U.S. President-elect Donald Trump walks with Elon Musk before attending a launch visit for the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas, USA.
Brandon Bell | via Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump attended Tuesday’s presentation. space x Rocket Starship and company CEO Elon Musk.
“I’m heading to Texas to see the launch of the largest object ever to rise.” written by trump Speaking at Truth Social ahead of the event, Musk was joined by all the “great patriots” involved in the launch to wish him well.
Trump’s presence at the SpaceX facility highlights his increasingly close ties to billionaire Musk, whose political action committee has heavily supported the Republican Party in recent elections. There is.
President Trump nominated Musk to co-chair a new advisory committee called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), along with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Since Trump’s election victory, Musk has been a near-constant presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and has criticized some Trump campaign officials. NBC previously reported.
Tuesday’s launch at SpaceX’s Starbase site in Boca Chica was the sixth launch of Starship, the largest rocket ever built.
The unmanned spacecraft took off from the company’s facility near Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX was aiming to catch the rocket’s “super heavy” booster on the launch tower once again, but instead the booster ended up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Starships were designed as reusable vehicles to fly cargo and people beyond Earth.
SpaceX has won a multibillion-dollar contract from the federal government to use Starship as a manned lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also attended Tuesday’s presentation. Mr. Cruz is the next chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over space-related issues.
SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft, powered by a powerful Super Heavy rocket, is ready for liftoff from the company’s Boca Chica launch pad near Brownsville, Texas, on November 16, 2024.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
SpaceX has received $19 billion from the federal government since 2008 and is poised to receive billions of dollars annually for years to come, according to a study of federal spending and prime contracts by FedScout.
The Environmental Protection Agency previously revealed that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act by discharging hot industrial wastewater at its launch facility without a permit during a previous Starship launch.
Research published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America A SpaceX data report says Monday’s SpaceX Starship launch “exceeded the maximum expected noise level, generated a sonic boom so powerful that it destroyed a densely populated residential area near the launch site in South Texas.” indicates that there is a risk of property damage to the ground. new york times.
SpaceX and Musk were vocal critics of the Federal Aviation Administration before President Trump’s election, urging the regulator to speed up its clearance review for Starship flights.
In September, Musk threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach.”
