U.S. President-elect Donald Trump walks with Elon Musk before attending a viewing of the launch of the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket, in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 19, 2024.
Brandon Bell | Via Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump attended Tuesday’s launch of the SpaceX rocket Starship with company CEO Elon Musk.
“I’m heading to the Great State of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever to be elevated,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, wishing Musk luck along with all the “great patriots” involved in the launch ahead of the event.
Trump’s presence at the SpaceX facility underscores his increasingly close relationship with the mega-billionaire Musk, whose political action committee heavily backed the Republican in the recent election.
Trump has tapped Musk to co-lead a new advisory commission called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, with former Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy.
Since Trump’s election win, Musk has been a nearly constant presence at Trump’s side at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, rankling some Trump team insiders, NBC previously reported.
Tuesday’s launch at SpaceX’s Starbase site in Boca Chica was the sixth for Starship, the largest rocket ever built.
The uncrewed spacecraft took off from the company’s facility near Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX aimed to catch the rocket’s “Super Heavy” booster once again with its launch tower, but instead the booster splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico.
Starship was designed to be a reusable vehicle for flying cargo and people beyond Earth.
SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the federal government to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also attended Tuesday’s launch. Cruz is the incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over space-related issues.
SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket is prepared for launch at the company’s Boca Chica launchpad, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S., November 16, 2024.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
SpaceX has received $19 billion from the federal government since 2008 and is poised to take in several billion per year, for years to come, according to research on federal spending and prime contracts by FedScout.
The Environmental Protection Agency previously found that SpaceX had violated the Clean Water Act during prior Starship launches by discharging hot, industrial wastewater without a permit at their launch facility.
Research published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America on Monday indicates that a SpaceX Starship launch “exceeds projected maximum noise levels, generating a sonic boom so powerful it risks property damage in the densely populated residential community near its South Texas launch site,” according to a report on the data by The New York Times.
SpaceX and Musk were vocally critical of the Federal Aviation Administration before Trump’s election, urging the regulator to speed up its license reviews for Starship flights.
In September, Musk threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach.”