President-elect Donald Trump attended a SpaceX launch in Texas with company CEO Elon Musk. The launch marked the sixth launch of SpaceX’s Starship, the largest rocket ever built. President Trump nominated Musk, who also heads Tesla Inc. and is a major backer of the Republican presidential campaign, to oversee efforts to improve government efficiency.
President-elect Donald Trump attended the launch of the SpaceX Starship rocket on Tuesday, along with company CEO Elon Musk.
“I’m headed to Texas to watch the largest object launch in history,” Trump wrote on Truth Social ahead of the event, wishing Musk the best of luck along with all the “great patriots” involved in the launch. I prayed. .
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.
NBC previously reported that 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 members of the Trump campaign. 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.
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 found that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act by discharging hot industrial wastewater at its launch facility without a permit during a previous Starship launch.
The findings, published Monday in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, show that SpaceX’s Starship launch “exceeded the maximum expected noise level, produced a very powerful sonic boom, and caused a huge drop in population near the launch site in south Texas.” “There is a risk of property damage in densely populated residential areas.” According to a report on the data in the 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.”
