Open the White House Watch newsletter for free.
Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
A test launch of SpaceX’s megarocket failed to go as planned on Tuesday, as President-elect Donald Trump watched, with flight directors scrapping the vehicle’s reusable booster in a blow to SpaceX boss Elon Musk. Abandoned the capture attempt just minutes into the mission.
Trump traveled to Brownsville, Texas, to witness the sixth test of the unmanned Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. The vehicle is a key part of Musk’s ambitions to return humans to the moon and colonize Mars.
SpaceX had hoped to repeat the first technological breakthrough achieved last month, holding the 397-foot (121-meter) rocket’s “super-heavy” booster stage with mechanical arms known as “copsticks.” On the same pad from which it was launched. Musk said earlier in the day that one of the goals was a “fast/hard booster catch.”
However, just four minutes into the flight, one of the mission directors ordered a “booster offshore divert” when unspecified criteria for the attempt had not yet been met.
“Unfortunately no action was taken to catch up,” SpaceX engineer Kate Tice said in a live broadcast on social media platform X. “It was pretty epic in the first attempt, but the safety of the teams and the public and the pad itself is paramount. . . . That’s why we’re accepting the compromise.”
The rocket took off as expected and entered orbit, the upper stage traveling into space and re-igniting its Raptor engines. The unmanned spacecraft atop the rocket completed an orbit around the Earth before landing and crashing into the Indian Ocean. Instead of returning to the pad, the low-level booster performed a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico, exploding upon contact with the water’s surface.
While still a partially successful mission, the failure to capture the booster was tantalizing for Musk, who invited Trump to witness the feat after repeatedly marveling at the earlier attempt during campaign rallies. . He called Musk a “super genius” and said the arms held the rocket “like you hold your little baby at night”.
After donating more than $100 million to Trump’s campaign, Musk has become one of the most influential figures on his transition team, wielding influence over cabinet and regulatory appointments. Trump named the billionaire as co-head of the newly created Department for Government Efficiency, or DOJ, to dramatically reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy.
The success of the “Return and Catch” in October marked a major technological breakthrough for SpaceX, which has sought to reduce the cost of space exploration by retaining and reusing previously exploded boosters. Morgan Stanley estimates that a single Starship flight costs $100 million, but the company hopes to drop that to $50 million over time.
Musk said last month’s breakthrough was a “big step toward making life multidimensional.”
SpaceX is preparing for a manned lunar orbit in 2025 and a lunar landing in 2026.
