On November 19, 2024, US President-elect Donald Trump walked with Elon Musk before watching the sixth test flight of the SpaceX Starship rocket in Brownsville, Texas, the United States.
Brandon Bell | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump attended Tuesday’s launch ceremony Space Exploration Technologies Corporation Rocket Starship and company CEO Musk.
“I’m going to the great state of Texas to watch the launch of the largest object ever launched into space,” Trump wrote On Truth Social, I wish Musk and all the “great patriots” who participated in the launch before the event good luck.
Trump’s presence at the SpaceX facility underscores his growing relationship with billionaire Musk, whose political action committee has heavily supported Republicans in recent elections.
Trump appointed Musk to co-lead a new advisory committee called the Department of Government Effectiveness (DOGE) with former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Musk has been a near-constant presence at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida since Trump won the election, angering some within Trump’s team. NBC previously reported.
Tuesday’s launch from SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starbase facility was the sixth for Starship, the largest rocket ever launched.
The unmanned spacecraft took off from the company’s factory near Brownsville, Texas. SpaceX aimed to use the launch tower to capture the rocket’s “Super Heavy” booster again, but the booster splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico.
Starships are designed as reusable vehicles for transporting cargo and people to places 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 lunar program.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz also attended Tuesday’s conference. Cruz is the incoming chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over space-related issues.
SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft is mounted on its powerful Super Heavy rocket and is preparing to launch on November 16, 2024 from the company’s Boca Chica launch pad near Brownsville, Texas, USA.
Joe Skipper | Reuters
SpaceX has received $19 billion from the federal government since 2008 and is expected to receive billions more annually in the coming years, according to a FedScout study of federal spending and major contracts.
The EPA previously found that SpaceX violated the Clean Water Act during previous Starship launches by discharging high-temperature industrial wastewater without a permit at its launch facilities.
Research published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America According to a SpaceX data report, Monday showed that the SpaceX Starship launch “exceeded projected maximum noise levels and produced a sonic boom so powerful that it had the potential to damage properties in densely populated residential communities near the South Texas launch site.” loss”. new york times.
Before Trump was elected, SpaceX and Musk had publicly criticized the Federal Aviation Administration, urging the regulator to speed up licensing reviews for Starship flights.
In September, Musk threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach.”
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