SpaceX conducts Starship test flight with Trump in attendance
WATCH: SpaceX Starship flight blasts off from Texas
SpaceX launched its Starship mega-rocket on another uncrewed test flight from South Texas on Tuesday, with President-elect Donald Trump on hand to watch. The flight, just five weeks after the last one, shows SpaceX is gaining confidence in the rocket and its systems and is moving closer to making the world’s most powerful rocket operational and, ultimately, reusable.
SpaceX launched its Starship mega-rocket on another uncrewed test flight from South Texas on Tuesday, this time with President-elect Donald Trump on hand to watch.
The flight, just five weeks after the last one, shows SpaceX is gaining confidence in the rocket and its systems and is moving closer to making the world’s most powerful rocket operational and, ultimately, reusable.
The 30-minute launch window opened at 4 p.m. Central Time.
What is Starship?
Starship is SpaceX’s reusable spacecraft-and-rocket combo, designed to carry over 100 tons of cargo – and, eventually, people – to space and then fly back to Earth to be launched again.
The Starship spacecraft is launched atop SpaceX’s new Super Heavy booster, a 33-engine gleaming silver monstrosity – also reusable – that is more powerful than even NASA’s Saturn moon rockets of the 1960s. Fully stacked, the Starship combination reaches 397 feet high.
The rocket is being developed to reduce the cost and complexity of launches. NASA plans to use Starship as its lunar lander during the upcoming Artemis missions later this decade, carrying astronauts down to the moon and then back up to the Orion capsule.
SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk has long made clear his goal of using Starship to take people to Mars, making humanity a "multiplanetary species."
Starship’s successful fifth test flight
After engine fires and explosions plagued the first test flights, last month’s Starship flight – the fifth – was the most successful one yet. The Starship upper stage successfully orbited Earth and survived reentry, making a pinpoint simulated landing in the Indian Ocean.
More dramatically, the giant first stage booster successfully made a powered return to the launch site. But instead of deploying landing legs like its smaller cousin, the Falcon 9, the rocket hovered next to its launch tower and was caught by a pair of metal arms, dubbed chopsticks.
President Trump and Elon Musk
In his election night victory speech, Donald Trump specifically referenced that Starship flight in his toast to Elon Musk.
"This spaceship came down, and I saw those engines firing, and it looked like it was over. It was going to smash," Trump said. "And then I saw the fire pour out from the left side and put it straight, and it came down so gently, and then it wrapped those arms around it, and it held it. And just like you hold your baby at night, your little baby. And it was a beautiful thing to see."
Musk actively supported Trump’s bid for the White House, spending $200 million of his own cash, appearing at campaign rallies, and regularly posting pro-Trump comments and memes on his X social platform. Since the election, Musk has been spending a lot of time with Trump, reportedly advising him on cabinet picks and policy.
Trump has already called on Musk to help run an advisory panel he dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, named in reference to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.