Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its giant Starship rocket to space from Texas.
Donald Trump arrived in Brownsville, Texas, to watch one of Elon Musk’s companies test its Starship rocket, the latest sign of a deepening bond between the president-elect and the world’s richest man.
Ever since Musk began camping out at Mar-a-Lago after the election, there’s been speculation over when Trump would grow tired of having him hanging around and giving him advice on running the country.
The rocket’s 233-foot-tall (71-metre-tall) first-stage booster, called Super Heavy, detached from its second stage, Starship, at roughly 40 miles (62 km) in altitude, sending the craft into space.
Super Heavy unexpectedly splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico instead of returning to land, where it was expected to fall into large mechanical arms attached to the tower it launched from. The last-minute diversion to water indicated something went wrong.
