Elon Musk’s private company SpaceX successfully ‘caught’ a rocket booster after returning it to its launch pad for the first time, a historic breakthrough in its journey toward taking humans to Mars before the end of the decade. But because of the billionaire’s endorsement of the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, the Democrat-led administration in Washington clearly doesn’t think that congratulations are in order.
SpaceX’s ‘Starship,’ the craft designed to turn humanity into a multi-planetary species, was developed to be a fully reusable launch vehicle, with its launch tower capable of ‘catching’ both of its rocket stages, the ‘Super Heavy’ booster and the spacecraft.
On Sunday, October 13th, the biggest rocket ever built took flight for the fifth time, with the intention of testing a bold maneuver that’s never been tried before: catching its giant, 71-meter-tall booster with the launch tower’s ‘chopsticks.’
The test was an overwhelming success. “A day for the engineering history books,” said Kate Tice, SpaceX manager of Quality Systems Engineering, during live commentary from the company’s California headquarters. “This is absolutely insane! On the first-ever attempt, we have successfully caught the Super Heavy booster back at the launch tower.”
“Are you kidding me?” SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot added from the launch site. “Even in this day and age, what we just saw—that looked like magic.”
While the breakthrough has been widely celebrated on the internet, it became increasingly obvious that no praise would come from one place in particular—the White House. Despite the achievement being compared to America’s greatest engineering feat, the 1969 moon landing, the Biden/Harris administration chose to keep silent because Musk happens to be on the opposing side, politically.
In recent months, Musk has been an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, calling him the only candidate who can “preserve democracy in America.”
Along with endorsing the presidential campaign, Musk reinstated Trump’s suspended account on X, and even hosted a two-hour long live podcast interview with the Republican nominee that reached a hundred million views in less than 24 hours. Even Brussels took notice, with the bloc’s self-styled “digital enforcer,” former Commissioner Thierry Breton, threatening Musk with legal consequences if he failed to limit Trump’s exposure on the site.
Earlier this month, Musk even attended one of Trump’s campaign rallies as a speaker, arguing against the Democratic party over its attacks on free speech and other basic liberties guaranteed by the American Constitution.
Social media users were quick to notice the White House’s silence and call out its petty partisanship:
When we first landed on the moon, the nation stood united in awe of what we could achieve together. Now, it seems party politics has overshadowed our ability to celebrate American innovation.