Yesterday was not the best day for Elon Musk and his founding space company: SpaceX. During its inaugural test flight, SpaceX’s Starship rocket, known as one of the most powerful ones ever constructed, exploded shortly after taking off at 8:33 am local time from Texas.
The 120-meter rocket system’s booster and cruise vessel were apparently unable to separate correctly after launch, potentially contributing to the spacecraft’s failure. Despite SpaceX’s prior warning that the probability of success was low and that the test flight was primarily for data collection purposes, company employees continued to cheer even after the rocket disintegrated, according to The Guardian’s report.
However, both Elon Musk and SpaceX accounts reacted with «exciting» messages on their official Twitter accounts.
“As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,” it was written in the SpaceX’s statement on Twitter, referring to the incident.
As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 20, 2023
Elon Musk soon reacted congratulating the SpaceX team «on an exciting test lauch of Startship».
Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!
Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months. pic.twitter.com/gswdFut1dK
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 20, 2023
After the explosion, Elon Musk’s personal wealth plummeted by almost $13 billion. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, which tracks the net worth of the world’s wealthiest individuals in real-time, reported a loss of $12.6 billion for Musk.
During the day, the entrepreneur also observed his electric car venture, Tesla, reveal disappointing Q1 results, leading to a 9.75 percent drop in shares, accompanied by earnings plummeting over 20 percent.
Subsequently, Musk, who is also the current Twitter’s CEO, faced a backlash on the social network after verified blue ticks were removed from users, making it possible for individuals to buy them instead of requesting them based on specific criteria.
However, despite all these a priori not-so-positive changes, Elon Musk tweeted he was having a good day «in so many ways» and even posted DJ Ponte Ice Pop Radio’s hit ‘Blue (Da Da Dee)‘.
Such a great day in so many ways
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 21, 2023
©PRISA MEDIA USA, INC. All rights reserved.
PRISA MEDIA USA, INC, expressly reserves the right to reproduce and use the works and other services accessible from this website by machine-readable media or other suitable means.