Donald Trump Planning to Attend SpaceX Starship Launch Today

Elon's presidential plus one.

VIPresident

Elon Musk will have a powerful plus-one in attendance for a SpaceX launch on Tuesday.

As The New York Times and other publications report, president-elect Donald Trump is expected to attend the sixth orbital flight test of its Starship rocket, the largest rocket in the world, which will lift off from SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

The launch is scheduled to occur at 5 pm EST — though in this line of business, delays frequently occur. According to Reuters, the Federal Aviation Administration issued temporary flight restrictions for "VIP Movement" near the launch site on Monday, an order that typically precedes a high-profile visit.

If the news is true, it's yet another clear sign of the deepening personal ties between Musk — a self-styled "First Buddy" — and Trump, who has plans for the world's richest man during his upcoming presidency.

Back Again

The Starship test hopes to demonstrate that the upper stage of the launch vehicle, the Starship itself rather than its enormous booster, can relight one of its rocket engines in space. This capability will be essential for the spacecraft to perform controlled reentries into the Earth's atmosphere, thus paving the way for its reusability.

As for the SpaceX test's audience, this won't be the first time that Trump has attended one in person. During his first term as president, he watched the launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in May 2020, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The context this time around is decidedly different. The 2020 launch marked the first time that NASA astronauts were carried to orbit from home soil in nearly a decade, as the US had long depended on Russia's launch capabilities to carry out the task. As such, Trump's attendance celebrated a landmark achievement in American spaceflight.

There's little doubt that Starship will be an important rocket, provided it lives up to its expectations. But the Tuesday launch test has no such historic plaudits attached to it, and does not serve as testament to a deepening NASA-SpaceX relationship (that part comes later). It will be a decisive test, but the rocket still has a long way to go before being mission-ready.

Trump's attendance, therefore, seems in service of boosting Musk's brand along with his own — while intertwining each with the other ever more inextricably.

Launch Lords

But to that end, most of the groundwork has already been laid. Through his America PAC, Musk bankrolled the campaigns of Trump and his allies with over $130 million in donations.

Trump returned the favor by tipping Musk to co-head his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a commission that will seek to cut federal spending by trillions of dollars.

Both parties have lavished praise on each other throughout the campaign — a noticeable change from the days of when they used to be at each other's throats.

Reports abound, nevertheless, that Trump and/or his team are getting tired of Musk. The future president's attendance at Musk's event today won't be enough to quash that speculation on its own — though in the public's eyes, the two generally proceed on good terms.

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