Awkward moment Trump asks Musk a baffling question at SpaceX launch
President-elect’s teen granddaughter Kai Trump captured the exchange for her behind-the-scene vlog
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Your support makes all the difference.Kai Trump captured an awkward moment between her grandfather Donald Trump and Space X boss Elon Musk during his SpaceX rocket launch earlier this month.
The 17-year-old political scion accompanied the president-elect and Musk to watch the Starship rocket launch in Brownsville, Texas, on November 19.
The sixth Starship flight test saw SpaceX once again attempt to catch the rocket’s Super Heavy booster using “chopstick” arms at the launch tower at the company’s Starbase facility.
But the catch failed, forcing Musk’s company to splash down the rocket into the Indian Ocean.
Kai, who was filming her behind-the-scenes vlog for X and YouTube, captured the moment that Musk informed Trump that the booster wouldn’t be able to return to the launch site after the mission director called off the catch four minutes into the launch.
“We had some concerns about the tower so it was commanded to land out at sea,” Trump’s incoming head of the Department of Government Efficiency said in the clip.
“Amazing, amazing,” Trump replied about the failed moment.
The president-elect then prompted a side-eye from Musk as he asked whether the rocket booster – which had crashed into the ocean – could be reused.
“Can they use that again? Can they get it from the sea?” he asked, standing next to Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
Musk paused and appeared to smirk as he informed Trump: “It’s going to be… probably blow up, it’s probably going to blow up, that’s my guess.
“We have better versions which are in production in those factories over there.”
Musk, however, later said that SpaceX had a contingency plan if the booster didn’t blow up.
“If it doesn’t blow up, we do have ships to try to bring it back and then we can expect it to learn more,” he said.
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