If you just ignore the political news and Wall Street, Elon Musk had an incredible week.
His company SpaceX pulled off an engineering marvel on Sunday when it launched the largest, most powerful rocket in the world — and on the first try, caught the 23-story-tall booster in midair using chopstick-like mechanical arms. The feat was unique in the history of spaceflight and duly impressed both government officials and aerospace experts.
“To manage to be that successful on your first attempt, I think it’s just remarkable,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who had not expected the catch to work.
Just a few days before, during a theatrical corporate unveiling at a Hollywood studio, Tesla showed off its prototype for the robotaxi Musk has been promising for years and trotted out a squad of bartending robot entertainers that he forecasted will be the “biggest product ever of any kind.” The flashy launch earned Musk a wave of social media adoration for the car’s sleek, futuristic design and the humanoid robots’ stunts.
But at the same time, an entirely separate set of dramas was swirling around Musk. On Oct. 5, he appeared at a Trump rally, leaping around the stage and proclaiming himself “Dark MAGA,” with a hat to match. In the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, he used his platform X to promote a torrent of misinformation around the federal response, evidently tailored to hurt Democrats.
A clear problem has emerged for a man who became rich, famous and increasingly powerful by retailing himself to Americans as a tribune of the human future: It’s now more difficult than ever to separate Musk the businessman from Musk the political figure.
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To see what that might be costing him, look at Musk’s brewing arguments with California and Washington.
Last Thursday, the California Coastal Commission rejected plans that would allow SpaceX to launch rockets more frequently from Vandenberg Air Force Base. In doing so, the agency cited his political antics: “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” Commissioner Gretchen Newsom said at a Thursday meeting.
The Starship launch — SpaceX’s biggest test of the year — was also nearly derailed this weekend due to Musk’s clashes with regulators. In recent months, SpaceX has butted heads with the Federal Aviation Administration over license requirements, with the agency slapping the company with hefty fines for allegedly failing to follow them before launches, and Musk openly threatening to sue for “regulatory overreach.” Even as Musk promoted the Starship test and targeted Sunday for its flight, it remained unclear if he would get the green light from the FAA until the day before.