Rachel Maddow lambasted Elon Musk on Thursday night, following the explosion of the latter’s latest SpaceX Starship rocket that sent “dangerous debris” streaming down from the skies over Florida.
“Tonight, Elon Musk blew something up and disrupted the lives of thousands of Americans,” Maddow began. “For the second time in less than two months, a rocket launched by Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, exploded and rained potentially dangerous debris down over a wide area of Earth, causing real chaos for planes and airline passengers.”
“In a statement, SpaceX said that, ‘During Starship’s ascent burn, the vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly,’” the “Rachel Maddow Show” host noted, before using that as a metaphor for Musk’s recent, Trump-sanctioned string of hasty government cuts and layoffs. “Rapid unscheduled disassembly is kind of Elon Musk’s specialty these days, especially in a way that really messes with other people through no fault of their own.”
“As debris rained down tonight from Elon Musk’s failed rocket, multiple airports in Florida, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach and Orlando, were all brought to a complete halt,” Maddow reported. “Even departures as far north as the Philadelphia Airport were significantly delayed.”
You can watch the full MSNBC segment, below:
Thursday’s failed test flight comes nearly two months after another SpaceX test of its Starship rocket, the largest and most powerful of its kind, similarly ended in a fiery explosion. Launched from the southernmost tip of Texas, SpaceX’s latest Starship was meant to complete an hour-long test flight going eastward toward the Indian Ocean. It was equipped with mock satellites that it was meant to release once it reached space.
The rocket only reached 90 miles in altitude before it began to malfunction, though, and contact with the ship was lost less than 10 minutes into its flight. An ongoing investigation mandated by the Federal Aviation Administration has reported that the January Starship explosion was caused by leaking fuel, which started a series of fires that shut down the rocket’s engines and triggered its self-destruct system.
Two months ago, SpaceX also called its January explosion the result of a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Right now, NASA plans to use Musk’s Starship rocket to take its astronauts to the moon sometime this decade. The billionaire, meanwhile, has plans to use Starship to take travelers all the way to Mars.
Referencing the ongoing investigation into the previous explosion, Maddow observed, “Last week the FAA nevertheless cleared SpaceX to launch another one, even though the investigation into why the last one blew up was not complete. Why did they clear it? I don’t know. But, of course, in between those two flights, Donald Trump was sworn in as president, he installed Elon Musk — his top campaign donor — as kind of his co-president, Musk’s DOGE austerity operation fired hundreds of people at the FAA and the FAA reportedly decided to suddenly start using Starlink satellite terminals made by Musk’s company.”
Capping off the segment, Maddow concluded, “It is worth wondering, at least, how much more ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ our country’s going to be able to take.”
