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SpaceX’s Starship, touted as the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, exploded during its test launch in Texas on Thursday morning.
Videos of the explosion, which is being called a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, were immediately posted to Twitter, as were memes comparing Elon Musk to the Roman Roy character in Succession.
BREAKING FOOTAGE 🚀 SpaceX #Starship, world’s biggest rocket, explodes during test flight pic.twitter.com/LDcGLB70vJ
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) April 20, 2023
Given the similarities between the events, people on Twitter began comparing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to Roman Roy from Succession, who also watched his high-profile rocket explode in his face:
— HBO (@HBO) April 20, 2023
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) April 20, 2023
— Mitch Carr (@mitchcarrtv) April 20, 2023
— The ADaug (@TheADaug) April 20, 2023
— Ian Lord (@Ian_Lord) April 20, 2023
One person compared the event to something out of a Mike Judge (Office Space, Idiocracy, Silicon Valley) project:
this is a mike judge movie pic.twitter.com/XT67242SvH
— Brian Grubb (@briancgrubb) April 20, 2023
SpaceX tried to play it cool following the explosion by sending out the following lighthearted tweet:
“As if the flight test was not exciting enough, Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation.”
The explosion of the Starship comes on the same day that Elon Musk’s other company, Twitter, decided it would be removing what it refers to as “legacy blue checkmarks.” At the time of this writing, however, many users with the blue checks reportedly still had theirs despite not signing up for Twitter Blue.
Founded by Elon Musk — who is also the CEO of companies such as Tesla and Twitter — back in 2002, SpaceX was created with the goal of “reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars.” Musk, as recently as this year, predicted that humans will reach Mars in the year 2029.
In addition to its rockets, SpaceX is also responsible for the creation of Starlink, which is a satellite internet constellation, launched back in 2019, that provides satellite Internet access coverage to over 53 countries.
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