President-elect Donald Trump praised Elon Musk and SpaceX during his election night victory speech.
In a speech broadcast Tuesday evening (November 5), Trump recalled watching the final and fifth flight test of SpaceX’s Starship rocket, as well as his conversations with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk about using the company’s Starlink satellites in North Carolina after… Missile launch incident. Deadly effects of Hurricane Helen.
“And I called Elon and said, ‘Elon, is that you?’ He said, ‘Yes, it was.’ And I said, ‘Who can do it? Can Russia do it? Can China do it?’ ‘No.’” Trump He said in the speechHe recalled watching the most recent Starship test in which the massive rocket was grabbed by the “chopstick” arms on SpaceX’s launch tower. “Can the United States do this other than you?” “No, no one can do that.” I said, “This is why I love you, Elon. This is great.”
Trump said he had to hold the donor on hold for 45 minutes while watching the test flight, which he said he thought was “a space age movie or something.”
The president-elect then noted his call with Musk after Hurricane Helen after receiving multiple inquiries about the use of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which have been used to provide vital communications services in the wake of natural disasters and conflicts around the world. In the wake of devastating Hurricanes Helen and Milton, SpaceX is making Starlink broadband services free for the rest of 2024, regardless of hardware costs, for all users living in areas affected by the storms.
“People from North Carolina came up to me and said, ‘Is it at all possible for you to talk to Elon Musk? We need Starlink,'” Trump said during his victory speech, adding, “I said, ‘What’s Starlink?'” ?
Trump said he asked Musk about Starlink: “What the hell is that?” “It’s a very good communications system,” he said. I said, “Elon, they need him so bad in North Carolina, can you get him?”
“He got there so fast. It was unbelievable,” Trump said. “So, he was amazing. He saved a lot of lives. He saved a lot of lives. But he’s got a special personality. He’s a special guy. He’s a super genius. We have to protect our geniuses. We don’t have that.” “A lot of them we should.”
Musk has endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election. The Trump administration has campaigned extensively on deregulating American industries, an issue that Musk and SpaceX spoke loudly about throughout SpaceX’s Starship rocket test campaign.
Musk called for Michael Whitaker’s resignation from the FAA in September after the FAA fined SpaceX for two launch violations. SpaceX threatened to sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach” in response.
Trump has touted his accomplishments in American spaceflight for years, noting that one of his proudest accomplishments during his first term was the creation of the U.S. Space Force. In 2020, the Trump campaign released a 2.5-minute video titled “Make Space Great Again” that praised his administration’s role in the SpaceX Demo-2 mission, the first orbital human spaceflight to be launched from the United States since the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet. In 2011.