SpaceX’s Starship has, once again, exploded — and CEO Elon Musk does not seem to be taking it well at all.
After investor and avowed Tesla hater Dan O’Dowd poked fun at the billionaire for setting off a “huge fireworks display for the Caribbean” when Starship’s eighth test flight ended in a spectacular explosion, Musk seems to be posting through it.
Responding to O’Dowd’s post, the multi-hyphenate business owner tagged the “R*tard Finder” account — a profile with an appalling name which claims to blast people users for doing and saying things the poster (and Musk, apparently) disagrees with.
While there’s nothing particularly surprising about the unelected official trashing one of his biggest detractors, some of Musk’s other posts since this latest Starship disaster suggest he may be upset about it, too.
In an exchange with fanboy who insisted on defending the honor of the world’s richest man by insisting that the Starship explosion was “NOT a failure,” Musk took the rare step of admitting defeat.
“It was an upper stage / ship failure tbh,” he replied on X. “But we learned a good amount in building the new ship design and the flight.”
In yet another response to a stan who noted that “progress is not always linear” in regards to the explosion, Musk quipped back that “rockets are hard.”
While this latest Starship mishap would be more than enough to put Musk in a foul mood, other news events could be weighing heavily on his mind as well.
After the billionaire tried to distance himself from his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during a meeting with GOP members of Congress earlier in the week, President Donald Trump emphasized to reporters that he, and not Musk, is calling the shots.
“I had a meeting, I said I want the Cabinet members to go first, keep all the people you want, everybody you need,” the president said during an Oval Office press conference. “It would be better if they were there for two years instead of two weeks, because in two years they’ll know the people better. I want them to do the best job they can.”
This is, notably, the second time since January that Trump has seemed to take Musk down a notch. Paired with the Starship explosion, that’s probably more than enough reason to send the billionaire into his legendary “demon mode.”
More on the Muskian mind: You Can See When Elon Musk Actually Sleeps by Analyzing His Tweets, and It’s Terrifying
