From explosion to donation

Musk announces $30M gift after SN11 blows up during launch

Alejandra Yañez | THE RIDER

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced earlier today on Twitter that he will donate $20 million to Cameron County schools and $10 million to the City of Brownsville for downtown revitalization.

Musk teased the public by adding, “Details to follow next week,” to close out his tweet.

However, this was only one of the four posts that the SpaceX CEO tweeted today.

Later in the day, Musk said the area currently known as Boca Chica Village will grow exponentially within the next year.

“Starbase will grow by several thousand people over the next year or two,” he tweeted.

As previously reported by The Rider, Musk plans to incorporate Boca Chica Village into the city of Starbase, Texas.

Some Rio Grande Valley supporters believe that SpaceX and Elon Musk are “gentrifying” the Valley.

Perhaps Musk’s most impactful post today was his post to get people to consider moving to Brownsville and Boca Chica.

“Please consider moving to Starbase or greater Brownsville/South Padre area in Texas & encourage friends to do so,” he tweeted. “SpaceX’s hiring needs for engineers, technicians, builders & essential support personnel of all kinds are growing rapidly.”

This tweet was not received well by Valley locals who argued via Twitter that there are already engineers and technicians here who are in need of jobs.

One local resident tweeted, “There’s a lot of engineers, technicians, and builders who are intelligent and highly capable of doing the job but overlooked because they’re from Brownsville or the RGV. You moved into our community, don’t count out the local talent.”

While many residents replied to the tweet in fear that Musk’s influence will create a worse situation for the Rio Grande Valley, many people from out of state also responded saying they were eager about the opportunity to find work at Boca Chica.

“I am so down for this,” another Twitter user posted. “Need to score job first.”

In other SpaceX news, SN11 was launched this morning at the Boca Chica launch site and exploded before touchdown.

SN11 took flight at 8 a.m. and reached an altitude of 10 km before beginning its landing technique.

At precisely two minutes and 13 seconds, SN11 shut off its first of three Raptor engines. At three minutes, the second engine was shut off.

The SpaceX video stream was in and out throughout the launch and was completely lost near the six-minute mark after all three Raptor engines had been shut off.

John Insprucker, the launch commentator for SpaceX, was silent for about a minute before returning to the livestream saying, “We’re back with you. As you can see from the frozen camera view, we lost the clock at T+ five minutes 49 seconds. Looks like we’ve had another exciting test of Starship No. 11.”

Insprucker said an issue arose as the launch went into the engine ignition sequence and would need to be evaluated by the SpaceX team.

“Starship 11 is not coming back,” he said. “Do not wait for the landing. We do appear to have lost all the data from the vehicle.

Bystanders within the area of Boca Chica reported fallen debris from the sky after the prototype exploded in the air and craft crash-landed into the ground.

Due to the foggy conditions, there was no photograph of SN11’s explosion. However, the loud bang of the craft making contact with the landing pad was heard by those nearby.

Musk took to Twitter to explain SN11’s failure.

“Looks like engine 2 had issues on ascent & didn’t reach operating chamber pressure during landing burn, but, in theory, it wasn’t needed,” he tweeted. “Something significant happened shortly after landing burn start. Should know what it was once we can examine the bits later today.”

Musk later replied to his tweet, saying that SN15 will roll to the launch pad in a few days.

“It has hundreds of design improvements across structures, avionics/software & engine,” Musk’s tweet reads.

In related news, the SpaceX CEO also announced via Twitter that BN1 will be scrapped.

“BN1 is a manufacturing pathfinder, so will be scrapped,” Musk posted. “We learned a lot, but have already changed design to BN2. Goal is to get BN2 with engines on orbital pad before end of April. It might even be orbit-capable if we are lucky.”