After months of White House meetings and appearances with President Donald Trump, Elon Musk found himself in a more familiar place on Tuesday: tucked comfortably into the SpaceX control room in Starbase, Texas.
He was there to watch his company’s vanguard mega-rocket, Starship, launch toward space for the ninth time.
He also took the occasion to speak with a space reporter, Eric Berger, who has followed him closely for years and written two books about SpaceX.
In a brief interview, which was mostly about SpaceX’s plans and the technicalities behind Starship’s two recent explosions, Berger asked Musk about his political projects.
“I think I probably did spend a bit too much time on politics,” Musk said, according to the interview published in Ars Technica, where Berger is the senior space editor.
“It’s less than people would think, because the media is going to over-represent any political stuff,” Musk continued, adding, “It’s not like I left the companies. It was just relative time allocation that probably was a little too high on the government side, and I’ve reduced that significantly in recent weeks.”
Musk told Tesla investors in April that he would be stepping back from the White House DOGE office. He also told the Qatar Economic Forum earlier this month that he would spend a “lot less” on politics going forward.
Musk faced criticism earlier this year from Tesla investors, who questioned his commitment to the company.
Tesla stock also cratered over the latest quarter, at one point reaching 35% below its opening price this year in April. However, they have been slowly recovering in May since Musk said he would roll back his political involvement.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As for the Starship flight Musk was attending on Tuesday, things did not go according to plan. The spaceship reached space, but it failed its first-ever attempt to deploy a payload, which was a set of eight mock-up Starlink satellites. Then it spun out of control, fell toward the Indian Ocean without testing the engine firing and heat shield stressing that SpaceX had planned, and likely broke apart in midair.
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