The mid-flight explosion of the largest rocket ever launched, with that spectacular firecracker in the Texas sky, caused all eyes to turn to Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind that operation sold to hype and cymbal. The numerous onlookers concentrated in Boca Chica were direct witnesses of a spectacle that they will remember and tell their grandchildren.
All the US media issued alerts about what happened. In all of them the idea of fiasco was rather given. “SpaceX's space rocket launched, but fell short of its most ambitious goals when it exploded minutes after its flight,” noted The New York Times. "The most powerful rocket ever built flew briefly and exploded in midair on the first launch attempt," CNN noted.
This was the general tone. Although the experts, and Musk himself, later added that one could not speak of total failure, that this was only a first test and a small setback for a future great advance in space exploration, any citizen could think that the thing had gone wrong, as the media headlines reflected, and that the most famous businessman is not going through his best period in his business.
No matter how you look at it, the owner of SpaceX could not puff up and brag about his contribution, as he has done on other occasions. The explosion coincided with a growing discredit of Twitter, the social network that he bought last fall for 44,000 million dollars and that, in a recent interview, he himself acknowledged that today it is not worth even half. And, even worse, its flagship, Tesla, the pioneering company in the manufacture of electric cars, suffered a drop in the price of its shares on Wall Street this Thursday of up to about 10%, after a report that includes a 24% drop in profits during the first quarter of the year.
This loss of profits, much worse than forecast, is directly related to the price cut of its vehicles, between 14% and 25% this 2023 in the United States. This strategy sought to stimulate weak demand, higher interest rates and, above all, flourishing competition. Musk is no longer alone in this market.
In the midst of this growing competition, Tesla is trying to maintain pole position or preserve its market share by making its cars cheaper, usually much more expensive than the rest. Tesla delivered 422,875 vehicles during that first third of the year, 36% more than the same period in 2022. However, it sold for an average of $46,000, down from $52,200 a year ago. This caused earnings to remain at 2.5 billion, below the 3.3 billion in the first quarter of 2022.
It was also a year ago around this time that his aggressive offer to buy the social network of the bird that trills. So Musk posed a question: “Is Twitter dying?” Twelve months later, and once the platform is in his hands, maybe I'll have his answer.
Under his control, Twitter has been transformed and, according to experts, not exactly for the better. In recent times, according to The Washington Post, government agencies, the media, and powerful social and economic influencers have questioned the use of this social network and have even abandoned it.
Advertisers have fled in droves due to changes in management policy, with a spectacular spread of hate speech, and erratic behavior by Musk, which has caused ad revenue to fall by as much as 75%.
And what's worse, the changes introduced have made many think that Twitter is no longer reliable.
It seems clear that, despite the fact that Musk praised that first step of the mega rocket, his contraption has exploded in one of his worst business moments. Too much pyrotechnic attention.
