Long-time readers will no doubt remember that I haven’t exactly tip-toed around Elon Musk when it comes to his mission, apparently, to tank Twitter. While just a few years ago, I might have been talking him up when it came to his mission to send people to Mars. SpaceX has revolutionized the aerospace industry with its groundbreaking achievements, especially with the ambitious Starship project. As the company continues to push the boundaries of space exploration, its CEO, Elon Musk, seems to simultaneously create public relations disaster after public relations disaster on Twitter.

SpaceX’s development approach for the Starship has been characterized by rapid prototyping and iterative testing. This process has allowed the company to learn from various failures and make significant progress in a relatively short period. Through multiple high-altitude test flights, SpaceX has demonstrated the capabilities of Starship prototypes, including controlled ascents, engine cutoffs, and controlled descents. The company has successfully nailed the difficult landing maneuver, which is crucial for the spacecraft’s reusability.

SpaceX’s ultimate goal is to kick off human colonization of Mars, thereby turning a little species of apes that you might have heard of called humans into an interplanetary species. A pretty big deal, and not just for science fiction fans. The Starship is central to this vision. Elon Musk has outlined an ambitious timeline for sending cargo missions to Mars by 2024, followed by crewed missions a few years later. While these plans may seem overly optimistic, SpaceX’s progress on Starship has brought the possibility of Mars colonization closer to reality. And yet, we have to wonder if we can take any schedule set by Musk seriously. And not just because the Cyber Truck had a planned launch of 2021 (and is still nowhere to be seen, years later). But also because it is increasingly challenging to take anything this modern-day Icarus does seriously anymore.

Just recently, in fact, the launch in Boca Chica, Texas of the largest rocket ever built didn’t exactly go to plan. The Starship spacecraft, ambitiously designed to fly people on a Mars mission someday, experienced a catastrophic explosion in mid-flight (thankfully with no crew on board). The ash, sand, and heavy debris that the launch unleashed have spread far beyond the anticipated debris field, casting not just a worrisome shadow over the region, but spreading a literal hazard that stands to threaten not human health and wildlife alike.

In a moment of rare candor (or common ego), Musk admitted on Twitter on April 16th that the Starship vehicle—with its 33 engines—was a high-stakes wager, teetering on the edge of explosion. That he was aware of the heightened risks of failure likely offers no solace (or surprise) to those in the affected area. Jared Margolis, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, noted that SpaceX had assured the FAA and other agencies that any “anomaly” would result in debris confined to a limited, 700-acre area surrounding the launch site. Of course, this assurance proved to be a gross miscalculation.

With Musk tweeting that they’re looking to be ready for another launch in just about a month or two, skeptics are, well, skeptical. Even with the assertion that future launches will include some sort of “water-cooled steel plate” to help with the heat. Why wasn’t this feature utilized in this first launch? Well, it wasn’t ready yet. Which, you would think, would mean that they weren’t ready to launch full stop. Instead, they banked on the concrete of the platform being able to survive just one launch, and went ahead with it. They were wrong.

In the chaotic wake of the explosion, the dazed denizens of Port Isabel and South Padre Island recounted tales of shattered windows in their businesses, trembling window panes in their homes, and a sinister veil of dust and particulate matter that unexpectedly smothered their homes, schools, and land.  So even those of us who yearn for humanity to ascend into the cosmos harbor a nagging trepidation that the very man who attempted (and failed) to monetize Twitter’s verification feature is at the helm. A head of a ship which, by the way, voted him off, although he has since refused to step down. While many of us used to see Musk as a sort of Iron-Man-like figure, advancing the species out of pocket, it has since become rather easy to be disillusioned with all of that. And to instead see him as just another billionaire doing whatever he wants regardless of the consequences and in service not of humanity, but of his own ego. At least this time, the side effects are space exploration and more sustainable transportation. We just have to cross our fingers that these positive side effects won’t soon be outpaced by the proverbial and literal aftershocks and plumes of ash caused by the actions of the very same individual.