On Saturday night CEO and founder of SpaceX Elon Musk presented in Texas a fully-assembled Starship rocket, which is ultimately set to put humans on Mars in an attempt to save humanity from extinction.
The shining, bullet-shaped successor to Falcon 1, which orbited the Earth 11 years ago, grabbed public attention for its futuristic look and its capacity not only to reach orbit and eventually other planets, but also to return back.
Elon Musk was so excited to share the first images of the fully completed spacecraft that he immediately posted a photo of the rocket after the presentation, captioning it with “rage, rage against the dying of the light”.
Both the post and Starship’s presentation stirred some mixed reactions from his followers, ranging from genuine excitement, to hardly concealed sneering from the public who saw some obvious phallic motifs in the rocket’s design.
While some Twitter users noted that there is a legitimate reason for rockets and the male sex organ to share a similar shape, many netizens just could not help but joke about Starship penetrating space in the future.
However, some of Musk’s followers were struck not so much by the rocket’s design, but rather by its apparent shabby shape, which revealed some dents on the exterior.
The next-generation Starship rocket is set to be launched into orbit in the next several months, in what appears to be a long-term bid to “place humans on Mars”.