Elon Musk said his stint in Washington taught him that “the federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized.”

Musk will discuss progress and next steps toward building a human presence on the Red Planet ahead of Starship’s ninth test flight today.

As Elon Musk pulls back from his political work in the US government, the SpaceX chief is turning his attention back to his rocket company, planning an all-hands-style X livestream to discuss his long-term goal of sending humans to Mars.

The ninth flight test of SpaceX's Starship megarocket is scheduled for later today, with an hour-long launch window opening at 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT). A livestream of Starship Flight Test 9 will be available on the Space.com homepage and YouTube channel, as well as on SpaceX's Flight 9 mission page, the @SpaceX X account and X TV app.

Elon Musk shifts attention back to X, xAI, Tesla, and SpaceX after a major outage, scaling back political work to oversee key tech rollouts and regain investor confidence.

Most of Southern California felt the shaking from a brief sonic boom created by SpaceX aircraft Dragon returning to Earth on Saturday night.