Tuesday operations “looked really good,” possible Trump pick for NASA chief says

Although SpaceX landed the Starship’s Super Heavy booster in the Gulf of Mexico rather than on land, Greg Autry — the Associate Provost for Space at the University of Central Florida — says operations Tuesday evening “looked really good.”

“I don’t think they had a big anomaly because it looked really good to me,” Autry told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

He said he thinks the company may have opted for a sea landing of the booster out of an “abundance of caution,” as President-elect Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk were in attendance to view the test launch in Texas.

“I don’t know what the decision-making process was yet of the failure mode or maybe they just want to be careful not to kill the president-elect of the United States by any chance,” he said.

The booster that landed in the Gulf of Mexico cannot be used again, according to Autry, as it is not designed to “be soaked in saltwater.”

Autry is on the short list for a top space job in Trump’s administration, according to two sources familiar with the process.

In a statement to CNN on Tuesday, the Trump campaign said: “President-Elect Trump is making decisions on who will serve in his second Administration. Those decisions will continue to be announced by him when they are made.”