South Texas erupted in cheers yesterday as SpaceX’s Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket system, blasted off on its first orbital test launch…and careened back to Earth in flames. Elon Musk’s 394-foot-tall baby climbed for just under four minutes before things started to go sideways in what scientists consider a “successful failure.”

Why did SpaceX employees pop the champagne?

Despite exploding—or, um, undergoing a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”—over the Gulf of Mexico, Starship surpassed the one expectation Musk set for the test: “Just don’t blow up the launchpad.” Mission accomplished.

The brief flight allowed engineers to gather much-needed data that they’ll use to figure out what went wrong. The next Starship test flight could happen in just a few months, which is good considering the ambitious plans SpaceX has for the rocket:

• Starship has until 2025 to stop exploding—that’s when SpaceX is set to help send humans to the moon’s surface for the first time in 50 years as part of the Artemis III mission. NASA is paying SpaceX more than $2.9 billion to use Starship as its lunar lander.
• Elon’s dream of colonizing Mars is nothing new, but with Starship humming, it may be one step closer to becoming a reality. Once it works as intended, the rocket will make space travel more accessible and less costly because it’s designed to be reusable.
• Starship’s massive payload capacity and world-record thrust could drive bigger, heavier innovations that wouldn’t be able to fit in existing rockets. The James Webb Telescope, space’s largest so far, had to fold up like a Transformer so it could make its journey in 2021.

Way down the line, scientists say, Starship could even be used to refuel flights between Earth and Mars and to mine the moon’s water ice for oxygen and other resources.

Big picture: Starship is meant to fly, just not yet. The rocket performed well for its first test flight, making it through Max Q, one of the most challenging moments of liftoff when spacecraft are most at risk of getting ripped apart by pressure. Once operational, the stainless steel Starship will be integral to future moon missions and satellite launches.—ML

You know you’ve found a standout when the professionals who review hundreds of credit cards every day sign up for it themselves.

And that’s exactly what happened when The Ascent’s experts saw this card. So what makes it so irresistible? We’ve got two words for ya: cash back.

Cardholders earn up to 5% cash back on rotating activated categories, plus a lucrative welcome bonus. What can this actually add up to in the real world? A whopping $1,306 in rewards.

To sweeten the offer even more, there’s 0% interest for 15 months on purchases and balance transfers, plus no annual fee.

Cash in on cash back.

Twitter purged legacy blue checks, but not all of them. After threatening to do it for weeks, Twitter removed blue check marks from prominent figures who aren’t paying subscribers, including Pope Francis, Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, and Neal Freyman. But several celebs are still verified, despite not paying up. LeBron James, who had been vocal about refusing to pay a monthly subscription, still has his check mark because apparently Elon Musk is covering him. “I’m paying for a few personally,” Musk tweeted.

Manslaughter charges dropped against Alec Baldwin. Prosecutors have dropped an involuntary manslaughter charge against the actor in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a movie set in 2021, Baldwin’s lawyers said. Baldwin denied that he pulled the gun’s trigger, but an FBI report concluded that someone had to have pulled the trigger for the weapon to fire. The movie, Rust, resumed filming in Montana yesterday, with Baldwin remaining in his acting and co-producing roles.

Major gold heist in Canada. Police announced that nearly $15 million in gold and other valuable items were stolen from a cargo holding facility at Toronto’s Pearson Airport on Monday, and the perps didn’t even say they were sorry about it. Pearson is Canada’s busiest airport, and gold mined in northern Ontario typically flows through it. The heist is one of the largest in Canada’s history.

BuzzFeed said yesterday it’s shutting down its news operation, BuzzFeed News. The move is part of broader cutbacks that include laying off 180 employees, or 15% of the company’s workforce. CEO Jonah Peretti said the cuts were the result of “economic and industry downturns” and the news division’s unprofitability.

How did we get here? BuzzFeed, founded in 2006 by Peretti, listicled its way to hundreds of millions in funding before launching a news division in 2012. In the newsroom’s early days, legacy media outlets rolled their eyes at BuzzFeed’s attempts at hard-hitting journalism. But it proved the haters wrong, and in 2021 won a Pulitzer Prize for its investigative work.

The problem: breaking big news didn’t translate to $$$

For all its reporting breakthroughs, BuzzFeed News was an expensive venture and didn’t bring in enough revenue to justify its continued existence, Peretti suggested.

So what will make money for BuzzFeed? Peretti said in an email that the company will focus on areas like its popular quizzes and other content that could potentially be created using AI—in his words, “parts of the business that have demonstrated their ability to add to the company’s bottom line.”

Other digital media outlets are facing similar challenges: Insider laid off 10% of its staff yesterday.—MM

Insider acquired a majority stake in Morning Brew in 2020.

On Wednesday night, Oakland Athletics President Dave Kaval confirmed the MLB team reached a deal to build a new stadium in Sin City.

It’s Freaky Friday for Las Vegas and Oakland. In 2016, Vegas had zero pro sports teams, and Oakland had three. If this deal goes through, Vegas will have four, and Oakland will have…none.

• Over the last six years, teams have flocked to Vegas like bachelor parties to the MGM Grand—the city is now home to the Raiders (NFL), Golden Knights (NHL), and Aces (WNBA).
• Meanwhile, Oakland lost the Golden State Warriors and the Raiders within a year of each other.

The A’s have been taking a lot of L’s. The team that pioneered the “Moneyball” strategy has lost its competitive edge in recent years, routinely trading its best players and spending little on the ones it’s kept. Two pitchers for the New York Mets, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, are together making more this year than the entire A’s roster.

And, putting on an abysmal on-the-field performance in an equally depressing stadium, attendance is the lowest in MLB at 10,129 people per game. On April 4, 11 of the 13 AAA minor league games drew more fans than the Athletics home game (3,407), per Baseball America.

Looking ahead…a new Athletics stadium in Vegas could be hosting games as early as 2027.—CC

Stat: At least 49 tracks on Spotify are the same exact song but appear under a different title and are attributed to different artists and writers. Adam Faze made the discovery this week when he realized that his Spotify Radio stream was playing the same song over and over again. No one knows precisely what is going on with these “fake artists,” but Faze and others allege it’s a ploy by Spotify to push AI-created music that has much lower licensing costs.

Quote: “Prove Mike Wrong”

In 2021, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell announced the “Prove Mike Wrong” challenge: He’d pay $5 million to anyone who could prove the data he had that purported to show interference in the 2020 presidential election wasn’t related to that election. And…someone debunked it. On Wednesday, an arbitration panel ruled that Lindell had to pay $5 million to Robert Zeidman, a computer forensics expert (and Trump voter) who, according to the panel, showed that Lindell’s data wasn’t linked to the 2020 election.

Read: This mom didn’t know she was in a $250k Candy Crush tournament, but she’s killing it. (Kotaku)

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to muting your family group chat.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

Space elevator: Take a trip to space and learn a lot along the way.

Hello, dearie: Check out the “grandma exploit” for an amusing response from ChatGPT.

Think you have an obsession? You’ve got nothing on this guy.

McMap: Here are the prices of Big Macs at McDonald’s locations across the country. $8.09 for one in Lee, MA? Really?

Attention corporate finance pros: Busy workday? No problem. CFO Brew delivers the top corporate finance headlines straight to your inbox. Subscribe now.

Renting vs. buying: Never an easy consideration. To help you stay informed, we’re talking with Zillow about the housing market, buying vs. renting, and how to prepare your finances and apply for a mortgage. Register here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Picdoku: If you went to band camp or ever tried to learn piano, you’ll recognize many of the symbols in today’s music-themed Picdoku. Play it here.

Friday puzzle

What is unique about the following sentence?

I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting.

Don’t let high-school math flashbacks keep you from learning about data—our Business Analytics Accelerator will teach you the basics of finance and data to make your job easier. Apply now for the May 1 cohort.

Unsure if artificial intelligence is coming for your job? Increase your understanding of AI in the workplace here.

Spring is here: Refresh your IT team’s digital strategy with these five tips for digital transformation. Download the guide.