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Firefly nears second orbital launch attempt as US forces Ukrainian founder to divest
While the rocket startup he is responsible for resurrecting is preparing for a second orbital launch attempt, a Ukrainian multimillionaire – an entrepreneur, businessman, and the founder of Firefly Aerospace – has once again been forced to take extreme actions by the US government.
Resurrected in 2017 after going bankrupt and ceasing operations the year prior, Firefly is a private launch provider based out of Austin, Texas and founded by Maxim Polyakov and former CEO Tom Markusic. Polyakov has supported the company since its second inception, privately funding the startup with over $200 million earned through success in Ukrainian tech industries. With those contributions, Polyakov was able to singlehandedly resurrect the startup from bankruptcy and continue the development of an even more ambitious Alpha launch vehicle.
For the last two years, though, Polyakov has been under scrutiny from US government officials, who’ve objected to Polyakov – a Ukrainian and UK citizen – having control over the company, with fears that the launch technology developed by the company could make its way back to Ukraine and poses a national security threat.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
In late 2020, Polyakov quietly stepped down as chairman and withdrew from Firefly’s day-to-day operations in the hopes of killing the controversy and giving the startup a better chance at being awarded government contracts. Firefly’s board of directors includes many former U.S government officials, including Deborah Lee James, former secretary of the Air Force, and Robert Cardillo, former director of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.
However, officials were not satisfied with Polyakov simply stepping down from operations, indicating they want him to have less ownership in the company as well. In November 2021, just two months after Firefly’s inaugural flight test, Polyakov received a letter from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S (CFIUS). This letter expressed these ongoing concerns and asked that he, along with his investment company, Noosphere Venture Partners, sell their stock in Firefly; which amounted to over 50% stake in the company. Because of this request, Firefly halted their operations at Vandenberg Air-force Base.
Before halting launch operations, Firefly claimed to be on track for another Alpha launch as early as January 2022. Firefly’s first launch on September 2nd, 2021 ended in failure around two minutes after liftoff due to a premature engine shutdown. Jason Mello, president of Firefly Space Transportation Services, stated in an interview that fixing the problem responsible for the failure was “fairly easy and straightforward.”
On February 16th, 2022 Polyakov revealed that the United States government had once again gone on the offensive, this time forcing him to fully and permanently cede any involvement in his company. He posted the following statement on Facebook:

Polyakov revealed that he chose to sell his 58% stake in the company to co-founder and CEO Tom Markusic for $1 USD – a selfless act given that selling his stake for nothing all but guarantees he will never recoup a cent of the several hundred million dollars he invested in Firefly.
Previously, Polyakov expressed how excited he was to turn Firefly into a massive aerospace company that both the United States and Ukraine could be proud of and benefit from. “During the Soviet era, Ukraine produced some of the world’s best rocket and engine technology, but much of those inventions have languished in recent years due to lack of investment. The hope was that Firefly could pair its best engineers from the U.S. and Ukraine together to make a fleet of large rockets capable of taking many satellites into orbit and, later on, missions to the moon. Polyakov wanted the U.S. to gain access to Ukrainian expertise, while also finding a way to boost the prospects of Ukrainian aerospace engineers, he has said.” (Bloomberg)
It is speculated that the US government’s sudden and extreme requests came because of concerns over the rising tensions caused by Russia’s increasingly unstable posturing and recurring threats of invasion. Even though Ukraine is friendly with the United States, concerns of conflict with Russia may have increased worries about what might happen to technology developed inside of the country. Ukraine, a sovereign nation, has been forced to increase security along its borders as fear of a Russian invasion grows.
Despite the recent legal and organizational setbacks and drama caused by the US government, Firefly has been doing extremely well from a technical standpoint. The company recently shared a video of the successful static fire testing of both stages of the second Alpha rocket, indicating that it could be ready for flight in the very near future. Even though Polyakov was forced to abandon his aerospace startup, it’s never been more clear that his investment not only saved Firefly but raised the company closer to success than it’s ever been before.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
