SpaceX
DeepSpace: A critical juncture for SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, other players
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A high-pressure competition between all four major US launch providers – SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, and Orbital ATK (now NGIS) – is about to head into its most critical stage, a period of 60 days allotted for interested parties to submit their completed proposals. According to the US Air Force (USAF), the final request for proposals (RFP) could come as early as March 29th, giving the four aforementioned companies until May 28th to complete their proposals.
All things considered, the growing pressure and some of the USAF’s strategy behind the program – known as Launch Service Procurement (LSP) Phase 2 – has raised significant questions that remain largely unanswered and lead to a few mild bouts of strife or unhappiness from contract competitors. Most notably, Blue Origin – having just won a USAF development contract worth $500M – has repeatedly requested that the USAF and Department of Defense (DoD) delay the RFP and contract awards until 2021, according to Space News’ Sandra Erwin. Meanwhile, a lack of clarification from the USAF means that it’s unclear whether the strategy behind launch contract awards (LSP) will end up contradicting or undermining a partially connected development program known as Launch Service Agreements (LSA) that saw the USAF award ~$2B to three providers (excluding SpaceX) between 2018 and 2024.
Battle of the Acronyms: LSP vs. LSA
- Recently rebranded by the US military as the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, LSP Phase 1 and 2 and LSA are the latest major procurement initiatives begun under the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program, spun up in the 1990s to provide a firmer foundation for the commercial launch of military spacecraft after the 1986 Shuttle Challenger disaster pushed most satellites off of the platform.
- Phase 2 of the EELV program has been ongoing for several years and will culminate with the procurement of 25+ launch contracts (LSP) from two providers no earlier than 2020. The USAF’s Launch Service Agreements are also a major strategic feature of Phase 2, nominally seeing the military branch contribute major funding to assist in the development of three separate launch vehicles (New Glenn, Vulcan, and Omega) with the intention of ultimately certifying those rockets for EELV (now NSSL) launches.
- LSA also saw the USAF award several tens of millions to SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop capabilities centered around advanced, new rocket engines (BE-4, AR-1, and Raptor), but the latest phase of LSA is valued at least several times higher than its earlier engine-specific awards.
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- Oddly, the purpose of LSA was – at least on the cover – to effectively ensure that the Air Force had multiple (more than two) providers and thus preserve a healthy, competitive military launch market. A senior leader specifically stated that “the goal of [LSA] is to make sure [the US military has] a competitive industrial base.”
- Aside from an initial $181M awarded to Blue Origin, ULA, and Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems, NGIS) in 2018 and 2019, the remaining funding – up to $320M for Blue Origin’s New Glenn, $610M for NGIS’ Omega, and $785M for ULA’s Vulcan – would be dispersed to each provider between 2020 and 2024.
- However, an odd and controversial bit of language behind the coming five-year launch services procurement (LSP) initiative would completely cut off funding to LSA awardees in the event that they fail to be awarded launches from the latest LSP.
- Additionally, the LSP awards are strictly meant – apparently very intentionally – to be distrubuted among two launch providers, despite a minimum at least four being able (SpaceX) or required (ULA, Blue, NGIS) to enter a bid.
- In other words, this guarantees that either one or two of the three LSA awardees would have the vast majority of their supposedly awarded development funding cut off after FY2020, four years early.
- Oddly, the purpose of LSA was – at least on the cover – to effectively ensure that the Air Force had multiple (more than two) providers and thus preserve a healthy, competitive military launch market. A senior leader specifically stated that “the goal of [LSA] is to make sure [the US military has] a competitive industrial base.”
- Despite continued protests from a number of stakeholders, the USAF has refused to budge from its decision to simultaneously A) create a duopoly, B) defeat the purpose of LSA awards, and C) mass-award ~25 launch contracts to two providers in 2020, anywhere from 12-24 months prior to the planned inaugural launches of all three LSA-funded rockets.
- Without cost-sharing development funds from the USAF and a chance of winning more than a handful of US military launch contracts between now and the late 2020s, it can be all but guaranteed that an LSA funding cutoff will either indefinitely pause or slow to a crawl a given provider’s development of their proposed launch vehicle.
A rocket and a hard place
- This sticky situation thus offers up a few potential ways that this badly-designed (or entirely dishonest) military launch development and procurement strategy will end up by the end of 2020. One way or another, the current strategy as it stands will end up providing two (or one, given that SpaceX will not receive LSA funding) companies with several years of development funding and at least five years of bountiful, guaranteed launch contracts.
- The four providers and two LSP slots available offer a set range of possible alternate realities, limited by political barriers that would, say, almost invariably prevent the USAF from severely harming ULA by cutting off the vast majority of the company’s only real source of income for 5+ years.
- ULA and SpaceX win: This maintains the status quo, wholly invalidating the point of using LSA funds to ensure “a competitive industrial base.” NGIS likely cancels/freezes all Omega development with no chance of competing in commercial markets. Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos could significantly delay New Glenn’s readiness for military missions if he fails to invest an additional $500M in infrastructure. Likeliest result: a marginally competitive duopoly.
- ULA wins, SpaceX loses: Having just certified Falcon 9 – and nearly Falcon Heavy – for high-value military launches and awarded SpaceX a total of 10 launch contracts (9 yet to be completed), the USAF could effectively spit in SpaceX’s face and award ULA and Blue Origin or NGIS LSP’s 25+ launch contracts.
- It’s hard to exaggerate just how much of a slight this would be perceived as by SpaceX and its executives, CEO Elon Musk in particular. The USAF would be risking the creation of a major political enemy, one which has already demonstrated a willingness to take the federal government to court and win. The USAF/DoD would effectively be hedging their bets against an assumption that SpaceX’s nine present military launch contracts will sate the company and ensure that SpaceX indefinitely remains a certified EELV/NSSL provider.
- In this eventuality, either Blue Origin or NGIS would lose LSA funding and the prospect of almost any military launch contracts until the late 2020s. For NGIS, this would likely kill Omega.
- At the end of the day, it’s sadly conceivable that the USAF/DoD may end up awarding LSP contracts to ULA (effectively a politically-forced hand) and NGIS, the latter assuring Omega’s survival. The military would thus be assuming that the political fallout created with SpaceX and Blue Origin would not be enough to severely harm their relationships, while also assuming that their much stronger commercial prospects and independent funding sources would ensure that each provider remains certified and willing to compete for future NSSL/EELV launches.
Regardless of what happens, the contradictory ways the USAF/DoD have structured their LSA and LSP programs seems bizarrely intent on creating major headaches and potential problems where that could easily be avoided with extraordinarily simple changes, namely removing the inexplicable cap and allowing three or more companies to win some of the ~25 LSP launch contracts).
Mission Updates
- The second launch of Falcon Heavy – the rocket’s commercial debut – is still scheduled to occur as early as April 7th.
- After Falcon Heavy, Cargo Dragon’s CRS-17 resupply mission is firmly scheduled for April (April 25th), while the first dedicated Starlink launch is now NET May 2019.
Photo of the Week:
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk offered a glimpse of a 1650 Kelvin (2500ºF/1400ºC) test of Starship’s metallic heat shield, simulating mid-range temperatures such a shield’s windward side might experience during an orbital-velocity reentry.(c. Elon Musk/SpaceX)
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.
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Elon Musk
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.
Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.
The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.
Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.
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Check out the “Robovan” from @Tesla
📸: @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/D4es2i9NUe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”
Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.
The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”
Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.
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Elon Musk
Space finally faced the people living next to its next Terafab mega-project
SpaceX confirmed Terafab’s Grimes County site is locked in, with construction starting within months.
SpaceX and Terafab representatives sat across from Grimes County residents for the first time on Wednesday, telling a packed Commissioners Court room that the $55 billion chip manufacturing project is now a done deal at the Gibbons Creek Reservoir site.
The meeting followed a $10 million check SpaceX sent the county earlier this week, satisfying a payment deadline built into the tax abatement agreement both sides signed in June. Elon Musk shared a post on X confirming the payment, and County Judge Joe Fauth told the San Antonio Express-News his office deposited the check after it beat its deadline.
Wednesday’s session, first reported by KBTX, moved the project from paperwork to construction. Terafab representative Riley Trennell told residents the JETI tax break agreements with Iola ISD and Anderson-Shiro CISD are signed and active, and that civil work and foundation prep are starting almost immediately. Renderings of the facility could be released within days, he said, with construction beginning within months.
The foundations for an exciting future are being built in Texas. Next up: Terafab → https://t.co/jGg52Zhn5I pic.twitter.com/SNfSXNr2tb
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 6, 2026
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
Musk first announced Terafab in March as a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI aimed at producing over a terawatt of AI compute annually, an amount that dwarfs the roughly 20 gigawatts the entire global chip industry produces today. Intel joined as a manufacturing partner in April. Musk has said the project needed its own day in the spotlight rather than being squeezed into an earnings call, and for months the Grimes County site remained unconfirmed even as reporting pointed there.
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SpaceX attorney Buck Brannon used Wednesday’s meeting to note that the company’s abatement is roughly 78 percent, not the 100 percent some earlier reports suggested. In exchange, SpaceX will pay Grimes County a fixed $20 million a year for 35 years, a total of $710 million, which Brannon said exceeds the $14 million Tesla paid Travis County in 2025.
SpaceX also addressed environmental concerns that have followed the project since Musk’s Terafab partnership with Intel was announced. Representatives said Terafab will not raise electric bills for other ratepayers, will not deplete local water supplies and will not draw down the Navasota River. SpaceX confirmed it owns the Navasota River pumping station, which it plans to use to divert stormwater into the Gibbons Creek Reservoir, and said it will build its own natural gas plants to power the facility rather than pulling from the ERCOT grid.
Grimes County commissioners also approved an addendum letting county employees use ten approved AI chatbots for work, including Grok.
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
