News
Russia quietly shelves development of sole SpaceX Falcon 9-competitive rocket
Russian space agency Roscosmos has indefinitely suspended development of the Proton Medium rocket, once expected to help the country compete with the meteoric rise of SpaceX and the growing field of interested entrants in the commercial launch industry.
As Russia makes a greater push toward Angara rockets, it is sidelining development of Proton Medium, a vehicle ILS hoped would compete head on with SpaceX's Falcon 9. https://t.co/BD6AOusalK
— Caleb Henry (@ChenrySpace) August 30, 2018
The (probable) death of a rocket
In an extraordinary feat of double-speak, freshly appointed Roscosmos director general Dmitry Rogozin – likely a primary source of Proton Medium’s paused development – explained that Russia’s national rocket program would likely experience the “financial collapse of [its] enterprise” if it chose to build “both old and new heavy-duty rockets” simultaneously. Rogozin clearly implied that Angara – a Russian rocket that has flown once (successfully) in 2014 and has a commercial demand about as close to near-zero as possible – was the “new” rocket that Roscosmos ought to solely pursue.
Indeed, upon analyzing the public specifications of Angara A5 and Proton Medium, the two rockets have near-identical theoretical performance characteristics, with higher geostationary transfer orbit payload capabilities (5-6 tons) roughly comparable to Falcon 9 in the SpaceX rocket’s drone ship recovery configuration. As a result, it certainly would make very little sense for Russia to fund and build two rockets with nearly indistinguishable utility – Rogozin certainly is correct in that regard.
However, the space agency director is dumbfoundingly off-base in his suggestion that Angara – not Proton Medium or other proposed alternatives – is the way forward to a financially sustainable Roscosmos. As he himself notes, “eternal state support [of launch vehicles] is impossible and inefficient,” seemingly indicating that he believes any viable state-funded rocket must eventually become a serious commercial competitor, a necessity for a launch vehicle if it’s to sustain itself beyond subsidies (i.e. guaranteed government launch contracts).
https://twitter.com/runnymonkey/status/1030356053882544129
The “old” versus the “new”
The Proton family of rockets – past and present – may not have the most reliable track record or a consistent launch cadence, but nearly any rocket on Earth can lay claim to a more storied launch career when placed next to Angara. Despite the fact that the Russian government itself has funded the development and production of Angara rockets, just a single orbital mission has been launched, and only with a mass simulator (dead weight) as its payload. Since that one-off 2014 launch debut, not even the Russian government itself has chosen to fly state satellites on Angara, instead siding with other successful vehicles in the country’s fleet, including Proton Breeze M and Soyuz-2.
This is almost without a doubt because Angara A5 is the most expensive rocket Russia currently operates, reportedly 30-40% more expensive than Proton M, estimated in 2017 by the US Government Accountability Office to cost roughly $65 million per launch. At roughly a third more than that, an Angara A5 launch presumably costs ~$90 million in a best-case scenario, given that the manufacturing apparatus required to construct the rocket has been maintained on a manifest of exactly zero launches since 2014. In fact, the vehicle was estimated by Russia itself to cost roughly $95 to $105 million per launch back in 2015.
https://twitter.com/runnymonkey/status/1032371653668261888
In an interview with SpaceNews in late 2017, the president of the commercial wing of Russia’s space launch program (known as ILS) frankly stated that “[ILS] needs to target something between $65 [million] and $55 million as the price point [for Proton Medium], and the Angara 5 vehicle will not be able to do that.” In the same interview, the ILS president even went so far as to imply that “Proton Medium was being designed as a purely commercial competitor to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.”
While there is a very slim chance that Proton Medium’s development will be revived after Roscosmos’ internal review, it’s far safer to presume that the vehicle is dead, thus killing Russia’s only tenuous hope of fielding a rocket capable of competing with the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin. While Roscosmos’ goal is to make Angara (an entirely expendable rocket, might I add) more affordable, it anticipates that the rocket would become cost-competitive with Proton no earlier than 2025.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
