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SpaceX to receive $15m from Florida to build Falcon refurbishment facility
The state of Florida’s Space Florida initiative is likely to award SpaceX nearly $15 million in support of the company’s recently-publicized plan to build a new Falcon rocket refurbishment facility and launch control center on Kennedy Space Center property.
All things considered, such an investment would be an extremely savvy move for the state, potentially speeding up an expansion that will pave the way – quite literally in terms of infrastructure — for SpaceX to support a dramatically larger launch cadence in Florida. Writing in an environmental assessment (EA) for the Richards Road project discovered in early June, the company provided a rough estimate for what that growth could look like:
“SpaceX estimates a possible 150 construction jobs associated with the initial development of the Proposed Action, and approximately 70 new SpaceX employees to support additional operations on KSC. SpaceX plans to launch more than 4,000 satellites with the intention that most of these satellites will be launched from LC-39A and LC-40.” (p. 39)
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- Satellite imagery from Google Maps shows the currently-abandoned site of SpaceX’s prospective Florida expansion. (Google Maps)
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- SpaceX’s Launch Complex 39A pictured in April 2018. (Tom Cross)
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- TomCross photographing Falcon 9 with the Zuma payload at SLC-40.
In the case of “most” of “more than 4,000 satellites” being launched from Florida, SpaceX is undoubtedly referring to the first phase of their Starlink internet constellation, a program that is also rapidly growing an R&D team to complete the system’s production-ready design and build a state-of-the-art factory for the vast majority of the network’s major components. For context, 70-90 additional new employees would grow SpaceX’s Florida presence by as much as 20-30% from 2018 levels.
Teslarati reached out to SpaceX for further clarification on the Starlink-related comments in the EA, but the company could not be reached for comment on the matter. However, SpaceX was later able to provide a statement on their prospective Richards Road expansion, reprinted below.
“As SpaceX’s launch cadence and manifest for missions from Florida continues to grow, we are seeking to expand our capabilities and streamline operations to launch, land and re-fly our Falcon family of rockets.”
It’s worth noting that SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell told CNBC reporters in May 2018 that the company expected 2019 to look more like 2017 (18 launches), suggesting that next year will likely be 30-50% slower than its busy 2018 launch schedule. Although the COO did state that “2019 [will] probably be closer to 2017 due to lower demand”, she didn’t explicitly include non-commercial launches in her figuring.
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- While SpaceX’s 2018 manifest is likely to support more annual launches than the company has yet to achieve, the trend slopes a bit down in the 12-24 months that follow. The SES-12 satellite is shown here and was launched in June 2018. (SES)
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- Iridium NEXT satellites being attached to the payload dispenser at SpaceX’s VAFB facilities. Iridium’s contract for eight launches should be completed by Q4 2018. (Iridium)
Combined with SpaceX’s official statement that its Florida manifest “continues to grow”, an observation that at face-value plainly contradicts the Chief Operating Officer’s on-record estimations, it seems almost impossible that that manifest growth is not largely a consequence of internal plans to dedicate a number of launches to Starlink satellites. As of June 2018, crowdsourced SpaceX launch manifests show a total of 20 possible launches in 2019 and 12 in 2020 – while plausible that a number of additional missions will be contracted or publicly announced as time marches on, it’s somewhat less plausible that those missions will push SpaceX’s commercial launch demand up to or above 2018 levels (24-28 launches).
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/875849793204928512
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Starlink launches thus make sense as a gap-filler for the one or two demand-sapped years likely to follow 2018, too near for SpaceX’s reusability-associated launch price drops to make a difference and too early for the company’s full-reusable BFR to come online. Rather conveniently, the production of roughly 12 new Block 5 Falcon 9s and Heavies per year would almost certainly keep all of SpaceX’s rocket manufacturing facilities busy, while also leaving an unfathomably vast fleet of stagnant Block 5 boosters (and hopefully payload fairings) available for any internal missions required by the Starlink program. If Patricia Cooper’s late-2017 statements are still roughly true today, SpaceX plans to begin the first dedicated launches of operational Starlink satellites in 2019, perfectly coinciding with their publicly anticipated lull in commercial launch demand.
Although it does depend on an extraordinarily rapid and successful ramp of the Starlink program, the paradoxical opportunity presented to SpaceX by launch demand lulls in 2019 and 2020 is hard to deny. Around the same time, one would expect the market for launches to begin to seriously respond to the arrival of a new, more affordable paradigm of orbital access, potentially culminating in an unprecedented demand for commercial launches as the price of entry begins to drop appreciably.
SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.
The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.
Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.
The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.
As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
SpaceX released new footage of Starship in space captured by the Starlink satellites it deployed.
SpaceX released a new video Friday evening showing Starship from an angle showcased by its own Starlink satellites, watching the rocket drift away in orbit.
The 65 second clip, posted on X, stitches together footage from four cameras mounted on a single Starlink V3 satellite. It opens with a close view of Starship’s 171 foot upper stage, still catching sunlight, then pulls back as the two spacecraft separate.
The footage comes from Starship’s 13th flight test, which launched July 24 from Starbase after a scrubbed attempt and an abort caused by an engine issue the week before. When Flight 13 finally flew, it carried the first batch of functional Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever deployed, twenty of them, with six equipped with cameras meant to scan the ship’s heat shield during reentry.
View of Starship in space from a Starlink V3 satellite on Flight 13.
This composite is made of imagery from four separate cameras on a single satellite. Six of the satellites were equipped with cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators to… pic.twitter.com/sNTHHz5vLr
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 31, 2026
Flight 13 checked most of its boxes. Starship deployed all 20 satellites, relit a Raptor engine in space, and splashed down softly in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia. Musk’s longer term plan calls for a Starlink V3 constellation of 100,000 satellites, according to a recent FCC filing, with Starship as the only vehicle capable of launching them at the volume that requires. Each Starship flight is designed to carry up to 60 V3 satellites once the vehicle reaches routine service, well beyond what Falcon 9 can carry in a single mission.
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Starship is next expected to fly with an attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower’s mechanical arms, a maneuver SpaceX has so far reserved for the Super Heavy booster.
Tesla flexed the new features of the Model Y L with a dedicated media event at the company’s Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The Model Y L is the extended-wheelbase version of the all-electric crossover, which has been voted the best-selling car in the world on three occasions. The vehicle is already rolling off production lines at Gigafactory Texas, and first deliveries are slated to take place later this year.
Tesla brings Model Y L ‘Launch Series’ to the U.S. at $61,990
Teslarati was invited to the event, but due to some scheduling conflicts, we could not make it to Los Angeles. Instead, we will have our hands on a media unit sometime in August, so we’ll be able to spend some more extended time with the Model Y L.
However, plenty of those who made it to LA shared some cool features that set the Model Y L apart from the Model Y.
Multi-Row Climate Control
Tesla fitted the Model Y L with full climate control on all three rows on the front screen. It can be adjusted by selecting which row you’d like to modify on the right-hand side of the touch screen:
The Model Y L has a little row of icons on the right side of the climate screen so the front passenger can more quickly jump to whatever row they want to control. pic.twitter.com/uJS44mgCvk
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 30, 2026
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Better Rear Window Visibility
One of the strangest things about the Model Y, especially the Juniper iteration, is the rear window has extremely limited visibility when looking into the rearview mirror.
Tesla has improved upon this with the Model Y L:
This is a drastic difference. https://t.co/wTdhitD5aA pic.twitter.com/z6hFs0Jkss
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 30, 2026
PowerShare will be included
Model Y L will come with PowerShare in North America, with an 11.5kW output to your home. Tesla said it would require Powerwall 3 for operation.
Wireless Charging Pad
There has been some speculation that Tesla would upgrade the wireless charging pads in the United States, but this is not the case.
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Tesla owner fixes common feature complaint with crafty DIY retrofit
Tesla confirmed that it does not come with the cooled pads as the Y L in China does. This is because North America has not adopted Qi charging yet.
Thermal Management Improvements
These improvements in the Model Y L were seen with thermal management:
- Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
- +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather, 7 miles of real-world range gained
- 8x more solar energy reflection off of glass roof
- 30% reduction in solar energy entering the cabin
Some of the thermal management improvements in the new Model Y L Premium:
• Up to 15% faster cabin cooling
• Up to 15 min faster cabin cooling in sunny conditions
• +23% thermal efficiency gained in hot weather +7 miles of real-world range gained
• +10 miles recovered after… pic.twitter.com/jZirFWFdtO— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 31, 2026
Demand
Tesla said the Model Y L is almost sold out in the U.S. It comes with
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- 1 year of FSD Supervised
- 1 year of Supercharging
- 1 year of Premium Connectivity
- Free exterior paint color, interior, and wheel option at no additional cost
SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch
SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo
