SpaceX
SpaceX shows off Crew Dragon atop Falcon 9 as govt shutdown kills momentum
Late last week, SpaceX published official photos of Crew Dragon’s first trip out to Launch Complex 39A (Pad 39A) atop its specially-certified Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket, showing off what looks to have been a successful integrated fit check and an important precursor to the debut launch of the company’s first human-rated spacecraft.
Despite the obvious readiness of SpaceX’s hardware and facilities for this historic mission, the company has been met with a brick wall that has almost indefinitely killed almost all forward momentum towards Crew Dragon’s first trip to orbit, appearing in the form of elected leaders so inept that they have failed to properly fund the bureaucracies underpinning the vast majority of the federal government for more than three weeks, NASA included.
About a month away from the first orbital test flight of crew Dragon https://t.co/U01Oxu3M7E
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 5, 2019
NASA has been severely impacted by the shutdown since it began on Dec 21 and has been operating at barely 5% capacity since then, just shy of the equivalent of throwing a bucket of wrenches into an intricately complex machine. Put simply, the entire agency is more or less at a standstill, aside from the most basic of operations and the support of spacecraft and facilities that cannot pause for the convenience of childish games of political brinksmanship. Among the parts of the agency harmed are those involved with the late-stage Commercial Crew Program (CCP) certification work and general program support, directly translating into an almost indefinite pause on Crew Dragon’s autonomous launch debut, known as DM-1.
Science-funding agencies that are open: DOE, DOD, and NIH.
The big ones that are affected: NSF, NIST, NOAA, NASA, EPA, USGS, FDA, Smithsonian, USDA@sciencemagazine has a rundown of the impact of the shutdown for agencies with a science focus https://t.co/uAPz7AWoVT
— Maryam Zaringhalam, PhD (@webmz_) January 5, 2019
Despite the ironic fact that their operations would likely be considered critical and thus be free of the brunt of a government shutdown’s impact once SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner are demonstrated and declared operational, almost all conceivable programmatic aspects of Commercial Crew Program currently fall into non-critical categories as both providers prepare for their first uncrewed demonstration missions to orbit. These autonomous demo missions will be immediately followed by crewed demonstration missions in which real NASA astronauts will fly to the International Space Station before NASA can finally complete the operational certification of Crew Dragon and Starliner.
Simultaneous ironic and gratingly painful, the first operational crewed launches are explicitly dependent on certifications to immediately follow crewed demonstration launches, which themselves are no less dependent upon the receipt of NASA certifications after each spacecraft’s first uncrewed demonstration launch. As such, every delay to CCPs uncrewed demo launches will likely translate into a near 1:1 delay (if not worse) for the operational debut of both spacecraft, already operating dangerously close to the edge of assured access to the ISS thanks to a range of delays caused by technical challenges and NASA sluggishness.
- An impressive view of Crew Dragon (DM-1), Falcon 9 B1051, and its upper stage. (SpaceX)
- The integrated DM-1 Crew Dragon ‘stack’ rolled out to Pad 39A for the first time in the first few days of 2019. (SpaceX)
- Falcon 9 B1051 and Crew Dragon vertical at Pad 39A. (SpaceX)
- The view of Crew Dragon from SpaceX’s freshly-installed Crew Access Arm at Pad 39A. (SpaceX)
NASA currently relies entirely on launch contracts on Russian space agency Roscosmos’ Soyuz rocket and spacecraft to deliver NASA astronauts to the ISS, and those contracts are set to end in a fairly permanent manner as early as November 2019, although the end of NASA’s Soyuz access could potentially be pushed back as far as Q1 2020. Ultimately, a single month of delays at this phase of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launch debut preparations could snowball into even worse delays for the crewed DM-2 and PCM-1 (Post-Certification Mission) missions and beyond, all of which are heavily dependent on NASA completing a vast sea of paperwork that would likely be ongoing at this very moment if 95% of the agencies staff wasn’t furloughed.

Thankfully, SpaceX at least was able to still perform a dry Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon rollout at Pad 39A, likely serving as an integrated fit-test for the rocket, spacecraft, and fresh pad infrastructure, which includes a brand-new Crew Access Arm (CAA) installed near the end of 2018. While spectacular and apparently successful, it’s undeniably hard to ignore the marring of the government shutdown and inevitable schedule delays it will cause.
SpaceX and its hardware is clearly ready for business – how much longer will we have to wait for the elected representatives of the US demonstrate a similar interest in doing their jobs?
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027
Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX’s biggest earnings test yet lands Tuesday, and Tesla shareholders should be watching
SpaceX reports earnings Tuesday as Wall Street watches AI spending, Starlink growth and Tesla merger
SpaceX reports third quarter results after the market closes Tuesday, with a webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET streamed on X, and Tesla follows a day later. Bloomberg consensus, cited by Pepperstone, calls for revenue of $12.89 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $6.62 billion and adjusted EPS near $0.15. That would be about 65% growth from the second quarter and SpaceX’s first profitable quarter since its IPO. Analysts expect roughly $6.4 billion from AI and $4.9 billion from Starlink, which is projected to reach 14.3 million consumer subscribers. Capital spending is forecast at $19.6 billion, leaving free cash flow near negative $11.6 billion.
The numbers matter because SpaceX has spent months trying to win over a skeptical market. It priced its record IPO at $135, spiked to $225.64, then sank near $105 in early August. Friday’s close of $146.03 sits about 28% below the June high. The Q2 report beat on revenue at $7.8 billion and put Starlink at 12 million subscribers, but $18.4 billion of capex hurt the stock. Since then SpaceX reached orbit on Starship Flight 14 with 26 Starlink V3 satellites, agreed to buy 800 MHz spectrum for about $8 billion as part of its Starlink Mobile push, and signed a fourth compute hosting deal in four months worth roughly $13 billion a year from December. Management is targeting more than 2 gigawatts of compute by year end and a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate. Evercore ISI, which raised its target to $275, said the quarter may be judged more on those targets than the reported figures
All of this sits under the Tesla merger question. Barclays analyst Dan Levy expects an all stock deal in which SpaceX buys Tesla at a premium, using reference values of $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, and said an announcement would need to come by late October or early November to be voted on at Tesla’s December 6 annual meeting. Barclays estimates Musk would hold about 37% of the combined company and 56% of the votes. Musk said in July that combining companies cannot be discussed on an earnings call, but an investor question asking when SpaceX will merge with Tesla is sitting on SpaceX’s Q&A platform, and Teslarati has tracked how the Roadster demo revived the talk.
If a deal happens, Tuesday’s result would effectively set the price Tesla holders would receive. Their shares would convert into SpaceX stock, along with exposure to a company with a heavy investment on AI, while Tesla itself expects 2026 capex above $25 billion. A strong quarter and calmer spending would make that exchange easier to sell. Another round of heavy capex and a falling stock would make it harder.
News
SpaceX’s Gwynne Shotwell just made a quiet gesture toward Tesla
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell quietly followed Tesla on X, and merger watchers noticed right away.
SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell has started following Tesla’s official account on X, a small change that landed in the middle of a very loud merger conversation. Whole Mars Catalog joked about it on Sunday.
A follow is not an announcement, and neither company has said anything about a deal. What gives the moment weight is the timing. Barclays analyst Dan Levy has told clients that an agreement could come before Tesla’s annual meeting, which must be held by December 6, with SpaceX as the buyer in an all stock deal, as we reported after the Roadster unveiling. Wedbush’s Dan Ives has stuck with a 2027 timeline.
“Shit, I better start following their X account if i’m gonna be helping run the company”
— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) October 18, 2026
Shotwell is the executive most worth watching if the two companies do move closer. When Musk was asked at the All In Summit why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate, Shotwell sat next to him and said SpaceX personnel had already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps. The businesses were integrating “faster than I thought,” she said, though “not fully integrated yet.” Her responsibilities have also grown since SpaceX absorbed xAI, and she now oversees operations that include Grok and the company’s AI compute buildout.
The financial links are already there. Tesla’s $2 billion xAI investment turned into a stake of less than one percent in SpaceX, the two share the Terafab chip project in Austin, and Musk exercised his 2018 Tesla options a week after SpaceX began trading, a sequence analysts flagged as giving SpaceX public shares to use in a deal. Musk holds about 20 percent of Tesla and controls 85.1 percent of SpaceX’s voting power, according to our earlier breakdown.
The next test is close at hand. SpaceX reports its second earnings as a public company on Tuesday after the close, and Tesla follows on Wednesday. Musk told analysts in July that “we can’t talk about combining companies and that kind of thing on an earnings call,” so a direct answer is unlikely from either stage. Tesla shareholders can still submit and vote on questions through the Say portal until 4 p.m. EDT on Monday, and the merger is a recurring theme in the queue.



