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SpaceX says crew spacecraft abort test still on track for 2019 launch
NASA recently invited members of the media to apply for access to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon in-flight abort (IFA) test and, as of December 5th, the company reaffirmed that the crucial test is still on track to launch just weeks from now.
In September, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed that Crew Dragon’s IFA spacecraft and Falcon 9 was scheduled to arrive in Florida within a few weeks. Days later, NASA confirmed that the rocket and spacecraft arrived in Florida on October 3rd, sooner, in fact, than Musk had predicted. Over the next few weeks, SpaceX technicians and engineers effectively closed out Crew Dragon capsule C205, priming it for operations and installing its body panels.
On November 13th, about six weeks after arriving in Florida, SpaceX successfully tested Crew Dragon’s redesigned propellant plumbing and high-pressure gas systems by static firing its Draco thrusters and SuperDraco abort engines. The successful static fire test lasted around 9 seconds, mirroring the SuperDraco impulse and thruster inputs the spacecraft would need to demonstrate in an actual in-flight abort. Crew Dragon has four sets of two SuperDraco engines capable of producing a combined thrust of more than 130,000 lbs (570 kN), almost as much thrust as the original SpaceX Merlin 1D engines used on Falcon 9 in the early 2010s.
Meant to verify that SpaceX has successfully redesigned Crew Dragon after the spacecraft suffered a catastrophic explosion during a very similar static fire attempt, November 13th’s was followed by an exhaustive hardware inspection and data review, some of which is likely still ongoing. Although NASA’s media invite suggests that a given launch event could be just a month or so away, there is a ton of uncertainty when dealing with major launches of new hardware (like Crew Dragon), meaning delays are all but guaranteed.
During a pre-launch media briefing ahead of SpaceX’s CRS-19 Cargo Dragon launch, director of Dragon mission management Jessica Jensen answered a question about Crew Dragon’s IFA test, cautiously stating that SpaceX teams are “targeting [a] December” launch. During SpaceX’s December 5th CRS-19 launch webcast, Dragon Engineering Manager John Federspiel briefly brought up Crew Dragon, noting that SpaceX was completing “minor refurbishment” following its successful static fire.
Most notably, he stated the IFA test was “targeted for February of 2020”, while Crew Dragon’s subsequent ‘Demo-2’ astronaut launch debut was expected to follow no earlier than (NET) “the first quarter of [2020]”, implying either February or March.
As it happened, SpaceX and several media outlets almost immediately attempted to correct the record, instead suggesting that Crew Dragon’s abort test is still tracking towards a launch later this month. Given that a senior Dragon engineering manager was the one to unblinkingly – and without correction – state that IFA is NET February 2020, there’s a strong possibility that he is technically correct but was not supposed to publicize the mission’s delay. At the same time, SpaceX appears to be firm on its claim that IFA is still aiming for a late-December launch. Delays would be no surprise – Crew Dragon’s Demo-1 launch debut took an agonizing three months to go from heading to the launchpad for the first to actually lifting off, almost entirely due to minor technical bugs and NASA paperwork.
Regardless, with less than four weeks left in 2019, SpaceX has an exceptionally tight schedule ahead of it to meet that December 2019 IFA launch goal and will effectively have to static fire IFA’s Falcon 9 before the end of the week or crush Crew Dragon’s inaugural processing time by at least a factor of four to achieve it. As such, a delay in 2020 should be all but expected at this point. With any luck, however, Crew Dragon will successfully perform its in-flight abort within the next 4-8 weeks, leaving SpaceX in a good place to prepare for its inaugural astronaut launch a few months later.
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Elon Musk
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks hit a new stage, and one hurdle remains
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks are reportedly advancing, and a deal could arrive by December.
Tesla and SpaceX are moving closer to a combination, with a deal announcement possible as soon as December, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The companies have also discussed a scenario in which the announcement slips into early 2027.
Boards and advisers on both sides are now working through the terms of the deal and the governance structure of the combined company, according to the report. One open item is how many SpaceX shares Tesla investors would receive. Bloomberg had previously reported that the two companies were aiming to announce a deal in the first half of next year and close it before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, so a December announcement would pull that schedule forward by months.
Tesla shares rose as much as 1.9% to $398.35 after the report, while SpaceX gained 0.6% to $140.63. SpaceX carries a market value of about $1.9 trillion following its June IPO, and Tesla is valued at about $1.55 trillion, which would make a combination the largest corporate deal on record. Neither company responded to requests for comment.
The talks became official on October 20, when Elon Musk said on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call that both companies had formed special committees of independent directors to study a merger, as Teslarati reported. Musk said he could not take part because he is “a conflicted party” and called the process “an odd kabuki dance.” He also noted that Tesla would need approval from 50 percent of all outstanding shares, a bar the company missed in 2025 when a board declassification proposal won support from only 39.4 percent.
China remains the biggest structural problem. Bloomberg’s sources said the companies still need to work out how to isolate Tesla’s large and profitable manufacturing business in China from SpaceX’s U.S. government and defense contracts. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta described those two factors last month as “key dynamics that are at odds with each other” for regulatory and shareholder approval. Musk has repeatedly said Tesla has no plans to separate its China business, a position he restated in August after ARK Invest predicted a merger announcement before the end of the year.
Washington adds another layer. Democrats took control of Congress in this month’s midterms and have pledged to investigate Musk’s business and political activities, which could bring added scrutiny to a deal involving one of the Pentagon’s most important launch and satellite contractors.
The report also lands three weeks before Tesla’s December 3 annual meeting at Giga Texas. That ballot has only three items, led by the re-election of Musk, board chair Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel, and includes no merger proposal. Any deal announced in December would likely require a separate special meeting for Tesla shareholders to vote on it.
The two companies already share a growing list of projects, including the Terafab semiconductor plant in Texas. Tesla’s next generation Roadster, which uses cold gas thrusters built on SpaceX hardware, turned up on display at SpaceX headquarters last month and has become one of the clearest public examples of that overlap.
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SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
SpaceX puts a $50 billion price on its Arizona supercompute campus ahead of December’s hearing.
SpaceX has put a price tag on the supercomputer campus it wants to build in the southern Arizona desert. In a statement Thursday, the company said it is pursuing a roughly $50 billion supercompute campus in Cochise County, about 80 miles east of Tucson. Together with a separate facility planned at Starbase, Texas, the two projects add up to more than $74 billion in planned investment.
The Arizona figure had not been disclosed before. SpaceX’s involvement only became public on November 4, when company representatives hosted a packed town hall at Cochise Elementary School for an application filed under the name Tombstone Resources LLC. A SpaceX representative told residents the filing used another name because putting SpaceX on it “draws attention” from outside the county, local station KVOA reported.
The application describes a 747-acre site near the Willcox Playa with up to nine buildings of about 493,000 square feet each. SpaceX plans to bring the campus online in four phases of roughly 1.5 GW, reaching 6 GW at full build, backed by a 24 GWh battery system and about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades. At that size, it would draw about 2.5 times more power than every data center in Maricopa County combined, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.
SpaceX says the project will create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, and that it could cut electricity bills for members of the local cooperatives by up to 20 percent. The campus would use dry cooling with no industrial groundwater use. Its application estimates ongoing water needs of 7 to 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 homes consume.
Power is the bigger question. The site sits next to the Apache Generating Station, a coal and natural gas plant with about 1 GW of capacity that had been slated to retire by 2028. SpaceX told residents its investment could expand the station to more than 6 GW.
Local opposition is organized. A petition asking the county to deny the permit has gathered about 2,400 signatures, and the nearby playa is a landing spot for federally protected sandhill cranes, which SpaceX says its design accounts for. The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, with written comments due November 27. If approved, construction could start in March 2027.
The Texas project faces a vote the same day. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement for SpaceX’s $24 billion gas plant and supercompute facility at its own December 9 hearing, as Teslarati reported. SpaceX said Thursday the Starbase site has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs, and it committed $220 million to Brownsville’s water and wastewater systems, $40 million of which has been paid.
Both campuses would expand a footprint still centered on the Memphis area, where SpaceX’s Colossus data centers run largely on gas turbines and the company won a permit for a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi earlier this year. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute. The Arizona campus alone, at full build, would be more than three times that size.
Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.