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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk forecasts a dozen Starship launches next year
CEO Elon Musk has provided a small update on SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket in a brief statement to and Q&A with the board of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
While it’s now been more than two years since Musk last gave a proper presentation on the Starship program, a number of excellent questions from board members still managed to extract a handful of new details about the fully reusable rocket, which the SpaceX CEO says aims to “be a generalized transport mechanism for the [entire] solar system.” According to Musk, though, the most pressing near-term issues facing SpaceX are more down to Earth.
Reiterated several times in his comments to the National Academies, Musk says that the current limiting factor for Starship is securing regulatory approvals from the FAA for the rocket’s first orbital test flights, which SpaceX and Musk initially hoped would begin as early as mid-2021. Targets from July to November 2021 have since come and gone, while SpaceX has only begun to make concerted progress towards Starship’s first orbital launch in the last two or so months. Almost two months after its first rollout, Starship S20 – the first orbital-class prototype – began integrated testing, completing ambient and cryogenic proof tests in late September and its first Raptor preburner and static fire tests in the second half of October.
Most recently, after almost a month spent inactive at SpaceX’s Starbase test facilities, Starship S20 fired up all six of its Raptor engines – the first test of its kind and a major milestone for the program. Save for the completion of some relatively simple closeout tasks, Starship S20 is now more or less qualified for flight after its successful static fire. That leaves Super Heavy Booster 4 (B4) – the first stage meant to carry Ship 20 into space – up next on SpaceX’s South Texas testing docket after almost four agonizing months spent sitting, untested, at various Starbase facilities.
Musk says that SpaceX preparing to complete “a bunch of tests in December” with the implication that those tests likely include the first full Super Heavy wet dress rehearsal (WDR) with thousands of tons of live propellant and the first several booster static fire tests. Recently refitted with 29 Raptor engines for the third time in four months, it appears that SpaceX is finally close to finishing Super Heavy B4 to a point that will allow the booster to begin integrated testing. Through Super Heavy B3, which completed testing this summer, SpaceX thankfully already knows that the basic booster design is a structurally sound pressure vessel with plumbing and systems capable of surviving a three-Raptor static fire.
Still, that’s barely more than 10% of the total number of engines Super Heavy will need operational to send Starship to orbit. After months at the pad, SpaceX is finally closing out Booster 4’s aft section and installing a basic heat shield around its 29 Raptor engines, which will produce up to ~5400 metric tons (~12M lbf) of thrust at liftoff – more than any other rocket in history. Following Starship S20’s recent success, SpaceX has now fired six Raptors simultaneously and in close proximity without issue. However, Super Heavy B4 will have to fire 29 engines packed into roughly the same amount of space. No other liquid rocket stage in history has a more densely-packed thrust section, averaging at least 85 tons of thrust per square meter (~125 psi) of available engine space.
It’s thus likely that SpaceX will split Super Heavy B4’s first static fire campaign into several different parts, possibly involving seperate tests of the center cluster of nine Raptor Center (RC) engines and outer ring of 20 Raptor Boost (RB) engines before firing up all 29 together. Even if that testing is completed without issue on the first attempts, SpaceX will still likely want to perform a full wet dress rehearsal – and possibly even another 29-engine static fire – with Ship 20 installed on top of Booster 4.
Musk also believes that Starbase’s first orbital launch site will be complete as early as “later this month” – essential for full booster testing. Once all testing is complete, Musk says Starship, Super Heavy, and Starbase should be ready for their first orbital launch attempt as early as January or February 2022. Of course, that launch is entirely contingent upon FAA environmental approval and launch licensing, the former still incomplete and the latter unable to proceed until the former is complete. If the FAA reaches a favorable conclusion, meets its recently-announced target of December 31st to complete Starbase’s environmental review, and grants SpaceX a new launch license just days or a few weeks later, a January-February launch isn’t out of the question.
Looking further into 2022, Musk also revealed that he hopes SpaceX will complete “a dozen [Starship] launches” next year – incredibly ambitious by any measure. There isn’t a rocket in history that’s achieved double-digit launches in the same year as its debut. More importantly, even if the FAA environmental review SpaceX is in the middle of ends with the best possible outcome for Starship, it limits the company to either 3, 5, or 8 (it’s somewhat ambiguous) orbital launch attempts per year. Still, even a ‘mere’ three orbital Starship launch attempts in 2022 would be an incredible acheivement for SpaceX – let alone five, or Musk’s forecast of a dozen.
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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.
SpaceX officially launched the Starlink Mini 2 on November 10, delivering the first portable Starlink terminal designed around independent power.
Invitation-only preorders for select U.S. customers are priced at $999 plus tax, a figure that includes a full year of Roam Unlimited service valued at roughly $2,100. A refundable $100 deposit reserves the kit, with the balance due at shipment, expected to begin in mid-December. Broader availability is listed as coming soon.
Starlink just unveiled Mini 2, its next-gen portable dish.
Quick-swap battery, up to 4.5 hrs per charge
USB-C power
Built-in Wi-Fi
Online in about 60 secondsPreorders are open now. https://t.co/QawqgbswrQ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 10, 2026
The headline feature is the quick-swap 71 Wh battery. Clipped to the rear of the dish without tools, it delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity on a single charge.
The 490-gram pack includes its own USB-C port and LED indicators, so users can charge a spare separately and swap it in seconds while staying online. Starlink notes that the terminal can continue operating while the battery charges or run directly from a 60 W USB-C source. The retail box includes one battery, a 60 W USB-C charger, and a 3-meter cable.
Beyond power, the Mini 2 is thinner at 23.1 mm (versus 38.5 mm on the original Mini) while measuring 263 × 314 mm. With the battery and kickstand attached it weighs 1.6 kg.
Built-in Wi-Fi 6 expands coverage to up to 1,800 square feet, an IP67 rating protects against dust and water, and a standard 1/4-20 tripod thread plus physical power button round out the design. Field of view remains 110 degrees, and the unit retains support for mobile use.
For travelers, campers, and remote workers, the swappable battery removes the longstanding requirement for an external power bank or vehicle outlet that defined the first Mini. Spare packs sold separately further extend runtime, turning the compact terminal into a more self-contained solution.
While the bundled $999 invitation price sits well above the original Mini’s current $149 starting point, the included year of service and genuine untethered operation mark a clear step forward in portable satellite internet.
SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
