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SpaceX sets new goals for Falcon booster reuse goals after ten-flight milestone
Speaking virtually at Barcelona’s 2021 Mobile World Congress (MWC), CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX has already set its sights on even more ambitious reusability goals for Falcon rocket boosters.
Less than two months prior, booster B1051 sent 60 satellites and an upper stage on their way to orbit, simultaneously becoming the first Falcon 9 first stage to ace ten orbital-class launches and landings, crossing a mostly symbolic – but still significant – milestone years in the making. SpaceX competitors – most notably the United Launch Alliance – have often held the ten-flight mark over its head as the latest in a long line of moving goalposts used to discredit, demean, and look down upon reusable rockets and SpaceX’s efforts to realize them.
Not long before it was clear that SpaceX would hit that 10-flight target with at least one Falcon booster, competitors working overtime to rationalize a lack of substantial investment into reusable rockets shifted their goalposts again, expanding rationales to require a fleetwide average of ten flights. Instead of explaining why SpaceX’s reusability plans could never work, as many dozens of aerospace executives have assuredly done over the last 5-10 years, the new attitude du jour is to claim that SpaceX’s ability to achieve its reuse goals was never actually in doubt and that the economics of full booster reuse simply can’t make economic sense!
Now, five and half years after Falcon 9’s first successful booster landing, four years after SpaceX’s first successful booster reuse, and seven weeks after a Falcon 9 first stage’s first ten-flight milestone, Elon Musk says that some of the company’s fleet of boosters are already “slated to fly 20 or possibly 30 times.” Never one to personally rest or allow his companies to rest on their laurels, SpaceX now has a new target to strive for as teams work to ramp and sustain Falcon 9’s launch cadence at record-breaking levels.
Back before Falcon 9’s Block 5 upgrade debuted in May 2018, Musk held a press conference in which he made it abundantly clear that it was SpaceX’s “unequivocal intent” to launch new Falcon boosters up to 10 times without refurbishment. Three years later, although SpaceX ultimately abandoned plans to recover and reuse Falcon 9’s upper stage to prioritize Starship development, Musk’s dream of cutting the cost of launch by a full magnitude has almost been realized.
Technically, if SpaceX had developed a reusable upper stage, Falcon 9 as it stands today could feasibly cost just ~10% of its list price (~$6 million. Factoring in the cost of a new expendable upper stage for each mission, the actual cost of a modern Falcon 9 launch with a flight-proven booster and payload fairing is closer to ~$18M. However, in the same June 2021 interview, Musk confirmed that the cost of Falcon 9 operations – as in refurbishment, recovery, consumables, and any other recurring work – is just 10% of the cost of launch, effectively confirming that Falcon 9’s Block 5 upgrade really did create a rocket booster that requires virtually no refurbishment.
Back in Musk’s 2018 conference call, he also noted that beyond plans for up to ten flights without refurbishment, Falcon boosters could feasibly be made to fly dozens or even 100+ times with occasional in-depth maintenance – not unlike modern aircraft. Three years later, Musk is now talking about launching certain Falcon boosters 20 or 30 times, while something approximating the recurring maintenance he once described has yet to crop up.
It’s possible, in other words, that SpaceX has found that Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters – which do need some small amount of refurbishment and inspection after each launch – can actually be flown 20 or 30 times without major rework. Ultimately, only time will tell, but Falcon 9 B1051’s 11th flight is expected – this time from the West Coast – as early as late July or August 2021, carrying SpaceX’s first or second dedicated batch of polar Starlink satellites. B1051 arrived at Vandenberg Air/Space Force Base (VAFB) in late June about a month after Falcon 9 B1049 – likely set to become the second booster to complete ten launches.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just confirmed the Tesla and SpaceX merger step everyone was waiting for
Tesla and SpaceX formed special committees to weigh a merger, and Elon Musk supports it.
Elon Musk confirmed Tuesday that Tesla and SpaceX have each formed special committees of independent directors to study a possible merger, the first formal step toward combining the two companies after months of speculation.
Musk made the disclosure during SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call. “Both SpaceX and Tesla have formed special committees to discuss this idea at the request of shareholders,” he said. “Because I’m a conflicted party, I can’t actually be in the discussions of the special committees.” He described the setup as “an odd kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation.”
Musk did not hide where he stands. “Do I think it would be a good idea? Yes,” he said, pointing to shared work on super intelligence software, chip design, the Terafab facility in Austin, robotics, mass to orbit and connectivity. “I do think there’s a lot of merit to combining the companies as we are pretty much in the super intelligence singularity.”
He also tried to cool expectations. The committees have not agreed on terms for any transaction, and Musk said assuming a merger is a certainty “would be overstating it.” Any deal would go to shareholders, and on the Tesla side it would need approval from 50 percent of all outstanding shares, not just the shares that are voted. Musk called that “quite a high hurdle.”
That bar has tripped Tesla up before. The company’s 2025 attempt to declassify its board won support from only 39.4 percent of outstanding shares and failed. Musk’s own voting stake sits near 20 percent after he exercised his 2018 options in June, so a deal would need broad backing from institutions and a retail base that often leaves votes uncast.
Timing is another open question. Tesla filed its proxy statement Monday for its December 3 annual meeting, and the ballot has only three items: director elections for Musk, Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel, a say on pay vote and auditor ratification. Barclays analyst Dan Levy had argued that an announcement would need to land by late October or early November to make the annual meeting, as Teslarati noted in its SpaceX earnings preview. With no terms agreed, any vote would likely require its own special meeting.
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Musk has been edging toward this for weeks. At the All-In Summit in September, he asked “who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration,” Teslarati reported. Last week’s Roadster unveil, built around SpaceX derived cold gas thrusters, pushed the talk further. The two companies already share the Terafab chip project, and Tesla holds a small SpaceX stake that came from its earlier investment in xAI.
SpaceX brought strong numbers to the conversation. It reported Q3 revenue of $14.58 billion, up 161 percent year over year, with its Super Intelligence segment now its largest at $7.56 billion. A higher SpaceX valuation would shape any exchange ratio Tesla holders are offered.
Tesla reports its own third quarter results after the close on Wednesday, October 21. Investors had already ranked merger timing among the top retail questions for SpaceX’s call, and the committees will almost certainly come up again on Tesla’s.
SpaceX reported its third-quarter 2026 financial results on October 20, posting the company’s first solidly profitable quarter since going public earlier in the year under the ticker $SPCX.
Revenue reached $14.58 billion, up 161 percent year-over-year from $5.6 billion, and well ahead of consensus estimates in the $12.7 to $12.9 billion range. The results highlight a rapid shift in SpaceX’s center of gravity toward artificial intelligence/super intelligence, while Starlink and traditional space operations continue to show robust progress.
Here are the key financial results for the quarter:
- Revenue of $14.58 billion (+161% YoY)
- Adjusted EBITDA of $8.8 billion (+306% YoY)
- GAAP net income of $4.4 billion (versus a $1.1 billion net loss in the prior-year quarter)
- Adjusted EPS of approximately $0.35 (versus roughly $0.13–0.16 expected)
- Income from operations of $2.8 billion
The AI/SI segment generated $7.56 billion in revenue, an 830 percent year-over-year increase, making it the company’s largest segment for the first time. Growth was primarily driven by the activation of major cloud services agreements, the integration of Cursor (acquired earlier in 2026), and rising usage of Grok models and the newly introduced Grok Bot personal agent.
🚨 SpaceX just reported earnings! Here are some highlights:
Financial:
Revenue $14.58B (+161% YoY) vs. consensus ~$12.7–12.9B
Adjusted EBITDA $8.8B (+306% YoY)
GAAP net income $4.4B (vs. prior-year loss; first solidly profitable quarter post-IPO)
Adjusted EPS ~$0.35 vs. ~$0.13–0.16 expectedSegments:
Super Intelligence (SI, formerly AI): $7.56B (+830% YoY) — now the largest segment, driven by cloud contracts, Cursor, and Grok.
Connectivity (Starlink): $5.25B (+69% YoY).
Space: $1.77B.Other highlights:
Starlink subscribers: 13.6M (+89% YoY).
Nameplate compute: 1.7 GW.
Capex: $19.6B (majority AI infrastructure).
Cash & marketable securities: ~$90B.
First revenue-generating Starship mission (26 V3 Starlink satellites, ~10× Falcon 9 downlink capacity per launch).— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 20, 2026
SI adjusted EBITDA reached $5 billion, and nameplate compute capacity stood at 1.7 GW at quarter-end, up from 1.4 GW in June and 0.6 GW a year earlier. Capital expenditures totaled $19.6 billion, with the majority allocated to AI infrastructure, including continued expansion of the Colossus facilities.
The Connectivity segment, which primarily surrounds Starlink, produced $5.25 billion in revenue, a 69 percent year-over-year and 22 percent sequentially. These are pleasant results to see and expected, considering how many airlines have adopted Starlink over the past year.
Starlink consumer subscribers reached 13.6 million, an 89 percent increase from the prior year, and a sequential gain of 1.6 million. Consumer average revenue per user improved to $69. Meanwhile, Enterprise and Government revenue also grew strongly, and Starlink is now installed on more than 3,800 aircraft, making internet more accessible and better performing than previous options.
The Space segment also performed well and contributed $1.77 billion in revenue, up 6 percent year-over-year and 84 percent sequentially. A major milestone was the successful first revenue-generating Starship mission (Flight 14), which deployed 26 V3 Starlink satellites. Those satellites added roughly 10 times the downlink capacity of a typical Falcon 9 Starlink launch.
SpaceX completed 12 customer launches during the quarter, including NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission, and continued to grow its backlog of crewed, national security, and commercial flights.
CFO commentary noted that the combination of launch leadership, recurring Starlink revenue, and rapid SI expansion is producing meaningful operating leverage.
The company ended the quarter with roughly $90 billion in cash and marketable securities, providing substantial resources for ongoing investment while targeting an investment-grade balance sheet. Sequential revenue nearly doubled from the $7.81 billion reported in the second quarter, illustrating the pace of the AI-driven acceleration. Things are looking strong for SpaceX.
What’s incredibly striking is the fact that SI has grown to be larger than the rest of the company in such a short amount of time. CEO Elon Musk said on the earnings call that Grok Bot is the “fastest-growing product I’ve ever seen,” so it seems that it could be a true keystone of SpaceXSI over the next few years.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) will report its second public earnings call today since its IPO earlier this year, and there are a few things we expect to hear about, as well as Wall Street analysts, who have already outlined their expectations for the call.
Wall Street analysts have a consensus of $12.72 billion in revenue and an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.13. These are broken down into three sectors: Space, Connectivity, and AI/SI, which are perceived in this way:
- Space: $1.41 billion
- Connectivity: $4.84 billion
- AI/SI: $6.47 billion
Other outlets cluster near $12.8 or $12.9 billion in revenue and $0.14 – $0.15 EPS. This implies a roughly 65 percent sequential growth from Q2’s $7.81 billion, driven mostly by AI/SI, with the first post-IPO positive EPS expected.
Here are the three things to watch for on the call:
AI Revenue Ramp and the $100B+ ARR target
AI is truly the swing factor for SpaceX, and analysts expect it to roughly double from Q2’s $2.56 billion and become about half of total revenue. Management previously guided to a $100 billion+ annualized run rate by December, including the Cursor acquisition, which was $60 billion, to close the quarter.
Listen for updates on SpaceX’s compute capacity, especially pertaining to its contracts with Google, Anthropic, and others, revenue per watt, any new deals, and Cursor’s early contribution.
Starlink/Connectivity Metrics and Mobile Expansion
Connectivity remains a main profit engine for SpaceX. Subscriber additions will be something to pay attention to, as Q2 ended at 12 million and previews are looking at 14 million for this quarter. Additionally, ARPU trends, enterprise and government growth, and any commentary on Starlink Mobile will be something to pay attention to, especially following the recent low-band spectrum deal and FCC-related constellation approvals.
Capex Trajectory, Cash Burn/FCF, and Starship/Operational Updates
Q2 capex of roughly $18.4 billion weighed on the stock. Investors will look to scrutinize Q3 spending levels, any guidance on the pace into Q4/2027, free cash flow, backlog, and liquidity. Operational color on Starship (Flight 14 milestones and Flight 15 timing/reusability progress), Falcon cadence, and government/NASA contracts are also in focus.
Of course, there will also be some speculation on the potential Tesla-SpaceX merger, but there was nothing mentioned in the company’s proxy it sent earlier this week.
SpaceX will report earnings after market close today and will stream the call on X.
Watch live as SpaceX discusses our Q3 2026 earnings at 3:30pm CT today → https://t.co/Qrb0qeVG15
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 20, 2026
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