News
SpaceX executive talks rocket R&D: “Nobody paid us to make Falcon Heavy”
Set to give a keynote speech on October 3rd at 2018’s International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Hans Koenigsmann – SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability – attended an impromptu talk one day prior, titled “From the University of Bremen to SpaceX”.
Speaking before a small audience, the University of Bremen graduate and fourth employee to join SpaceX discussed his opinions of Falcon Heavy, BFR, and more, frankly relating how SpaceX intentionally chose to build Falcon Heavy on its own, going so far as to turn down funding reportedly offered by one or more US government agencies.
From Bremen to SpaceX (to Bremen)
Hopefully a sign of things to come for his 09:20 UTC, Oct. 3 keynote, titled “Reusability: The Key to Reliability and Affordability”, Hans’ precursor talk centered around the circuitous path that led him from University of Bremen to SpaceX, humorously describing how he “got bored of airplanes pretty quickly” after becoming an aerospace engineer. He quickly turned to space, hopping between a number of German smallsat projects that eventually led him to settle in the U.S. after flying there and back “at least 25 times”.
Once in the US, he wound up working at spaceflight startup Microcosm – alongside now-president and COO of SpaceX Gwynne Shotwell – for several years before running into Elon Musk and almost immediately accepting the eccentric entrepreneur’s SpaceX job offer in 2002. He has worked for SpaceX ever since and now spends a majority of his time managing and overseeing its BFR, Block 5, and Crew Dragon programs with a focus on systematically ensuring reliability. He touched on the company’s BFR development program and pointed to the fabrication of massive composite structures as the single most pressing challenge facing SpaceX engineers and technicians.
Asked by an audience member about the apparent difficulty of developing the heat-shield segment of BFR’s spaceship upper stage (BFS), Koenigsmann was quite confident that it would be a relatively easy aspect of the craft’s development, making the argument that what really matters to the craft is overall heat transfer per unit of its shield. From a basic comparison of the area of a given heat shield and the spacecraft’s mass at reentry, his lack of concern is probably warranted – a BFR spaceship’s worst-case LEO reentry is likely to be less stressful than an average Space Shuttle reentry.
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- BFS bares its belly in a 360 degree animation. (SpaceX)
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- Space Shuttle Endeavor shows off its main heat shield during an on-orbit inspection in August 2007. (NASA)
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- A slightly broader overview of BFS just after separating from the booster. Note notches along the shield/skin divide, as well as very specific access panels, hatches, and smaller protuberances. (SpaceX)
“Try [to not] get money from the government”
Perhaps most intriguing of all Koenigsmann’s comments was an almost unprovoked segue into the US government’s involvement in Falcon Heavy development. According to the SpaceX executive, the company was actually approached by “the government”, with the unknown agency or agencies stating – in Hans’ words – that they wanted to be a part of the rocket’s development. According to Hans, SpaceX responded in an extremely unorthodox fashion: “we said, ‘Nope! We just wanna build it, you can buy it when it’s ready and we’ll charge you for the service.’” He noted in the next sentence that funding was the primary lever on the table:
“It’s a great position to do this, you gotta find the money, you gotta know people that have money and are willing to invest in your company, and [SpaceX has] been lucky enough to know some of those people.”
In other words, when given an opportunity to either rely on government funding or some other source of capital for a given R&D project, SpaceX – or at least Hans Koenigsmann, VP of Reliability – would apparently recommend the latter option in almost all cases. Again, without being prompted, he elaborated on his feelings about funding sources, culminating in a statement that is simply profound coming from an executive in the aerospace industry. The following quote is unabridged and straight from Hans himself:
“You need to [try to not] get money from the government, otherwise the government will tell you what to build and how to build it… they will tell you how to build this and that’s just not always – I mean for some things it’s the best to do, but in others it’s actually not.”
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- A concert of Draco thrusters work to push Dragon away from the ISS and back towards Earth. (ESA)
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- The first spaceworthy Crew Dragon capsule is already in Florida, preparing for its November 2018 launch debut. The same capsule will be refurbished and reflown as few as three months after recovery. (SpaceX)
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- It’s currently unclear whether B1046 or B1048 will become the first SpaceX rocket to fly three times. (Tom Cross)
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This sentiment could suggest that SpaceX will seek to prioritize private funding sources for the development of future vehicles like BFR’s rocket and spaceship, although there is plenty of room for interpretation in Hans’ IAC 2018 comments. SpaceX currently maintains strong and productive relationships with both NASA and the USAF, primarily centered around the company’s $2.6B fixed-price contract for the development and operation of Crew Dragon.
Watch and listen to Hans Koenigsmann’s full presentation below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs2LBeLCo_s
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
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Investor's Corner
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.
SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.
The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”
Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.
The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.
Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.
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SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) reported a beat in revenues and EBITDA in its first earnings call report while also minimizing losses as its business continues to gain momentum.
After its IPO in July, SpaceX saw some tough losses on Wall Street due to a major selloff after a delay in its 13th Starship test flight. The ship launched later that week and completed what was arguably the most successful IFT operation in the Starship program’s history.
Nevertheless, the company is continuing on and reported some encouraging financials while also promoting what appears to be a robust outlook moving forward in its Space, AI, and Connectivity divisions.
SpaceX to report first-ever earnings today: here’s what to expect
Earnings Results
- Revenues: $7.8 billion reported vs. $6.7 billion expected
- Adjusted EBITDA: $3.5 billion vs. $2 billion expected
- Net loss of $541 million, an improvement of $467 million from net loss of $1.0 billion
Additionally, CFO Bret Johnsen had these comments:
“2026 has been a momentous year so far, and the second quarter demonstrated the true power of SpaceX. Revenue growth accelerated across all our business segments and we delivered strong operating leverage, with significant margin expansion led by our new AI compute agreements. Our unparalleled leadership in launch, Starlink subscriber growth, new enterprise and government partnerships, and best-in-class AI infrastructure underscore our ability to drive meaningful scale and deliver attractive returns. As a newly public company, we are delighted to welcome our broad base of shareholders and bondholders. We ended the second quarter with $100 billion of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and $47.5 billion in backlog. This financial strength gives us substantial capacity to invest in Starship, Starlink Broadband and Mobile satellites, and our AI platform, while maintaining a disciplined long-term capital allocation framework.”
Space Business Highlights
SpaceX shared some of its biggest Space Business Highlights for Q2:
- Space revenues grew 55% sequentially and 29% year-over-year to $962 million, driven by a higher number of large customer launches and a favorable customer shift compared to the prior year
- Total costs and expenses for the Space segment were up by $389 million year-over-year, as we continued to accelerate R&D investments in our Starship program, which we believe will reduce the cost to orbit by 99% or more relative to the historical average, and unlock significant revenue potential across all business segments
- Leading launch provider for the world with 78 launches and 1,041 metric tons of mass to orbit deployed over the six months ended June 30, 2026, primarily allocated to Connectivity for the deployment of our Starlink constellation
- Starship V3 development continued to advance towards full and rapid reusability:
- Completed Starship V3’s first suborbital mission in May, Flight 12, which achieved a successful lift off from our new Starbase pad, a precision landing of Starship’s upper stage, and deployment of modified V2 Starlink satellites
- Subsequent to the second quarter, completed Starship Flight 13 in July, which achieved all flight objectives including deploying 20 production V3 satellites, demonstrating in-space relight of a Raptor engine, and executing the softest ever splashdown of Starship, providing critical views of an intact heatshield
SpaceX will report its earnings today at 4:30 P.M. EDT.
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Elon Musk issued a second pointed warning to SpaceX short sellers on Tuesday, just hours before the company was set to release its first quarterly earnings as a publicly traded firm. Responding to a report highlighting elevated short interest, Musk wrote on X: “I try to warn them, but they just double down …”
The comment came as data from S3 Partners showed roughly 95 percent of available SPCX shares to borrow were on loan, translating to about 34 percent short interest as a percentage of the float. The stock has traded under pressure since its record-breaking IPO in June 2026, declining significantly from early peaks.
I try to warn them, but they just double down … 🤷♂️
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 4, 2026
This marks the second such message from Musk in under three weeks.
On July 17, amid post-IPO volatility, he stated: “The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low.” At that time, SPCX had fallen roughly 30 percent from its peak above a $2.6 trillion valuation, with short sellers reportedly realizing gains of about $8.7 billion.
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Musk’s warning aligned with optimistic analyses projecting that Starship-driven cost reductions could enable a multi-trillion-dollar space economy through applications such as orbital solar power, asteroid mining, data centers, and Mars-related projects, positioning SpaceX as critical infrastructure.
SpaceX is scheduled to report second-quarter results after the market close later today, followed by a webcast. Analysts anticipate revenue near $6.9 billion, reflecting growth in Starlink, launch services, and AI-related segments. The earnings release precedes a major lockup expiration on August 6 that could free hundreds of millions of insider shares.
Musk has a long track record of confronting short sellers, particularly regarding Tesla, where he has argued that persistent bearish positions underestimate transformative technologies. Critics view his optimism as overly ambitious given near-term stock fluctuations, while supporters see temporary dips as opportunities in a longer-term expansion of the space economy.
As SpaceX opens its books to public scrutiny for the first time, the high short interest and Musk’s repeated cautions set the stage for heightened market attention on the results and management’s commentary.
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
SpaceX reports beat in first earnings while minimizing losses
