SpaceX
SpaceX fairing catcher Mr. Steven heads for Panama Canal after one last drop test
Iconic fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven appears to have quietly departed for SpaceX’s Florida launch facilities a few days after completing (successfully or not) one final controlled fairing catch test in the Pacific Ocean.
While bittersweet for those that have closely followed the vessel’s development and many attempted Falcon fairing recoveries, this move should ultimately give Mr. Steven around three times as many opportunities to attempt fairing recoveries thanks to SpaceX’s significantly higher East Coast launch cadence.
Mr Steven docking last night after another helicopter drop test, fairing half aboard. #spacex @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/1uMm8ktzWY
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) January 26, 2019
Under SpaceX lease since late 2017, the company moved the vessel to California and modified it with its first net and set of arms around December 2017. Mr. Steven attempted his first Falcon fairing catch – each half worth more than $3M – in February 2018 after the launch of Earth imaging satellite PAZ and two SpaceX Starlink prototypes, thus beginning a string of five unsuccessful recovery attempts for West Coast Falcon 9 launches. The lack of success has most certainly not been for a lack of trying, exemplified in large part by Mr. Steven’s frequent net and arm upgrades over the last year, culminating in the installation of four massive arms, a vast primary net, and a smaller secondary net below it.
Recent fairing recovery test with Mr. Steven. So close! pic.twitter.com/DFSCfBnM0Y
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 8, 2019
SpaceX engineers and technicians repeatedly managed to get Falcon fairing halves – autonomously guided by GPS after deploying parafoils – within 50 to a few hundred feet during several of those five post-launch attempts. In the last few months of 2018, SpaceX also began a program of controlled fairing drop tests, where a helicopter would lift a fairing half 5,000-10,000 feet up before releasing it for Mr. Steven. A recent drop test organized in either late-December or early-January saw the parasailing fairing half get so close to a successful catch that its parafoil rigging actually appeared to get tangled on (or at least bump) the edge of Mr. Steven’s net, spanning an area of around 3000 square meters (~30,000 sq ft).
Barring a continuation of SpaceX’s helicopter drop test program on the East Coast, Mr. Steven’s final controlled fairing recovery attempt occurred on January 25th, perhaps less than four days before the ship departed for Florida. After maneuvering wildly and reaching 28 mph (45 km/h) – the fastest speed yet clocked – on his trip back to port, Mr. Steven arrived with a fairing half tantalizingly cradled in the ship’s new secondary net, a perfectly ambiguous state that could indicate a successful catch and net transfer or a missed catch and ocean retrieval, with the smaller net used as an ad-hoc shock absorber during his sprint to port.
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- The apparent fairing-grabbing mechanism or robot spotted aboard the SpaceX-leased vessel Mr. Steven. (Reddit /u/ vshie)
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- Not nearly enough net, as it turned out. (Pauline Acalin, May 2018)
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- Mr Steven testing his new net in a series of sea trials, July 11
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- Mr. Steven returned to Port of San Pedro around on October 8th after a day spent at sea, apparently with a Falcon fairing half in tow. This is the second known time that a fairing has been in Mr. Steven’s net. The fairing was eventually lifted off around noon the following day. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Mr. Steven was captured performing tests with a duo of fairings and nets at its Port of LA berth, January 22nd. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Prior to his Panama Canal exit, Mr. Steven barely missed 2-3 successful Falcon fairing catches during several controlled drop tests. (SpaceX)
Back to Port Canaveral
Prior to Mr. Steven’s California station and arm/net upgrade, the vessel was introduced to SpaceX in Florida as a sort of faster version of the slower service vessels already used to support drone ship deployments and recover fairing halves (or shards) out of the ocean. Although it remains entirely possible that Mr. Steven’s abrupt journey towards southern Mexico is a false alarm, it appears quite likely that the vessel will ultimately end up back where it started its SpaceX journey. After returning to Port Canaveral, Mr. Steven should be able to support a range of post-launch fairing recovery attempts thanks to SpaceX’s consistently-busy East Coast launch schedule.
At his current cruising speed of ~18 knots (21 mph/35 km/h), Mr. Steven will take at least 9-10 days (~220-240 hours) to travel the ~7500 km (4600 mi) of ocean separating Port of LA and Port Canaveral. Even assuming many lengthy stops for fuel and supplies, the vessel should easily arrive in time to attempt its first East Coast fairing catch in support of SpaceX’s next launch, NET February 18th. After that, Crew Dragon’s inaugural orbital launch (DM-1) is targeted for late February, followed by Cargo Dragon’s 17th operational mission (NET March 16th) and the second-ever launch of Falcon Heavy, absolutely no earlier than March 7th.
Mr. Steven appears to have quietly departed Port of Los Angeles for Manzanillo, a port on the southwest coast of Mexico. This is likely Leg #1 of a voyage to Port Canaveral, where he can support #SpaceX's more frequent Florida launches. He'll be missed on the West Coast 🙁 pic.twitter.com/Jb5cOA2Cda
— Eric Ralph (@13ericralph31) January 29, 2019
Elon Musk
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Elon Musk says SpaceX will feed engineering data into Grok’s next model, avoiding restricted material.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that SpaceX will feed its internal engineering data into the next major training run for Grok, the AI model now folded into SpaceX following February’s merger. In a post on X, Musk wrote that SpaceX’s “massive corpus of world-class engineering data,” excluding anything restricted under U.S. arms export law, will be added during supplemental training of what he called the “2T run,” a reference to a roughly two trillion parameter model that would nearly double the parameters behind the latest Grok 4.5 that’s rolling out.
SpaceX’s massive corpus of world-class engineering data (excluding material blocked by ITAR) will be added during supplemental training of the 2T run.
This will dramatically improve Grok’s engineering capabilities. https://t.co/BbQEViFByn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
The excluded material that Musk is referring to would fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restricts export of technical data tied to defense and space hardware. That likely rules out propulsion specifics for Merlin and Raptor engines along with guidance and control details for SpaceX’s launch vehicles, but leaves manufacturing knowledge, materials science, and Starlink hardware design on the table.
The announcement extends a pattern that has been building since SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut in June, when the company went public with Grok and xAI’s Colossus supercomputer folded into the pitch to investors.
Days after that listing, SpaceX closed its $60 billion all stock acquisition of coding startup Cursor, giving xAI both enterprise software distribution and a stream of real world developer data to train on. Grok 4.5 launched July 8 running partly on that Cursor training data, with Musk describing it as roughly comparable to Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 but faster and cheaper to run.
Feeding SpaceX’s own engineering data into the next AI model follows the same logic Musk has applied across xAI’s sister companies. Tesla supplies real world driving data and manufacturing expertise, X supplies conversational data, and now SpaceX supplies aerospace engineering data built up since 2002.
Musk did not give a release date for the upcoming AI model, referred to elsewhere as Grok 4.6. He has said the two trillion parameter run is in its final training phase and expected to wrap this week.
In a pointed message on X, Elon Musk warned that firms maintaining significant short positions in SpaceX over time face “very low” survival probability.
The statement comes amid post-IPO volatility for the rocket company, now trading under the ticker $SPCX.
The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2026
Five weeks after what was described as the largest IPO in history, the stock had fallen roughly 30% from its peak above $2.6 trillion, briefly surpassing Microsoft and Amazon in market value. Short sellers celebrated gains of about $8.7 billion, but Musk’s reply underscores his long-term conviction.
The warning directly echoes a detailed bullish analysis arguing that Starship’s cost reductions could unlock a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. Projects ranging from solar power beamed from orbit and asteroid mining to orbital data centers and Mars terraforming were projected to create over $100 trillion in new market capitalization.
In this vision, SpaceX acts as the essential infrastructure provider, akin to AWS for cloud computing, capturing monopoly-like revenues from launches, crew transport, and data traffic across a rapidly expanding frontier.
This is far from the first time Musk has targeted short sellers. With Tesla, he has repeatedly framed persistent bears as destined for major losses. In July 2024, Musk declared that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and volume production of Optimus robots, “anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates,” referencing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ reported short bets.
Elon Musk reveals what Tesla stock surge could do to Bill Gates
Earlier, in 2018, he taunted shorts that they had “about three weeks before their short position explodes,” a remark followed by sharp stock gains. Musk has also called short selling “value destroying” and once suggested it “should be illegal,” viewing it as betting against innovation and progress.
Critics often dismiss Musk’s optimism as hype, especially when near-term metrics like quarterly deliveries or stock fluctuations disappoint.
Yet his pattern remains consistent: framing short positions against his companies as fundamentally misjudging exponential technological leaps. For SpaceX shorts, the message is clear: betting against multi-planetary ambitions and the infrastructure monopoly they enable carries existential risk for the firms involved.
As Musk and supporters see it, the space economy’s upside dwarfs Earth-bound valuation models, making today’s dips temporary in a decades-long ascent.
SpaceX has updated its target for the thirteenth integrated flight test of Starship, aiming for as early as Thursday, July 23. The 90-minute launch window opens at 5:45 p.m. CT from the company’s Starbase facility in South Texas.
The target flight was initially rescheduled for today, but SpaceX pushed it back again.
This latest adjustment follows an aborted attempt earlier in the week and reflects the iterative, rapid-development approach that has defined the Starship program. With the vehicle already stacked and ground teams making final preparations, the mission represents another step toward proving the full reusability of the world’s most powerful rocket system.
Now targeting to launch Starship’s thirteenth flight test as early as Thursday, July 23 → https://t.co/Rp7VwBzpWx pic.twitter.com/Y0YNzfc5zk
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 19, 2026
The original launch attempt on July 16 was scrubbed at T-0 when several Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed to ignite properly. The automatic abort system triggered just as the engines began their startup sequence, preventing liftoff.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed that some engines did not start as expected, prompting the decision to replace two Raptors on Booster 20 to ensure reliability. The issue occurred despite a successful full-duration static fire earlier, highlighting the complexities of coordinating 33 engines under flight conditions.
This cautious approach underscores SpaceX’s commitment to safety amid an aggressive test cadence.
Flight 13 builds directly on the lessons from Flight 12 in May 2026. The Super Heavy booster’s primary goals include a successful liftoff, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and controlled splashdown in the Gulf of America.
Hardware and software modifications address the off-nominal flip and boostback burn problems from the prior flight, where propellant slosh and engine relight issues led to an uncontrolled impact.
For the Starship upper stage, objectives include deploying 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites, the first real payload of this type, performing a single Raptor engine relight in space, and executing a controlled entry, descent, and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Propulsion upgrades aim to improve engine-out capability after one vacuum Raptor was lost on Flight 12.
Additional test elements focus on heat shield performance. Six satellites carry cameras to image the tiles during flight, while white-painted tiles and upgraded attachments on flaps and the aft skirt will gather data for future reusability.
The FAA completed its mishap investigation into Flight 12 earlier this month, clearing the regulatory path.
This suborbital mission, the second with V3 vehicles, advances Starship toward operational missions, including potential crewed flights and support for NASA’s Artemis program. Success would mark significant progress in rapid reusability and satellite deployment from the massive system.
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