News
SpaceX fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven’s owner abruptly files for bankruptcy
The legal owners of SpaceX’s sole fairing recovery vessel are in dire financial straits, signaled by business owner Steven Miguez’s decision to file for bankruptcy as a last chance of protecting Seatran Marine, a company which owns and leases eight utility vessels known as crew boats.
Mr. Steven, leased by SpaceX in late 2017, is one of those crew boats, although he has since been dramatically modified to support a series of consecutively larger arms, nets, and other various components in hopes of eventually catching Falcon 9 payload fairings out of the air. While there is most likely no serious risk of SpaceX actually losing access to Mr. Steven, this development still raises the question of what will happen to the ship in the near and more distant future.
The bankruptcy paperwork filed is chapter 11 – "proposing a plan of reorganisation to keep a business alive." The paperwork protects Mr Steven from foreclosure for now so there is no immediate change to anything.
— Gav Cornwell (@SpaceOffshore) November 21, 2018
As indicated in the tweet above, the ultimate outcome – at least for the time being – is simple uncertainty, as Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings will prevent Miguez from having to foreclose on Mr. Steven in the short term. If the Miguez family can rapidly find a solution for its money troubles, all could proceed unchanged. However, with all due respect to the owners and to Seatran Marine’s employees, Chapter 11 bankruptcy simply is not easily undone and is generally a last resort to be used only after all alternative solutions have been exhausted. Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings can take anywhere from a few months to several years to complete, tending to take longer as the scale and complexity of the filing party grows.
Making the best of a bad situation
Leased by Seatran to operator Guice Offshore (GO), SpaceX’s primary fleet manager on both coasts, GO (and thus SpaceX) had contracted to pay at least $3300 a day to use Mr. Steven, although that contract expired in October 2018. The new terms are unclear and it’s unknown if a replacement contract has yet to be signed.
Given the situation at hand and despite the sad financial circumstances facing the vessel’s owners, SpaceX may be in the best position yet to purchase Mr. Steven outright, assuming the company expects to continue attempting Falcon fairing recoveries for the indefinite future. In 2015, namesake Steven Miguez took out a $22.5M loan to cover Mr. Steven’s construction costs, offering a rough price ceiling for the modern, high-performance Fast Supply Vessel (FSV). While the most obvious interested buyer would be GO itself, it’s unlikely that the company has a sum of that size to offer, meaning that GO would need to take out its own loan to acquire the ship.
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- Mr. Steven took to sea to test out a new recovery-related appendage – purpose unknown – on November 12. (Pauline Acalin)
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- After an afternoon attempting to catch Falcon fairings dropped by a helicopter, Mr. Steven returned to port on Nov. 14. (Pauline Acalin)
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- (Pauline Acalin)
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- One half of SpaceX’s Iridium-6/GRACE-FO just moments before touchdown on the Pacific Ocean. (SpaceX)
SpaceX, on the other hand, quite literally just closed a debt funding round of $250M, terms unknown, leaving the company more than enough liquid capital to enable a cash transaction assuming there is some interest in becoming Mr. Steven’s legal owner. SpaceX already owns its two operational autonomous spaceport drone ships (ASDS) outright and has extensively modified Mr. Steven to support fairing recovery, quite literally building its prototype recovery apparatus around the rented vessel. As the vessel’s new owner, SpaceX could likely keep contracting to GO for general operations and support, perhaps even continuing to lease Mr. Steven to GO to create as few waves as possible.
By selling Mr. Steven outright, Miguez could likely acquire more than enough funds to preserve Seatran Marine and its subsidiaries long enough to recover his financial footing and return his companies to a stable state.
Business as usual?
In the meantime, it does not appear that these unfortunate legal issues have had a tangible impact on GO and SpaceX’s near-term ability to operate Mr. Steven. Around November 20th, SpaceX and GO crew performed the most recent of a series of Falcon fairing recovery tests, dropping a half from a helicopter to provide Mr. Steven a comparatively controlled environment to practice catches. Earlier this month, CEO Elon Musk appeared to imply that Mr. Steven would not attempt to catch Falcon 9’s fairing halves following the West Coast launch of SSO-A, at the time scheduled for November 19th.
Since then, SSO-A’s flight-proven Falcon 9 launch has slipped a full two weeks thanks to a combination of additional inspections and bad weather, now targeting launch NET December 2. It’s a stretch, but there is at least a slight chance that SSO-A’s excessive launch slips could mean that Mr. Steven will be able to attempt fairing recovery after all, at least per Musk’s suggestion that SpaceX would “try again next month”.
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News
Anti-Tesla union leader ditches X, urges use of Threads instead
Tesla Sweden and IF Metall have been engaged in a bitter dispute for over two years now.
Marie Nilsson, chair of Sweden’s IF Metall union and a prominent critic of Tesla, has left X and is urging audiences to follow the union on Meta’s Threads instead.
Tesla Sweden and IF Metall have been engaged in a bitter dispute for over two years now.
Anti-Tesla union leader exits X
In a comment to Dagens Arbete (DA), Nilsson noted that her exit from X is not formally tied to IF Metall’s long-running labor dispute with Tesla Sweden. Still, she stated that her departure is affected by changes to the platform under Elon Musk’s leadership.
“We have stayed because many journalists pick up news there. But as more and more people have left X, we have felt that the standard has now been reached on that platform,” she said.
Jesper Pettersson, press officer at IF Metall, highlighted that the union’s departure from X is only indirectly linked to Tesla Sweden and Elon Musk. “Indirectly it does, since there is a lot of evidence that his ownership has caused the change in the platform to be so significant.
“We have nevertheless assessed that the platform had value for reaching journalists, politicians and other opinion leaders. But it is a microscopic proportion of the public and our members who are there, and now that value has decreased,” Petterson added.
IF Metall sees Threads as an X alternative
After leaving X, IF Metall has begun using Threads, Meta’s alternative to the social media platform. The union described the move as experimental, noting that it is still evaluating how effective the platform will be for outreach and visibility.
Pettersson acknowledged that Meta also does not operate under Sweden’s collective bargaining model, but said the union sees little alternative if it wants to remain visible online.
“In a perfect world, all large international companies would be supporters of the Swedish model when they come here. But unfortunately, the reality is not like that. If we are to be visible at all in this social media world, we have to play by the rules of the game. The alternative would be to become completely invisible, and that would not benefit our members,” he said.
Despite many recent rumors and various reports, Elon Musk confirmed today that SpaceX is not developing a phone based on Starlink, not once, but twice.
Today’s report from Reuters cited people familiar with the matter and stated internal discussions have seen SpaceX executives mulling the idea of building a mobile device that would connect directly to the Starlink satellite constellation.
Musk did state in late January that SpaceX developing a phone was “not out of the question at some point.” However, He also said it would have to be a major difference from current phones, and would be optimized “purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.”
Not out of the question at some point. It would be a very different device than current phones. Optimized purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 30, 2026
While Musk said it was not out of the question “at some point,” that does not mean it is currently a project SpaceX is working on. The CEO reaffirmed this point twice on X this afternoon.
Musk said, “Reuters lies relentlessly,” in one post. In the next, he explicitly stated, “We are not developing a phone.”
Reuters lies relentlessly
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026
We are not developing a phone
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026
Musk has basically always maintained that SpaceX has too many things going on, denying that a phone would be in the realm of upcoming projects. There are too many things in the works for Musk’s space exploration company, most notably the recent merger with xAI.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
A Starlink phone would be an excellent idea, especially considering that SpaceX operates 9,500 satellites, serving over 9 million users worldwide. 650 of those satellites are dedicated to the company’s direct-to-device initiative, which provides cellular coverage on a global scale.
Nevertheless, there is the potential that the Starlink phone eventually become a project SpaceX works on. However, it is not currently in the scope of what the company needs to develop, so things are more focused on that as of right now.
Tesla has added a notable improvement to its Dashcam feature after complaints from owners have pushed the company to make a drastic change.
Perhaps one of the biggest frustrations that Tesla owners have communicated regarding the Dashcam feature is the lack of ability to retain any more than 60 minutes of driving footage before it is overwritten.
It does not matter what size USB jump drive is plugged into the vehicle. 60 minutes is all it will hold until new footage takes over the old. This can cause some issues, especially if you were saving an impressive clip of Full Self-Driving or an incident on the road, which could be lost if new footage was recorded.
This has now been changed, as Tesla has shown in the Release Notes for an upcoming Software Update in China. It will likely expand to the U.S. market in the coming weeks, and was first noticed by NotaTeslaApp.
The release notes state:
“Dashcam Dynamic Recording Duration – The dashcam dynamically adjusts the recording duration based on the available storage capacity of the connected USB drive. For example, with a 128 GB USB drive, the maximum recording duration is approximately 3 hours; with a 1 TB or larger USB drive, it can reach up to 24 hours. This ensures that as much video as possible is retained for review before it gets overwritten.”
Tesla Adds Dynamic Recording
Instead of having a 60-minute cap, the new system will now go off the memory in the USB drive. This means with:
- 128 GB Jump Drive – Up to Three Hours of Rolling Footage
- 1TB Jump Drive – Up to 24 Hours of Rolling Footage
This is dependent on the amount of storage available on the jump drive, meaning that if there are other things saved on it, it will take away from the amount of footage that can be retained.
While the feature is just now making its way to employees in China, it will likely be at least several weeks before it makes its way to the U.S., but owners should definitely expect it in the coming months.
It will be a welcome feature, especially as there will now be more customization to the number of clips and their duration that can be stored.
Anti-Tesla union leader ditches X, urges use of Threads instead
Elon Musk confirms SpaceX is not developing a phone
