News
SpaceX’s third Block 5 rocket heads to Texas test site as launch marathon nears
A SpaceX Falcon 9 – almost certainly the third Block 5 booster to leave the company’s factory – was spotted passing through New Mexico on the last leg of its trip from California to Texas. Although the shipment is a great sign, it begs the question of how exactly SpaceX plans to launch its next six launches penciled in for July and August.
Bear with me, as this post will dive into the specifics of orchestrating launches – namely having rocket boosters, upper stages, and fairings all ready at the same place and time. Fundamentally, the analysis that follows suggests two main possibilities: 1) two or three of those July/August launches will have to be delayed for booster availability or 2) the first (and perhaps second) truly rapid reuse of Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters will occur before summer’s end.

The first Block 5 Falcon 9 lifts off on May 4, 2018. The upgrade’s rapid reusability optimizations could be crucial for SpaceX’s summer manifest. (Tom Cross)
After conducting routine static fire testing in McGregor, the booster spotted on Monday – B1048 – will likely be shipped West to Vandenberg Air Force Base for the first West coast Block 5 launch in mid-July. B1047, the second Block 5 booster to leave SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory, was spotted miles from Cape Canaveral, FL near the end of May, while B1046‘s early May launch marked the debut of Falcon 9 Block 5 and was expected to undergo several months of disassembly and analysis to ensure the rocket upgrade was functioning as intended. Based on previous patterns, the fourth Block 5 Falcon 9 booster – B1049 – should not be expected to ship from the factory to McGregor until late June or early July. Finally, the last orbital Block 4 booster (B1045) will conduct its second and final launch in the last few days of June, currently NET June 29.
Put simply, B1049 is unlikely to arrive at its first launch site until mid or late July and can thus be taken out of the July running. B1045 will be (presumably) expended after launch, also taking it out of the running for future launches. B1048 will almost certainly travel to Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) for its first launch in July, effectively ruling out its availability for other July and August launches. Furthermore, Iridium’s CEO Matt Desch has stated that both Iridium-7 and Iridium-8 are expected to launch on unflown boosters. Fundamentally, this leaves two Block 5 boosters readily available for four loosely scheduled July and August launches on the East Coast.
- Falcon 9 B1045 prepares for its first launch in mid-April. (SpaceX)
- B1046 returned to Port Canaveral shortly after its May 4 debut, and is now being carefully analyzed as pathfinder hardware. (Tom Cross)
- Falcon 9 B1047 spotted in Florida just a short trip away from Cape Canaveral, where it will likely launch Telsat 19V in mid-July. (Reddit /u/fatherofzeuss)
- What was likely B1049 spotted heading to McGregor, Texas for static fire testing, June 11. (TeslaMotorsClub /u/nwdiver)
Focusing on July’s schedule as it currently stands, B1047 would be required to launch two high-energy geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) missions in as few as two weeks. The nature of drone ship recoveries would cut the time available between the booster’s return to port and its second static fire to perhaps 5-10 days. In other words, there would be almost no time whatsoever for refurbishment, at least compared to the current prospective record of B1045, roughly 70 days between launches.
All things considered, two launches of the same booster in well under a month would be an act of heroics given that B1047’s first launch will be the second or third-ever flight of Falcon 9 Block 5. An extensive upgrade to the venerable rocket intended to make it highly reusable and equally reliable, Block 5 is the culmination of more than half a decade of experience launching a wide array of Falcon 9 versions and 56 total launches. While I would place the odds of a sub-30 day back-to-back reflight happening less than two months from now at maybe 10%, my odds for the next six to nine months are closer to 95% – remember, Musk set SpaceX the goal of two flights of the same booster in 24 hours by the end of 2019. It may sound insane, but it quite literally was what Block 5 was designed to enable.
Although delays are more probable here, the alternative is a truly wild roller coaster of launches and historic reusable rocket milestones. Fingers crossed!
- A rough sketch of SpaceX’s launch schedule over the next few months. (Eric Ralph)
- After CRS-15, all orbital launches will be use Block 5 boosters and upper stages. The upgraded rocket’s next launch is NET July 20. (Tom Cross)
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Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.






