News
SpaceX Falcon 9 booster spied on highway as triple-satellite launch moves right
A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was spotted heading north from the company’s Hawthorne, California factory on January 22nd, signifying a likely shipment of the flight-proven rocket that will help launch Canada’s trio of Radarsat Constellation Mission satellites.
Delayed from mid-February to early March 2019 after an unplanned landing anomaly damaged the Falcon 9 originally assigned to the mission, the shipment of a different booster to Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) helps to narrow down the rocket now likeliest to launch the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) radar satellite constellation.
https://twitter.com/GoForStaging/status/1088174203298230272
Do the Booster Shuffle!
Thanks to a hydraulic pump failure that led Falcon 9 B1050 to land (albeit softly and in one piece) in the Atlantic Ocean last December, the imminent launch of two booster-dense Falcon Heavy missions, and the thus far schedule-shy orbital launch debut of Crew Dragon, SpaceX’s fleet of available boosters – all flight-proven – can be succinctly summarized as “B1046 thru B1049”.
B1050’s future is uncertain after suffering a smashed interstage and soaking in salt water for several days, while B1051 is definitively assigned to Crew Dragon’s orbital launch debut, known as Demo-1 (DM-1). Falcon 9 B1052 and B1053 are unknown quantities and B1054 was expended after a high-value US Air Force launch, also SpaceX’s final mission of 2018. It’s probably safe to bet that B1052, B1053, and B1055 will be the next three boosters to support a Falcon Heavy launch (or two), currently NET March and April 2019. All three of those Falcon Heavy (FH) boosters have completed static fire tests in Texas and both side boosters arrived at SpaceX’s Florida facilities within the last ~6 weeks.
- A Falcon Heavy side booster was spotted eastbound in Arizona on November 10th. (Reddit – beast-sam)
- The second (and third) flight of Falcon Heavy is even closer to reality as the first new side booster heads to Florida after finishing static fire tests in Texas. (Reddit /u/e32revelry)
- Reddit user wedatsaints captured this photo of the second Falcon Heavy side booster traveling through Mississippi on Jan 16. (Reddit /u/wedatsaints)
- SpaceX Facebook group member Joshua Murrah captured the second Falcon Heavy side booster to arrive in Florida in the last month. (Joshua Murrah, 01/17/19)
- A booster – likely the next Falcon Heavy center core – was vertical at McGregor’s S1 static fire stand. (Instagram /u/tcryguy)
Assuming that Falcon Heavy Flight 2 and 3 use the same exact boosters, SpaceX production technicians and engineers may already be nearing the completion of another Falcon 9 booster (B1056, presumably) at the Hawthorne factory, although they are likely 1-2 weeks away from that milestone. If, Falcon Heavy Flight 3 (presumed to be the USAF’s STP-2 mission) does not reuse all three first stage boosters from Flight 2 (commercial payload Arabsat 6A), then Hawthorne will have to build, ship, and test anywhere from 1-3 additional boosters between now and April 2019. In the latter scenario, all unflown – mid-build or completed – Falcon boosters would be ‘claimed’ between now and March or April.
Put in another way, short of opting for a delay that could stretch 1-4 months or longer, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Radarsat prime contractor MDA will have to accept one of SpaceX’s flight-proven Falcon 9s.
Falcons on wheels
Thanks to SpaceX’s trusty and well-worn method of using good old trucks and roads to transport Falcon 9 and Heavy boosters, upper stages, fairings, landing legs, and much more cross-country, spaceflight fans have long taken advantage of opportunities – rare and fleeting as they might be – to spot and track SpaceX hardware on public roads. Put simply, a lot of people are excited about SpaceX or are at least familiar and curious enough to know someone to share a photo or observation with. As a result, the community averages dozens of ‘core spottings’ per year. With a little intuition, the process of elimination, a few sources, and some wild guesses, this allows unofficial fans to (very roughly) paint a picture of SpaceX’s fleet of rockets.
- Reddit user intamin1 spotted a Falcon 9 booster northbound between Hawthorne and Vandenberg on Jan 22. (Reddit /u/intamin1)
- A booster – likely the next Falcon Heavy center core – was vertical at McGregor’s S1 static fire stand. (Instagram /u/tcryguy)
For example, the Falcon 9 spotted in Valencia, CA on January 22nd by Reddit user intamin1 could theoretically be any SpaceX booster currently in existence. By knowing the rough state of SpaceX’s fleet (as described above) and observing that the booster was northbound between Hawthorne, CA (the factory) and Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) on Jan 22, a great deal can be intuited. Bound for SpaceX’s West Coast launch complex (SLC-4), it ought to be flightworthy. Knowing that a Falcon Heavy center booster was on SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas static fire stand on January 10th means that the spotted booster can’t (or at least shouldn’t) be coming from Texas, as Falcon Heavy has no known launches planned from VAFB. The process of testing, inspecting, and preparing Falcon boosters for cross-country shipment is also not easily rushed.
On the East Coast, SpaceX needs to launch communications satellite PSN-6 and Spaceflight rideshare GTO-1 in mid to late February. With no new boosters expected to be easily available for months and PSN-6/GTO-1 already entering into the phases of payload fueling, integration, and fairing encapsulation, it can be all but guaranteed that a flight-proven booster was assigned to the mission months ago and is now nearly ready for its third flight somewhere in Cape Canaveral, FL.

Given that B1046 and B1049 are on the West Coast after conducting launches from VAFB and that B1050 is out of circulation for the time being, only B1047 and B1048 remain (in theory) on the East Coast, both having flown two missions. B1048 was recently spotted and confirmed in photos of SpaceX’s Pad 39A integration hangar, although Falcon 9 B1051 and the first orbit-ready Crew Dragon were the center of attention.
B1047 completed its second launch in mid-November 2018 and returned to one of SpaceX’s Florida hangars for refurbishment around Nov 21. Unless any number of locals and bystanders somehow missed it, neither booster has left the Cape since arriving. Meanwhile, B1048 is currently the best-known candidate at hand for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon In-Flight Abort (IFA) test, expected to occur no earlier than spring 2019 and entirely dependent upon the successful launch, reentry, recovery, and refurbishment of the DM-1 capsule to proceed. As a result, the only booster that is realistically available for PSN-6/GTO-1 is Falcon 9 B1047 for what would be its third launch.
Few of my favorites from today's Pence visit to #SpaceX pad 39A. In first photo, from left to right: Previously flown B1048, booster for DM-1, Crew Dragon for DM-1. Look at the size of that Merlin engine bell.
More photos: https://t.co/6dMbampx2c pic.twitter.com/3KmjVj4Rvf
— Emre Kelly (@EmreKelly) December 18, 2018
Assuming B1048 did not manage to make it from Cape Canaveral to Central California without a single spotting, the only rockets available for the RCM mission are B1046 and B1049. B1049 completed its second launch – Iridium-8 – just weeks ago and returned by drone ship to Port of LA on January 13th, whereas Falcon 9 B1046 – after completing its historic third launch – completed recovery and was snug in a Hawthorne, CA refurbishment bay by December 17th, 2018. Going off of Occam’s Razor, B1046 is the clear victor for the launch of RCM, although a ~60-90-day turnaround for the already thrice-flown booster could be a stretch. B1049, however, would have barely a single month for refurbishment and inspections.
In the last week or two, RCM stakeholders were provided an updated launch target, delaying the mission by approximately two weeks to a window that begins February 28th with the implication being that the launch is now expected NET early March. If that date is recent and from SpaceX, B1046 is the most practical option, with B1049 thus filling its refurbishment bay in Hawthorne, CA around the same day. If a risk of a 30-day or greater delay is tolerable for CSA and MDA, then B1049.3 would likely be a more optimal fit for their risk tolerance profile. Time will tell!
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.







