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SpaceX delays Starlink doubleheader
Update: To “allow additional time for pre-launch checkouts,” SpaceX has delayed Starlink 2-6 from January 30th to 8:15 am PST (16:15 UTC), January 31st and Starlink 5-3 from February 1st to February 2nd.
A pair of SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets are on track to round out the first month of 2023 and kick off the second with a Starlink double-header.
“To complete pre-launch checkouts,” SpaceX delayed its last launch of the month by 24 hours. The first Falcon 9 rocket will launch Starlink 2-6 and a D-Orbit rideshare payload no earlier than 8:29 am PST (16:29 UTC) on Monday, January 30th. The mission will lift off from SpaceX’s Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) SLC-4E pad and head southeast, skirting the California and Mexico coast. In case of bad weather or a minor technical issue, a backup window is available at 12:31 pm PST.
As few as 35.5 or 39.5 hours later, a second Falcon 9 rocket will lift off from SpaceX’s Florida-based NASA Kennedy Space Center LC-39A pad around 3:02 am EST (08:02 UTC) on Tuesday, February 1st.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
Starlink 2-6
Kicking off the pair, Starlink 2-6 will be SpaceX’s ninth Starlink rideshare mission since the company began manifesting third-party payloads on its internet satellite launches in June 2020. Falcon 9 will launch the mission’s main payload – a batch of 49 Starlink V1.5 satellites – to a semi-polar orbit that will see them cross Earth’s equator at an angle of 70 degrees. Ordinarily, the mission would carry 51 Starlinks, but SpaceX has removed a pair of satellites to make room for Italian space logistics company D-Orbit’s ION SCV009 spacecraft.
ION weighs around 160 kilograms (350 lb) on its own and is roughly the size of a large oven. D-Orbit designed the spacecraft to host fixed payloads and deploy rideshare satellites in orbit. It also has a propulsion system that allows it to provide “last-mile delivery services,” offering rideshare customers the ability to tweak the orbit their satellite ends up in. Space tugs like ION aim to give satellite owners some of the benefits of a dedicated rocket launch (custom orbit selection in particular) while retaining most of the cost savings rideshare launches enable.

After reaching orbit, Falcon 9 will deploy ION first, use thrusters to spin itself end over end, and then release all 49 Starlink satellites simultaneously. The spinning stage’s centrifugal force causes the satellite stack to naturally spread out within several hours. The satellites then use reaction wheels to stabilize their orientation, deploy solar panels to begin charging their batteries, and eventually use ion thrusters to climb to operational orbits.
ION SCV009 will attempt to test a new satellite separation system built by EBAD and demonstrate its ability to operate in very low Earth orbit (VLEO). The spacecraft will potentially lower itself to an altitude of 270 kilometers (170 mi).
Starlink 5-3
Starlink 5-3 will carry no rideshare payloads and will likely be nearly identical to Starlink 5-2, which SpaceX successfully launched on January 26th. The latest mission’s stack of 56 Starlink V1.5 satellites weighed 17.4 tons and was the heaviest payload SpaceX has ever launched. Starlink 5-3 is targeting the same orbit and will likely also carry 56 satellites.
Pad 39A last supported SpaceX’s fifth Falcon Heavy launch on January 15th and has been quickly converted back to its single-core Falcon 9 configuration for Starlink 5-3. After the Starlink mission, Pad 39A has at least two Dragon spacecraft launches scheduled before SpaceX will need to convert it back to a triple-booster configuration for Falcon Heavy’s sixth launch.
SpaceX is scheduled to launch Crew Dragon’s Crew-6 astronaut transport mission no earlier than February 26th, and Cargo Dragon’s Spx-27 cargo delivery mission on March 11th. Falcon Heavy is scheduled to launch the giant ViaSat-3 communications satellite no earlier than March 24th.
Tune in below around 8:25 am PST (16:25 UTC) to watch SpaceX Starlink 2-6 launch live.
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.
