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SpaceX launches two Falcon 9 rockets in seven hours
Two SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets have successfully launched a Crew Dragon carrying four astronauts and a new batch of Starlink internet satellites a little over 7 hours apart, nearly halving the company’s previous record.
A Falcon 9 rocket on the East Coast kicked things off with a launch out of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) LC-39A pad – leased by SpaceX since 2014 – at noon EDT (16:00 UTC). A rare new Falcon 9 booster lifted an expendable upper stage and flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule – carrying four professional astronauts – most of the way free from Earth’s atmosphere before heading back to Earth and landing without issue on a SpaceX drone ship. The upper stage continued to low Earth orbit and deployed Dragon, kicking off a 29-hour journey to the International Space Station (ISS).
Seven hours and ten minutes later, a second Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from SpaceX’s Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB) SLC-4E pad, bursting through a thick layer of coastal fog. Following a successful launch and landing of booster B1071 and two good burns of the rocket’s upper stage, Falcon 9 deployed another 52 Starlink V1.5 satellites, adding to the more than 3000 working satellites already in orbit.
And SpaceX isn’t done. As early as 7:07 pm EDT (23:07 UTC) on October 6th, less than 24 hours after Starlink 4-29, a third Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch from SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) LC-40 pad. Rounding out the trio, the mission will carry Intelsat’s Galaxy 33 and Galaxy 34 communications satellites into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).
The mission will be Falcon 9 booster B1060’s 14th launch, significantly raising the bar for the commercial acceptance of reused SpaceX rockets. Prior to Galaxy 33/34, SpaceX’s commercial reuse record was held by Transporter-3, which was Falcon 9 B1058’s tenth launch.
The completion of two Falcon 9 launches in a little over 7 hours nearly halves SpaceX’s previous record of 14 hours and 8 minutes, set by a pair of launches in June 2022. It also demonstrates that the company can repeatedly prepare for and complete multiple Falcon 9 launches in very close proximity – more or less a necessity if it wants to hit CEO Elon Musk’s unprecedented target of “up to 100 launches” in 2023.
It isn’t a record for all of spaceflight, however. That likely falls to the Soviet R-7 family of rockets, 2 of which launched just 25 minutes apart in 1969. However, 3 Falcon 9 launches in 31 hours (Crew-5, Starlink 4-29, and Galaxy 33/34) is likely a record for all rockets. Parsing astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell’s extensive records, the R-7 family likely held the record for decades after completing 3 launches in 40 hours in 1978.
But, as it turns out, SpaceX already beat that record when it launched 3 Falcon 9 rockets in 36 hours in June 2022. 3 Falcon 9 launches in 31 hours thus breaks SpaceX’s record and the world record. That’s become an increasingly common occurrence for a company that has beaten its competitors so thoroughly that, by many measures, it has become peerless. Now, only the records of the former Soviet Union and a retired NASA rocket can outmatch SpaceX, a single 20-year-old company.
In less than three years, SpaceX has launched 30 astronauts: more than twice as many as China but a tiny fraction of the 852 people NASA’s Space Shuttle launched over its 30-year career. SpaceX’s Falcon family of rockets is the most reliable in history after 154 consecutive successes in less than six years, and Falcon boosters have completed more successful landings (145) than Space Shuttle orbiters. But its Dragon spacecraft will likely never best the Soviet and Russian Soyuz capsule and its variants, and Falcon will almost certainly be retired before it can come close to the R-7 rocket family’s extraordinary record of 1844 launches over 65 years.
But in the modern era, SpaceX is simply unmatched.
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Tesla’s AI Chief just hinted at something big for FSD v14 lite owners
Tesla’s AI chief suggests the newest FSD v14 Lite build may finally go wide release.
Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, noted on Sunday that the newest FSD v14 Lite build rolling out to Hardware 3 cars is likely the version that goes to wide release, the strongest signal yet that Tesla is near to closing out an early access phase that Hardware 3 owners have waited more than a year for.
Elluswamy made the comment in response to an extensive review from Tesla owner Zack, known on X as @BLKMDL3, who tested software version 2026.20.6.10 and detailed the changes in a lengthy post. “FSD v14 Lite (for Tesla AI3 hardware vehicles) review.
The update restarts a rollout that had stalled after its initial release. Tesla began pushing FSD v14 Lite to Hardware 3 early access drivers on June 29, bringing driving behavior learned on the newer Hardware 4 computer down to the more limited chip that has powered Tesla vehicles built between 2019 and early 2023. That release, as we covered in detail, gave roughly 4 million HW3 vehicles their first meaningful update since being frozen on version 12.6 in early 2025.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
The latest build adds features that bring Hardware 3 closer in line with what Hardware 4 owners already have. FSD can now start directly from park without a brake pedal confirmation, a change Zack called a small but meaningful quality of life improvement. The interface also picks up the blue “P” park icon, approaching destination alerts, and a dedicated Self-Driving app with streak tracking, all details previously exclusive to the AI4 branch of v14, as outlined in Tesla’s original release notes.
The stakes around Hardware 3 go beyond software polish. Tesla sold the Full Self-Driving package for years on the promise that every vehicle equipped with it had the hardware needed to eventually drive itself without supervision. That promise broke down during Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call, when Musk acknowledged HW3 cars could not run unsupervised FSD, prompting Tesla to offer trade-in discounts and hardware retrofits alongside the Lite software track.
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla has continued to frame v14 Lite as the primary path forward for the HW3 fleet, telling owners in April that international markets would follow the U.S. rollout once regulatory approvals came through. For now, HW3 owners in the early access group are the only ones running the new build. A broader rollout would mark the second major software delivery to the legacy fleet since Tesla first released FSD v14 to Hardware 4 vehicles, and the first sign since June that the Lite program is still moving rather than stuck in early access limbo.
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.
Tesla has evidently revealed which of its vehicle models will be the first to receive Starlink integration: the Cybercab.
Tesla’s Santana Row showroom now has a full-fledged display of the Cybercab, with an extensive bit of information hung around an exhibit that seems to reveal the vehicle’s newest feature: an integrated Starlink antenna that will enable secure and reliable internet access during trips.
Credit: @Starscream_SJC | X
Cybercab is geared toward autonomous ride-hailing for one or two passengers. The production units rolling off the lines at Gigafactory Texas are built without steering wheels or pedals, meaning when public rides begin, passengers will not need to interact with a human being or control the vehicle in any way outside of what appears on the center screen for their entertainment during the ride.
Tesla Santana Row will be reopening tomorrow with a full focus on self-driving. Everything in the showroom is about Robotaxi and Cybercab with stats and information about the technology. The Cybercab on display is the production model. pic.twitter.com/yIUYdOGFOp
— Shaun Cassidy (@Starscream_SJC) July 20, 2026
Along the display, Tesla wrote this message about Cybercab:
“Cybercab is built for autonomy. It has no steering wheel, no side mirrors, and no pedals. It goes where you tell it to go and how you want it to, so you can relax along the way. It is hyper aware and responsive to your surroundings, monitoring other drivers, responding to emergency vehicles, utilizing its expertise in the rarest scenarios to help keep you safe.”
Tesla has been teasing a potential Starlink integration for quite some time now. In December, the company hinted at potential Starlink internet terminal integration within its vehicles in a patent that described a vehicle roof assembly with integrated radio frequency (RF) transparency.
The company wrote in its patent application that a new roof design built with materials that differ from the standard metallic or glass elements used in today’s cars would allow it to integrate modern vehicular technologies, in particular, ones that require radio frequency transmission and reception.
Tesla suggested high-strength polymer blends, like Polycarbonate, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, or Acrylonitrile Styrene Acrylate.
This is the first time we’ve seen Tesla officially confirm the Starlink integration into the Cybercab. It’s not much of a surprise considering the company’s intention behind the Cybercab, which is to make travel autonomous.
Productivity will now be at a maximum during a work-related commute, while the center screen could be utilized for Netflix or potentially even live TV for those who are heading to dinner or to a fun activity.
Tesla’s AI Chief just hinted at something big for FSD v14 lite owners
Elon Musk sends first warning to SpaceX short sellers
