SpaceX
SpaceX’s April 7th Falcon Heavy launch a step toward new commercial markets
A bit less than 14 months after SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy took to the sky for the first time, the company’s super-heavy-lift rocket – the only such vehicle in the world that is currently operational – has garnered a pending date for its second launch attempt and commercial debut.
While there is some inherent uncertainty surrounding the (once again) fairly new rocket, SpaceX has now officially filed a plan with the Cape Canaveral range authorities that would see Falcon Heavy nominally conduct a critical static fire test as soon as March 31st, followed one week later by a launch target of no earlier than (NET) 6:36 pm EDT (22:36 UTC), April 7th. Set to place the ~6000 kg (13,200 lb) Arabsat 6A communications satellite in a high-energy geostationary orbit, a successful mission that ultimately proves Falcon Heavy’s commercial utility could also raise global launch market interest in the rocket, including potential anchor customers like NASA.
Falcon Heavy enters a different era
While it could be fairly argued that SpaceX has already near-flawlessly demonstrated Falcon Heavy’s performance and basic existence with the rocket’s February 2018 launch debut, that debut is really only half the story when it comes to breaking into commercial markets as a serious contender. Above all else, the fact remains that Falcon Heavy is often seen as infamous for what is perceived as a torturous, delay-ridden period of development, a common partial misunderstanding that has not exactly been combated by the now 14+ months separating the rocket’s first and second launch attempts. In the industries that have the most potential interest in Falcon Heavy, on-time launches are a central selling point of launch vehicles, with affordability effectively being a luxury behind timeliness and overall reliability.
Despite the success of Falcon Heavy’s debut, what SpaceX has not yet demonstrated is the ability to reliably and accurately insert a large customer payload into a specific orbit, for a specific (i.e. contracted) price. Adding another partial hurdle to the path before Falcon Heavy, the rocket’s first launch featured a hardware setup that could be described as a one-off, owing to the fact that Flight 1 utilized a mishmash of flight-proven Block 2 boosters and one unique Block 3-derived center core. By the time that the rocket was ready for its first launch, SpaceX was just three months away from debuting Falcon 9’s Block 5 variation, framed as the family’s ‘final’ version. Featuring an extensive range of major changes to Falcon structures, Merlin engines, avionics, reusability, and manufacturing processes, this ultimately meant that the next Falcon Heavy to fly would be a significantly different rocket compared to its sole predecessor.
While we actually know very little about what the task of re-certifying Falcon Heavy’s Block 5 upgrade for flight entailed, the minimum of 14 months separating flights 1 and 2 offers at least a partial idea of just how extensive the required rework was. With a long-delayed customer’s extremely expensive (likely $150-300M+) satellite on the line, there is a surplus of pressure on SpaceX to both complete this launch flawlessly and do so as soon as possible.
If all goes well with the imminent launch of Arabsat 6A and the USAF’s STP-2 mission shortly thereafter, SpaceX will have done a great deal to assuage many industry doubts about Falcon Heavy, particularly its practical launch availability and the company’s ability to ensure that its launches are at least roughly on-time. As of today, SpaceX has won five firm launch contracts for Falcon Heavy – three in the last year alone – and has the potential to acquire several additional contracts in the coming years, ranging from additional national security satellites from the NRO and USAF to flagship NASA science missions like the Jupiter-bound Europa Clipper. Aside from Blue Origin’s New Glenn (launch debut NET 2021), ULA’s Vulcan (also NET 2021), and ULA’s Delta IV Heavy (likely far too expensive), SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is also the frontrunner for commercial contracts to launch segments of a proposed lunar space station, with launches potentially beginning as early as the early 2020s.
Further still, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announced earlier this month that the space agency was actively considering a stand-in fix for
Either way, the long term prospects of Falcon Heavy rocket could potentially be both lucrative for SpaceX and immensely beneficial for satellite industries and national space agencies alike. If SpaceX can demonstrate that it has inherited Falcon 9’s now thoroughly impressive reliability and moderate to great schedule assurance, the market for Falcon Heavy could end up supporting a major fraction of SpaceX’s sizable launch business.
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Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX’s biggest earnings test yet lands Tuesday, and Tesla shareholders should be watching
SpaceX reports earnings Tuesday as Wall Street watches AI spending, Starlink growth and Tesla merger
SpaceX reports third quarter results after the market closes Tuesday, with a webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET streamed on X, and Tesla follows a day later. Bloomberg consensus, cited by Pepperstone, calls for revenue of $12.89 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $6.62 billion and adjusted EPS near $0.15. That would be about 65% growth from the second quarter and SpaceX’s first profitable quarter since its IPO. Analysts expect roughly $6.4 billion from AI and $4.9 billion from Starlink, which is projected to reach 14.3 million consumer subscribers. Capital spending is forecast at $19.6 billion, leaving free cash flow near negative $11.6 billion.
The numbers matter because SpaceX has spent months trying to win over a skeptical market. It priced its record IPO at $135, spiked to $225.64, then sank near $105 in early August. Friday’s close of $146.03 sits about 28% below the June high. The Q2 report beat on revenue at $7.8 billion and put Starlink at 12 million subscribers, but $18.4 billion of capex hurt the stock. Since then SpaceX reached orbit on Starship Flight 14 with 26 Starlink V3 satellites, agreed to buy 800 MHz spectrum for about $8 billion as part of its Starlink Mobile push, and signed a fourth compute hosting deal in four months worth roughly $13 billion a year from December. Management is targeting more than 2 gigawatts of compute by year end and a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate. Evercore ISI, which raised its target to $275, said the quarter may be judged more on those targets than the reported figures
All of this sits under the Tesla merger question. Barclays analyst Dan Levy expects an all stock deal in which SpaceX buys Tesla at a premium, using reference values of $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, and said an announcement would need to come by late October or early November to be voted on at Tesla’s December 6 annual meeting. Barclays estimates Musk would hold about 37% of the combined company and 56% of the votes. Musk said in July that combining companies cannot be discussed on an earnings call, but an investor question asking when SpaceX will merge with Tesla is sitting on SpaceX’s Q&A platform, and Teslarati has tracked how the Roadster demo revived the talk.
If a deal happens, Tuesday’s result would effectively set the price Tesla holders would receive. Their shares would convert into SpaceX stock, along with exposure to a company with a heavy investment on AI, while Tesla itself expects 2026 capex above $25 billion. A strong quarter and calmer spending would make that exchange easier to sell. Another round of heavy capex and a falling stock would make it harder.
News
SpaceX’s Gwynne Shotwell just made a quiet gesture toward Tesla
SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell quietly followed Tesla on X, and merger watchers noticed right away.
SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell has started following Tesla’s official account on X, a small change that landed in the middle of a very loud merger conversation. Whole Mars Catalog joked about it on Sunday.
A follow is not an announcement, and neither company has said anything about a deal. What gives the moment weight is the timing. Barclays analyst Dan Levy has told clients that an agreement could come before Tesla’s annual meeting, which must be held by December 6, with SpaceX as the buyer in an all stock deal, as we reported after the Roadster unveiling. Wedbush’s Dan Ives has stuck with a 2027 timeline.
“Shit, I better start following their X account if i’m gonna be helping run the company”
— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) October 18, 2026
Shotwell is the executive most worth watching if the two companies do move closer. When Musk was asked at the All In Summit why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate, Shotwell sat next to him and said SpaceX personnel had already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps. The businesses were integrating “faster than I thought,” she said, though “not fully integrated yet.” Her responsibilities have also grown since SpaceX absorbed xAI, and she now oversees operations that include Grok and the company’s AI compute buildout.
The financial links are already there. Tesla’s $2 billion xAI investment turned into a stake of less than one percent in SpaceX, the two share the Terafab chip project in Austin, and Musk exercised his 2018 Tesla options a week after SpaceX began trading, a sequence analysts flagged as giving SpaceX public shares to use in a deal. Musk holds about 20 percent of Tesla and controls 85.1 percent of SpaceX’s voting power, according to our earlier breakdown.
The next test is close at hand. SpaceX reports its second earnings as a public company on Tuesday after the close, and Tesla follows on Wednesday. Musk told analysts in July that “we can’t talk about combining companies and that kind of thing on an earnings call,” so a direct answer is unlikely from either stage. Tesla shareholders can still submit and vote on questions through the Say portal until 4 p.m. EDT on Monday, and the merger is a recurring theme in the queue.
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