SpaceX
SpaceX recycles Falcon Heavy’s commercial launch debut to Thurs – here’s why
SpaceX has scrubbed the first attempted launch of Falcon Heavy Flight 2 due to high upper-level winds deemed too much of a risk to mission success. Thursday, April 11th’s recycled launch window is identical to Wednesday’s, stretching from 6:35pm-8:31pm ET (22:35-00:31 UTC).
According to SpaceX, both the Falcon Heavy Block 5 rocket and its Arabsat 6A satellite payload are in good health and would have been ready to launch on April 10th if the weather had been slightly more cooperative. While seemingly innocuous, something as basic as wind currents can risk the partial or total failure of rockets even as large as Falcon Heavy, The intricacy and stress-optimized nature of Falcon Heavy’s three interlinked boosters make the rocket particularly susceptible to off-nominal aerodynamic stresses, constantly performing a sort of balancing act to keep those boosters flying in a sort of formation at extreme speeds.
While rockets are also susceptible to extreme ground-level wind conditions, upper-level wind violations are far more common, particularly for SpaceX’s Falcon family. Falcon 9 and Heavy are uniquely at the mercy of these conditions due to a fineness ratio (height vs. width) unprecedented at their level of performance. In fact, Falcon boosters are so long, skinny, and mass-optimized that SpaceX actually pressurizes them with nitrogen during extended/unsupported periods in a horizontal orientation. In simpler terms, held near its extremities, Falcon first stages can actually damage themselves under their own weight by bending somewhere in the middle.
Past a certain point, this bending is highly undesirable. The walls of Falcon 9’s lithium-aluminum alloy propellant tanks – also doubling as part of the rocket’s load-bearing structure – are approximately 0.2 in (5mm) thick, around 40% thinner than an iPhone X. Weighing approximately 25,000 kg (55,000 lb) empty yet 550,000 kg (1,210,000 lb) when full of fuel, Falcon 9 is thus a bit like a rolled sheet of printer paper balancing under a textbook while accelerating at several Gs.
The problem is that Earth’s atmosphere is heavily stratified: there are many different horizontal layers of air that can end up moving in very different directions at very different speeds. Imagine for a second that you’re sprinting along a sidewalk but each sidewalk section is actually a treadmill moving slightly left or right. Running along at full speed, you abruptly hit several sections that are rapidly moving, say, right. Bad times are had. For Falcon Heavy (or 9), running into high upper-level winds is much less exaggerated but still ends up having the same effect: the rocket, like the runner, loses control authority and ends up a fair bit more sideways than intended. When rockets find themselves tilting more than a few degrees off of their vector, they start to bend and flex a lot. When rockets more than minutely bend and flex, they have a tendency to crumple and warp to the point that they will literally break into pieces a bit like a partially cooked spaghetti noodle.
Those same forces act on Falcon Heavy quite a bit differently than they do on a single Falcon 9, but the principle remains the same: sideways booster = bad news. The wind wins this round but SpaceX will be ready for another attempt today. Likely a strategic choice, Wednesday’s launch attempt was called off just shy of 20 minutes before propellant loading began, dramatically simplifying the process of turning Falcon Heavy around for another launch attempt.
Tune in later today for another exciting day of Falcon Heavy photos and prelaunch operations as photographers – including Teslarati’s Pauline Acalin and Tom Cross – return to Pad 39A to replace camera batteries and generally ogle an elegant rocket.
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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.
SpaceX has updated its target for the thirteenth integrated flight test of Starship, aiming for as early as Thursday, July 23. The 90-minute launch window opens at 5:45 p.m. CT from the company’s Starbase facility in South Texas.
The target flight was initially rescheduled for today, but SpaceX pushed it back again.
This latest adjustment follows an aborted attempt earlier in the week and reflects the iterative, rapid-development approach that has defined the Starship program. With the vehicle already stacked and ground teams making final preparations, the mission represents another step toward proving the full reusability of the world’s most powerful rocket system.
Now targeting to launch Starship’s thirteenth flight test as early as Thursday, July 23 → https://t.co/Rp7VwBzpWx pic.twitter.com/Y0YNzfc5zk
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 19, 2026
The original launch attempt on July 16 was scrubbed at T-0 when several Raptor engines on the Super Heavy booster failed to ignite properly. The automatic abort system triggered just as the engines began their startup sequence, preventing liftoff.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirmed that some engines did not start as expected, prompting the decision to replace two Raptors on Booster 20 to ensure reliability. The issue occurred despite a successful full-duration static fire earlier, highlighting the complexities of coordinating 33 engines under flight conditions.
This cautious approach underscores SpaceX’s commitment to safety amid an aggressive test cadence.
Flight 13 builds directly on the lessons from Flight 12 in May 2026. The Super Heavy booster’s primary goals include a successful liftoff, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and controlled splashdown in the Gulf of America.
Hardware and software modifications address the off-nominal flip and boostback burn problems from the prior flight, where propellant slosh and engine relight issues led to an uncontrolled impact.
For the Starship upper stage, objectives include deploying 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites, the first real payload of this type, performing a single Raptor engine relight in space, and executing a controlled entry, descent, and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Propulsion upgrades aim to improve engine-out capability after one vacuum Raptor was lost on Flight 12.
Additional test elements focus on heat shield performance. Six satellites carry cameras to image the tiles during flight, while white-painted tiles and upgraded attachments on flaps and the aft skirt will gather data for future reusability.
The FAA completed its mishap investigation into Flight 12 earlier this month, clearing the regulatory path.
This suborbital mission, the second with V3 vehicles, advances Starship toward operational missions, including potential crewed flights and support for NASA’s Artemis program. Success would mark significant progress in rapid reusability and satellite deployment from the massive system.
Elon Musk dismissed reports claiming SpaceX had placed a massive order for NVIDIA GPUs worth $52 billion. The denial came hours after Taiwanese media, citing unnamed industry sources, reported that SpaceX planned to acquire approximately 13,000 AI server racks, equating to roughly 1 million GB300 GPUs, from Foxconn.
Each rack was estimated at around $4 million, with deliveries potentially starting in late 2025.
The story suggested this would mark SpaceX’s first major foray into Foxconn-manufactured NVIDIA hardware, breaking from suppliers like Supermicro and Dell. Musk responded bluntly on X:
This is fake news
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2026
Despite the denial, the rumored scale aligns with SpaceX’s explosive growth in AI infrastructure. NVIDIA’s GB300 (successor to the GB200 NVL) racks deliver unprecedented performance for large-scale training and inference. A $52 billion commitment would dwarf most corporate AI budgets and provide the compute muscle needed for frontier models.
SpaceX already operates gigawatt-scale terrestrial clusters like Colossus in Memphis, Tennessee, and has monetized them aggressively through leasing deals.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Major customers include Anthropic (paying ~$1.25 billion monthly for 220,000+ GPUs), Google (~$920 million monthly for 110,000 GPUs), and Reflection AI. These arrangements are projected to generate tens of billions in annual revenue, far outpacing traditional SpaceX businesses.
Such an investment would fuel internal AI efforts, particularly Grok models under the integrated SpaceXAI division, while supporting ambitious orbital data center plans. SpaceX envisions launching thousands of AI-optimized satellites powered by solar energy and cooled in space, bypassing terrestrial power and land constraints.
This “Starmind” constellation could position the company as a leader in space-based computing.
SpaceX as an Emerging AI Powerhouse
Once primarily known for reusable rockets and Starlink satellite internet, SpaceX has transformed into a multifaceted AI player.
The 2026 acquisition of xAI integrated Grok development directly into the company. Starlink’s low-latency global network complements massive compute clusters, enabling efficient data flow for training and serving AI models.
Musk has long argued that AI scaling demands solutions beyond Earth, citing things like real estate and electricity limits on the ground.
While the Foxconn deal may not be in the cards, SpaceX’s trajectory is continuing on the path of blending aerospace engineering with hyperscale AI to dominate both launches and intelligence infrastructure.
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