SpaceX
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy to ignite all 27 Merlin engines in early morning test
SpaceX is set to take another stab at the first integrated static fire test of Falcon Heavy Block 5 rocket, a milestone that will open the doors for its commercial launch debut just a handful of days later.
The window for the second Falcon Heavy’s static fire test will open at
If all goes well during these relatively routine procedures, SpaceX can be expected to announce a date for Falcon Heavy’s second-ever launch, likely no sooner than 4-5 days after the static fire is completed. In other words, a flawless performance tomorrow could permit a launch date as early as April 9-10. Launching fewer than four days after completing static fire testing is rare even for Falcon 9, which has the luxury of far less complexity (and data produced) relative to Falcon Heavy, which has only flown once and
Three months after Falcon Heavy’s February 2018 debut, SpaceX debuted Falcon 9 in its upgraded Block 5 configuration, featuring widespread changes to avionics, software, structures, thermal protection, and even uprated thrust for its Merlin engines. Falcon Heavy Flight 1 was comprised of Block 2 and Block 3 variants of the Falcon 9’s umbrella V1.2 Full Thrust configuration, which debuted in December 2015. Both side boosters – Block 2s – were flight-proven and had previously launched in 2016, while the rocket’s heavily modified center core was effectively a new version of Falcon 9 based on Block 3 hardware.
One of the biggest goals of Block 5 / Version 6 is ease of reusability. In
And we have
Block 5 has improved payload to orbit. Improved redundancy. Improved reliability. It’s really better in every way than Block 4. I’m really proud of the SpaceX team for the design.
– SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, May 2018
A different different rocket
Given just how extensive the changes made with Block 5 are, Falcon Heavy Flight 2 is drastically different than its sole predecessor, emphasized by the 13+ months SpaceX has taken to go from Flight 1 to Flight 2. Had SpaceX been able to successfully recover Falcon Heavy’s first center core (B1033) after launch, its quite likely that the company would have attempted to refly the rocket’s three landed boosters a bit sooner than April 2019, but the booster’s failed landing threw a bit of a wrench in the production plan.
After intentionally expending almost a dozen recoverable Block 3 and 4 Falcon 9 boosters in 2017 and 2018, SpaceX’s fleet of flightworthy cores had been reduced to a tiny handful. Interrupting Falcon 9 Block 5’s production ramp would have likely become a bottleneck for 2018’s launch cadence, and may well have contributed to SpaceX falling short from its planned 30 and then 24 launches last year with a still-impressive 21. Building an entirely new Falcon Heavy center core was simply not a priority as SpaceX required all production hands on deck to build enough Block 5 boosters to avoid major launch delays.
As a result, SpaceX delayed the production of the first Falcon Heavy Block 5 center core by ~6 months and ~8 boosters, shipping the rocket – presumed to be B1055 – to McGregor, Texas for static fire acceptance testing in Q4 2018. The center core arrived in Florida in mid-February 2019, following both side cores and a payload fairing.
Ultimately, SpaceX is likely to conduct Falcon Heavy’s first commercial launch with about as much caution as could be observed during the unique launches of SSO-A (the first triple-
Stay tuned for an official SpaceX confirmation of Falcon Heavy’s second integrated static fire, as well as new launch date.
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Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.
It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.
Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.
The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.
Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.
The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.
SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.
There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.
The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.
Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites
It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.
SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history
Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.
Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.
SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.
The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.
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