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SpaceX transports fifth Starship prototype to the launch pad
SpaceX has at long last transported its fifth full-scale Starship prototype to a nearby launch pad, kicking off a week of busy pre-test preparations while the sixth rocket is already nipping at its heels.
Starship SN5’s move to the pad ends the longest gap between full-scale prototype testing since Starship Mk1 was destroyed in November 2019, a partially-expected failure that began a more than three-month period of infrastructure upgrades. The first upgraded Starship (SN1) rolled to the pad on February 25th, followed by SN3 on March 29th and SN4 on April 23rd, indicative of a fairly consistent monthly cadence of Starship production (and destruction).
Almost exactly two months after its predecessor headed from the factory to SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas launch facilities, Starship SN5 has taken its place on a brand new launch mount. The cause of that month-long delay is fairly simple. When Starship SN4 exploded on May 29th, it damaged the existing launch mount and some additional ground support equipment (GSE), forcing SpaceX to scrap the destroyed mount and build a new one from scratch. In a matter of weeks, SpaceX’s crack team of pad engineers and technicians have done exactly that.
While, judging from several sets of canceled road closure days, the new mount wasn’t built quite as quickly as someone high up in SpaceX would have hoped, the speed of the recovery from SN4’s destructive demise is still extremely impressive. For full-scale operations, SpaceX needs a strong metal structure capable of providing a Starship prototype the propellant, power, and communications links it needs to perform tests, as well as standing up to the weight of a full-loaded Starship (>1000 metric tons) and preventing the rocket from flying away during static Raptor engine tests. Additionally, the launch mount will eventually need to survive the fury of one and even three Raptor engines once Starships graduated to flight testing.
As of June 3rd, the replacement launch mount was partially-completed steel skeleton.
Barely two weeks later, SpaceX had flipped that skeleton, installed it on the actual launch mount table, finished all structural work, installed a conical frame to enable hydraulic ram testing to simulate Raptor engine thrust, and outfitted the mount with a wide variety of complex plumbing, wiring, and fixtures. The current design is about as simple as it can get but is still relatively complicated, with a wide range of systems that must work perfectly together throughout an equally wide range of temperatures and other stressful conditions.
Starship SN5’s installation on that replacement mount serves as a final confirmation that the new structure is more or less complete. Now SpaceX will be faced with the different challenges of christening the new launch mount and ensuring that it’s functioning as planned at the same time as Starship SN5 is attempting to do the same thing. The company also appears to have taken the previous launch mount’s demise as an opportunity to implement some minor design changes, all of which will also need to be tested and verified.
Delays are quite likely but Starship SN5 is currently scheduled to kick off its first test campaign as early as June 29th. SpaceX will likely begin with an ambient pressure test to check for leaks, followed by a cryogenic proof test with liquid nitrogen to confirm that SN5 performs as expected while subjected to the ultra-cold temperatures its liquid methane and oxygen propellant will be kept at. SN5 would then move into wet dress rehearsals (WDR) with live propellant and one or several static fires with a single Raptor engine. Finally, if that complex series of tests goes a little bit better than it did with SN4, Starship SN5 will become the first full-scale prototype to attempt controlled flight, hopping to at least 150m (~500 ft).
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Elon Musk
ARK’s SpaceX IPO Guide makes a compelling case on why $1.75T may not be the ceiling
ARK Invest breaks down six reasons SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO valuation may be justified.
ARK Invest, which holds SpaceX as its largest Venture Fund position at 17% of net assets, has published a detailed investor guide to why a SpaceX IPO may be grounded in a $1.75 trillion target valuation.
The financial case starts with Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, which has surpassed 10 million active subscribers globally as of early 2026, with 2026 revenue projected to exceed $20 billion. ARK’s research puts the total satellite connectivity market opportunity at roughly $160 billion annually at scale, and Starlink is adding customers faster than any telecom network in history. That growth alone would justify a substantial valuation.
Additionally, ARK notes that SpaceX has reduced the cost per kilogram to orbit from roughly $15,600 in 2008 to under $1,000 today through reusable Falcon 9 hardware. A fully operational Starship targeting sub-$100 per kilogram would represent a significant cost decline and open markets that do not currently exist. SpaceX executed a staggering 165 missions in 2025 and now accounts for approximately 85% of all global orbital launches. That infrastructure position took decades to build and would be nearly impossible to replicate at comparable cost.
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The February 2026 merger with xAI added a layer to the valuation that straightforward financial models struggle to capture. ARK argues that at sub-$100 launch costs, orbital data centers could deliver compute roughly 25% cheaper than ground-based alternatives, without power grid delays, permitting friction, or land constraints. Musk has stated a goal of deploying 100 gigawatts of AI computing capacity per year from orbit.
The $1.75 trillion figure itself is not a conventional earnings multiple. At roughly 95x trailing revenue, it prices in Starlink’s adoption curve, Starship’s cost trajectory, and the orbital compute thesis together. The public S-1 prospectus, due at least 15 days before the June roadshow, will give investors their first complete look at the financials to test those assumptions. ARK’s position is that the track record earns the benefit of the doubt. Fully reusable rockets were considered unrealistic for years. Starlink was considered financially unviable. Both happened on timelines that surprised skeptics.
Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
ARK’s SpaceX IPO Guide makes a compelling case on why $1.75T may not be the ceiling
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
