SpaceX
SpaceX’s first Falcon 9 Block 5 booster casualty battered but still intact in aerial photos
Shortly after successfully sending a reused Cargo Dragon spacecraft on its way towards the International Space Station (ISS), SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 booster B1050 experienced an anomaly with its grid fins during a planned landing, resulting in a shockingly soft (but unintentional) landing just off the Florida coast.
By some minor miracle, the drastically off-nominal loads experienced by the booster during its unintended departure from controlled flight somehow did not rise to the bar of structural failure. Nevertheless, now floating a handful of miles east of Port Canaveral’s mouth, B1050 did not make it through the ordeal unscathed.
https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/1070742919986991107
A little more than 24 hours after the booster found itself floating sideways in the Atlantic Ocean, B1050 had floated a solid ten miles south of its original position into waters and airspace that no longer fell under the purview of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, technically a military outpost. As the captains of tugboat Eagle and SpaceX support vessel GO Quest discussed the logistics of returning the booster to port with the local harbormaster and US Coast Guard, Teslarati photographer Tom Cross chartered a local helicopter to get a slightly better view of the waterlogged rocket and its ad-hoc recovery operations.
A casualty of war (with the air)
Second only to the fact that the booster appears to be in disproportionately good shape considering the circumstances, by far the most noteworthy feature of the newest addition to SpaceX’s marine fleet is the sheer damage suffered by B1050’s interstage, the black carbon fiber composite structure that topsFalcon 9 Block 5 boosters and hosts its grid fins and stage separation mechanism.
Revealed from an aerial perspective, it almost looks as if one side of the composite cylinder was smashed with a giant hammer, tearing off at least 20% of the entire interstage – including one of four titanium grid fins – while leaving another large segment hanging on by only partially-figurative carbon fiber threads.
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- Falcon 9 B1050 is seen here shortly before launch with an intact interstage. (Tom Cross)
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- B1050 viewed from Cocoa Beach. (Tom Cross)
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- Falcon 9 B1050’s interstage, or what’s left of it. (Tom Cross)
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- RIP grid fin. (Tom Cross)
It’s not 100% clear why B1050’s interstage was so readily destroyed but a narrative can certainly be drawn from the current public record. After its grid fins lost hydraulic power and became stuck at an extreme angle, B1050 almost immediately lost control and began rapidly and quite brutally spinning and flailing, tossed around as it hurtled through the air at supersonic speeds. Being a predominately smooth cylinder, Falcon 9’s first stage is inherently prone to rotation in the presence of high-velocity air currents, which is why its grid fins are an absolute necessity for maintaining control authority during in-atmosphere “flights”.
Engines stabilized rocket spin just in time, enabling an intact landing in water! Ships en route to rescue Falcon. pic.twitter.com/O3h8eCgGJ7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 5, 2018
In a show that will turn the stomach of anyone familiar with a rocket’s typically narrow load tolerances, Falcon 9 B1050 experienced extreme aerodynamic stresses during the worst of its uncontrolled tumble, to the extent that the entire booster and interstage can be seen visibly twisting at least 5 degrees left and right from the perspective of an onboard camera. In the video above, focus on the center of Falcon 9’s grid fins during the first and last 5-10 seconds to properly visualize the extreme forces at play.
It might look fairly innocent to the untrained eye, but keep in mind that Falcon 9’s interstage is no more than a couple of inches thick and is absolutely massive, stretching 3.7m (~12 ft) in diameter. Perhaps even more importantly, the damage to the interstage has almost without a doubt rendered it unusable from the perspective of SpaceX’s established methods of safely moving and manipulating Falcon 9 boosters.
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- Technicians attach an older interstage-grabber to lift B1046 after its first recovery. (Tom Cross)
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- One of SpaceX’s East Coast interstage jigs is pictured here atop B1049. (Tom Cross)
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- A Falcon 9 Block 5 booster bares its interstage and pusher rod, offering a perfect illustration of its scale. (Bloomberg)
All of those methods rely on adapters that attach to the interstage to lift the rocket vertically or support part of its ~30-ton dry mass horizontally. Lacking a sound interstage, it’s now entirely unclear how SpaceX might go about getting B1050 onto land without damaging it further. In simpler terms, this bodes very, very badly for any plans to safely reuse B1050 in the near (or distant) future. After suffering loads that severely weakened and ultimately tore its interstage to pieces, it’s reasonable to assume that the rest of the rocket’s lithium-aluminum propellant tanks experienced stresses that are at least roughly comparable.
If that’s the case, perhaps the only real hope for B1050’s ‘reuse’ will be the recovery of certain subcomponents and miscellaneous parts that may have made it through the ordeal unscathed or with only minor damage. The three remaining titanium grid fins are a guaranteed recovery, while COPVs, cold gas thrusters, avionics boxes, and maybe even some of its nine Merlin 1D engines could be salvageable with some level of refurbishment.
In the meantime, the tentative plan right now is to two B1050 into Port Canaveral sometime after dawn tomorrow, either ending up at drone ship OCISLY’s berth or another less-developed section of the port.
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
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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