News
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket to launch spy satellites from California next month
The US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) says that SpaceX’s first West Coast launch of 2022 is scheduled no earlier than (NET) 8:37 am PST (16:37 UTC), February 2nd.
Surprisingly, the announcement is identical to a launch target that the US Space Systems Command (SSC) put forth as far back as September 7th, 2021, meaning that the NRO’s NROL-87 mission hasn’t slipped a single day in more than four months. On the same list of upcoming military launches, Falcon Heavy’s USSF-44 mission was targeted for October 9th – now NET March 2022 due to payload issues – and Atlas V’s STP-3 launch – planned for November 22nd – actually launched on December 7th. It’s not common for a modern US military spacecraft to make it more than a few months without significant delays – let alone no delay at all.
NROL-87 will also continue an unprecedented string of SpaceX launches that began in the last month or two of 2021. Aside from being SpaceX’s first West Coast launch this year, NROL-87 is the sixth Falcon 9 launch scheduled in the first five weeks of 2022. Even more significantly, NROL-87 could be SpaceX’s 11th Falcon 9 launch in two months or its 14th launch in three months.
In other words, SpaceX is on track to demonstrate the ability to launch anywhere from 56 to 66 times annually by actually sustaining that cadence for two or even three months in a row. In July 2020, SpaceX completed a new environmental assessment of its two East Coast launch pads with the FAA, revealing plans and permission for as many as 64 Falcon launches per year in 2022 and up to 70 from 2023 onward. However, it’s one thing to claim or plan for 60-70 launches per year but another thing entirely to actually demonstrate the ability to achieve those numbers over multiple months.
Prior to 2021, the most SpaceX had ever launched in a two-month period was eight times at the end of 2020. In 2021, SpaceX managed to launch 20 times in just the first half of the year – demonstrating an annual cadence of 40 launches per year if repeated in H2 2021. However, Starlink satellite production ran into major hurdles as SpaceX grappled with semiconductor shortages and attempted to move from V1.0 to a new V1.5 design. As a result, SpaceX only launched three times in Q3 and skipped July and October entirely.
However, Starlink production appeared to recover in Q4 and SpaceX managed to launch another eight times in the last two months of 2021. More importantly, SpaceX actually launched five times in December 2021 and six times between November 24th and December 21st – less than four weeks. Heading into 2022, SpaceX has shown no signs of slowing down. On January 4th, a statement from the US Space Force implied that SpaceX was aiming for five Falcon 9 launches in the first month of 2022. Two weeks later, SpaceX has completed three Falcon 9 launches and has two more scheduled on January 27th and 29th. NROL-87 will kick off February on the 2nd and, barring delays, could be SpaceX’s 11th launch since December 2nd.
Unofficial manifests suggest that SpaceX has as many as 40 commercial launches tentatively scheduled in 2022, one of which has been completed. In H1 2021, SpaceX further demonstrated the ability to build and launch approximately 1800 Starlink satellites (30 launches worth) in a single year. Of course, issues can and will arise and delays are the norm in spaceflight, so there’s a good chance SpaceX will have slow months where customer and Starlink missions both run into delays. Nonetheless, all evidence currently available suggests that SpaceX could smash its annual launch record (31 in 2021) with anywhere from 40 to 60+ launches in 2022.
-
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
