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SpaceX prioritizes Starship test flights, pauses plans for floating launch pads
President and COO Gwynne Shotwell says that SpaceX has temporarily abandoned plans for floating Starship launch platforms to ensure it’s fully focused on gaining flight experience with the next-generation rocket.
On February 13th, a NASASpaceflight.com forum member reported that a pair of oil rigs were scheduled to leave a Mississippi port for an unknown destination. At one point, those oil rigs – christened Deimos and Phobos after Mars’ moons – were owned by SpaceX. In mid-2020, SpaceX bought the former half-billion-dollar oil rigs for just $7 million. Around the same time, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that SpaceX was “building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth.”
SpaceX’s oil rig purchase was publicly uncovered in January 2021. Since then, however, the company has done very little to Phobos or Deimos. Phobos’ deck was half-cleared in fitful bursts of work, but Deimos was left almost untouched. Now, according to SpaceNews, SpaceX’s second in command says the company sold Phobos and Deimos and has paused work on offshore Starship launch platforms.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
In August 2021, Musk added some additional insight, revealing that the platforms were not a priority and that the only visible work done was the result of SpaceX hiring third parties to clear Phobos’ deck. Ultimately, the project may have been a false start. Speaking in February 2023, Shotwell told reporters that while SpaceX had sold the rigs, she was still confident that “sea-based [launch] platforms” would become a crucial asset in the future.
Perhaps even exceeding CEO Elon Musk’s infamously lofty ambitions, Shotwell said that SpaceX has “designed Starship to be as much like aircraft operations as we possibly can get” in the hopes of enabling “dozens of launches a day, if not hundreds of launches a day.” No rocket family in history has launched more than 61 times in one calendar year, making Shotwell’s Starship cadence target hundreds or even thousands of times more ambitious than a 1980s rocket record that’s still standing four decades later.
It’s unclear if the FAA’s stringent environmental reviews would ever allow SpaceX to get close to that kind of launch cadence using pads built on US soil. SpaceX fought long and hard to receive approval for up to five orbital Starship launches per year out of Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX has also received approval [PDF] for up to 24 Starship launches per year out of a NASA Kennedy Space Center pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. And SpaceX is permitted to launch [PDF] up to 70 much smaller Falcon rockets per year from its two existing Cape Canaveral pads.
“Dozens” to “hundreds” of Starship launches per day would be two or three orders of magnitude beyond the highest cadences the FAA has ever permitted. Shotwell’s continued interest in floating platforms is thus unsurprising, as they may be the only way SpaceX can realistically achieve airline-like Starship operations while still coexisting with US regulators.
According to SpaceNews, Shotwell said that SpaceX “really need[s] to fly [Starship] to understand it – to get to know this machine – and then we’ll figure out how we’re going to launch it.” That disciplined focus could be just the thing the Starship program needs. More than eighteen months after SpaceX first fully stacked a two-stage Starship, the rocket still hasn’t attempted an orbital launch. SpaceX has, nonetheless, put a vast amount of money and effort into building, expanding, and optimizing factories and launch facilities for Starship, an orbital rocket that has yet to even partially demonstrate itself.
In essence, SpaceX has made huge gambles on the assumption that a version of Starship mostly resembling what the company is building today will be highly successful, reusable, and reliable. SpaceX’s success with Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon, and suborbital Starship testing suggests that it will ultimately be successful, in time. Nonetheless, Shotwell’s apparent desire to conduct orbital Starship launches and gather data before making major investments in new infrastructure (and, hopefully, big design changes and “optimizations”) is a welcome change of pace. Shotwell reportedly assumed oversight of Starbase and Starship in late 2022.
Ferrari’s first electric vehicle, the Luce, is fully sold out for 2027, according to CEO Benedetto Vigna.
Presenting third-quarter results, he stated: “Everything we plan to sell next year is already fully allocated. Client test drives, scheduled for next year, will help further boost demand. We have no critical issues, neither on manufacturing nor on the demand side. Obviously, the car is more complex because it has many new parts and many new technologies.”
First customer deliveries are expected before the end of 2026, with the model already commanding waitlists despite a turbulent debut.
The Luce is a five-seat, four-door liftback saloon—the longest Ferrari ever produced—powered by four electric motors producing approximately 1,035 horsepower.
It features an 800-volt architecture, a 122-kWh battery, a claimed WLTP range of around 329 miles, 0-62 mph acceleration in 2.5 seconds, and a starting price near €550,000 in Europe (roughly $560,800–$615,000 in the U.S. depending on configuration).
Developed in collaboration with Jony Ive and Marc Newson’s LoveFrom studio alongside Ferrari’s own Centro Stile, it represents a deliberate departure from the brand’s traditional mid-engine sports cars toward a more spacious, grand-touring format.
Its exterior has proven deeply polarizing. Unveiled in Rome in May 2026, the design features smooth, sweeping surfaces, a large glass roof, and restrained detailing that critics described as bland, generic, or more reminiscent of an Apple product or mass-market EV than a Ferrari.
Ferrari unveils its Luce EV, and its reception has been a disaster
Online reactions included memes comparing it to a Nissan Leaf or Polestar, while former Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo publicly warned of “the destruction of a myth” and suggested the prancing horse logo be removed. Italian politicians and longtime owners joined the chorus of disappointment, and Ferrari’s shares dropped roughly 8% in a single day, erasing billions in market value.
Design experts noted the absence of the brand’s signature tension, aggression, and emotional drama.
Yet the controversy has not translated into weak demand among the ultra-wealthy clientele who actually buy Ferraris. Production volumes remain tightly limited, as reports suggest fewer than 500 units in the current year and a longer-term pace of roughly 600 annually through 2030, preserving exclusivity.
One early chassis sold for $40 million at auction. Vigna has indicated that seeing the car in person, along with upcoming client test drives, is expected to strengthen rather than weaken interest. Ferrari aims for fully electric models to comprise 20 percent of its lineup by 2030, with a second EV now delayed to 2028.
For a brand defined by scarcity and desirability, the Luce’s sell-out status suggests that among those who can afford it, the polarizing design has not proven to be a commercial liability.
Tesla and SpaceX shares fell on Wednesday after Democrats swept both chambers of Congress. The decline stood out as broader market securities recovered and turned positive, while both of Musk’s publicly traded companies lagged.
CEO Elon Musk already joked about the unsuccessful campaigning for the Republicans, but now the new party will make pretty drastic changes to how it handles Tesla and SpaceX, and those companies will adjust their outlook.
Let’s take a deeper look.
Tesla ($TSLA)
Tesla shares traded lower during the regular session after Democrats secured both the House and Senate. The stock was down 2.32 percent at around 1:45 p.m. on the East Coast, trading at around $389.30.
The pressure is tied to more than the raw scale of Musk’s political spending, estimated at $450–474 million this cycle with roughly $224 million directed at Texas. In that state, Tesla now faces a Democratic governor and a Democratic senator after Gina Hinojosa unseated Greg Abbott and James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton.
The Austin Gigafactory, Robotaxi pilot programs in multiple Texas cities, and any related AI compute expansion sit under a new state executive who campaigned against certain corporate subsidies and floated a moratorium on new data-center construction.
Federally, Democratic control of key committees opens the door to deeper examination of Tesla’s autonomous-driving safety record, federal energy-storage and manufacturing incentives, and the national-security implications of any combination with SpaceX.
Investors are also weighing whether the company’s historically close alignment with the prior Republican leadership will invite slower permitting, additional hearings, or tighter rules on Full Self-Driving deployment.
For Tesla, the political shift adds near-term friction around state permitting and federal regulatory approvals for autonomy and energy storage. A potential merger with SpaceX may face slower review even if it proceeds.
Core growth drivers such as vehicle deliveries, energy deployments, and robotaxi rollout remain intact, yet the stock now carries a higher political-risk premium that could weigh on valuation until the company demonstrates workable relationships with the new Texas leadership and congressional majorities.
SpaceX ($SPCX)
SpaceX shares also declined in live trading on November 4 following the Democratic midterm sweep. The stock traded at $134.97, down 4.49 percent. The drop occurred even as broader indexes stabilized, highlighting a company-specific reaction to the election outcome.
Musk’s large contributions, concentrated in Texas races that both companies lost, place SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility and headquarters under a new Democratic governor.
At the federal level, Democratic control of Congress enables greater scrutiny of NASA, the Department of Defense, and other contracts that support a meaningful share of revenue, along with reviews of Starlink national-security uses and any Tesla merger. Analysts have noted that empowered committees can hold hearings and request documents on these relationships.
For SpaceX, the results raise the risk of delayed contract awards, higher compliance costs, and tighter constraints on AI and satellite infrastructure expansion, particularly in Texas where a data-center moratorium has been discussed.
A merger with Tesla could encounter political friction that slows integration of launch, connectivity, and autonomy capabilities.
While Starlink growth and launch cadence continue as primary drivers, the company faces a more contested path for federal funding and state-level operations, requiring management to rebuild ties with the new congressional majorities and Texas leadership to limit the overhang.
Tesla’s new vehicle registrations in Germany rose sharply in October, nearly quadrupling from the same month a year earlier. That’s according to data from the KBA, Germany’s federal motor transport authority.
The KBA reported 2,932 Tesla vehicles registered in October, a 290.9 percent year-over-year- increase. For the first ten months of the year, Tesla’s cumulative registrations reached 47,742 units. This number is up 206.1 percent compared with the January-October period of 2025. These gains occurred against a backdrop of strong overall growth in the BEV sector as a whole.
Germany registered 94,086 new BEVs in October, a 79.5 percent rise that brought the BEV share of the passenger car market to 37 percent of the 254,492 total cars registered that month.
🇩🇪 Tesla’s new registrations in Germany nearly quadrupled in October, according to KBA data.
October: 2,932 units, +290.9% YoY Jan–Oct: 47,742 units, +206.1%
Germany’s overall BEV market grew 79.5% to 94,086 units last month. https://t.co/GMwNqsFAOC
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 4, 2026
Despite the percentage surge, Tesla’s absolute numbers left it with a 1.2 percent share of all new car registrations for October. Chinese competitors did record higher volumes, as BYD registered 5,173 vehicles, a 2 percent share, Leapmotor with 3,661 cars, which equates to 1.4 percent, and Xpeng had a 0.5 percent share.
Year-to-date through October, BYD edged ahead of Tesla with 47,961 registrations versus Tesla’s 47,742.
The October results follow a notably strong September for Tesla in Germany, when it registered 12,552 vehicles, an increase of roughly 269 percent year-over-year and one of its strongest monthly totals on record in the country. That month, the Model Y led all EVs and ranked among the top-selling vehicles of any powertrain.
The figures form part of a broader recovery in Tesla’s European registrations after an extended period of softer demand. While monthly volumes remain subject to typical quarter-end patterns and competitive pressure from both established European brands and rapidly expanding Chinese manufacturers, the year-to-date growth indicates improved traction in Europe’s largest car market.
Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg continues to supply the region, positioning the company to capture a share of the expanding German BEV market as overall EV adoptions looks to be accelerating.
Ferrari Luce sold out for 2027 after design controversy
Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX decline after Democratic Midterm sweep
