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SpaceX to launch Crew Dragon and Starlink satellites less than 48 hours apart
After launching just once in the last ten weeks, SpaceX appears to be set to return to H1 2021 stride and has scheduled the launches of a historic all-private Crew Dragon mission and the first batch of laser-linked Starlink ‘V1.5’ satellites less than 48 hours apart.
First up, SpaceX is on track for its first dedicated Starlink launch in almost four months (~16 weeks) – this time carrying upgraded V1.5 spacecraft – as early as 8:55 pm PDT, Monday, September 13th (03:55 UTC 14 Sept). Aside from quite possibly marking the last time ever that SpaceX goes 3+ months without a Starlink launch, the “Starlink 2-1” mission will be the company’s first West Coast launch in ten months and first West Coast Starlink launch ever.
As few as ~44 hours later, SpaceX is now fully ready to launch both Dragon’s and the world’s first crew of all-private astronauts into the highest orbit reached by humans since 2009 no earlier than 8:05 pm EDT, Wednesday, September 15th (00:05 UTC 16 Sept). Known as Inspiration4, there is a real chance that the mission could mark a turning point for the future of true orbital space tourism and will be the first of at least four or five private Crew Dragon launches scheduled in the next few years.
Both missions will mark important technical milestones in their own right. As previously discussed on Teslarati, Inspiration4 will launch on a twice-flown Falcon 9 booster and with a Dragon space capsule that was in orbit less than five months prior, setting new records for crewed booster reuse and orbital space capsule turnaround. Its all-private four astronaut crew (also a first in spaceflight history) will reach altitudes as high as 575 km (357 mi) – the highest humans have traveled since 2009 and the seventh-highest crewed Earth orbit spaceflight of all time.

On the opposite side of the United States, SpaceX is also gearing up for the dedicated launch of a batch of 51 ‘Starlink V1.5’ satellites. Known as Starlink 2-1 or Starlink Group 2-1, the mission will mark the start of a new ‘shell’ of SpaceX’s low Earth orbit (LEO) Starlink constellation, the first dedicated Starlink launch since May 26th, the first dedicated Starlink launch with laser-linked spacecraft, and SpaceX’s first West Coast launch since November 2020. Additionally, Starlink 2-1 will launch on a nine-flight Falcon 9 booster – the second time a SpaceX rocket has completed ten orbital-class launches and landings if all goes to plan.
Originally scheduled to launch as early as July, SpaceX is believed to have delayed Starlink 2-1 until the design and production of upgraded V1.5 satellites were ready to support the 51-satellite launch. Until SpaceX or its CEO provide more information, all that’s known about the new V1.5 design is that its main focus was the addition of inter-satellite optical links (laser links). Those ‘space lasers’ are designed to allow Starlink satellites to route communications themselves, enabling potentially unbeatable latency, internet coverage over oceans and extremely sparse regions, and a network that doesn’t need line-of-sight ground stations to function.

Technically, SpaceX has already launched 13 Starlink satellites with laser links and has been testing those spacecraft for the last 2-9 months, hopefully meaning that the V1.5 satellites SpaceX launches later today will be more reliable than their first-of-their-kind Starlink V0.9 and V1.0 cousins. Tune in at SpaceX.com around 8:40 pm PDT (03:40 UTC) to catch the company’s live Starlink 2-1 webcast.
Elon Musk
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks hit a new stage, and one hurdle remains
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks are reportedly advancing, and a deal could arrive by December.
Tesla and SpaceX are moving closer to a combination, with a deal announcement possible as soon as December, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The companies have also discussed a scenario in which the announcement slips into early 2027.
Boards and advisers on both sides are now working through the terms of the deal and the governance structure of the combined company, according to the report. One open item is how many SpaceX shares Tesla investors would receive. Bloomberg had previously reported that the two companies were aiming to announce a deal in the first half of next year and close it before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, so a December announcement would pull that schedule forward by months.
Tesla shares rose as much as 1.9% to $398.35 after the report, while SpaceX gained 0.6% to $140.63. SpaceX carries a market value of about $1.9 trillion following its June IPO, and Tesla is valued at about $1.55 trillion, which would make a combination the largest corporate deal on record. Neither company responded to requests for comment.
The talks became official on October 20, when Elon Musk said on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call that both companies had formed special committees of independent directors to study a merger, as Teslarati reported. Musk said he could not take part because he is “a conflicted party” and called the process “an odd kabuki dance.” He also noted that Tesla would need approval from 50 percent of all outstanding shares, a bar the company missed in 2025 when a board declassification proposal won support from only 39.4 percent.
China remains the biggest structural problem. Bloomberg’s sources said the companies still need to work out how to isolate Tesla’s large and profitable manufacturing business in China from SpaceX’s U.S. government and defense contracts. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta described those two factors last month as “key dynamics that are at odds with each other” for regulatory and shareholder approval. Musk has repeatedly said Tesla has no plans to separate its China business, a position he restated in August after ARK Invest predicted a merger announcement before the end of the year.
Washington adds another layer. Democrats took control of Congress in this month’s midterms and have pledged to investigate Musk’s business and political activities, which could bring added scrutiny to a deal involving one of the Pentagon’s most important launch and satellite contractors.
The report also lands three weeks before Tesla’s December 3 annual meeting at Giga Texas. That ballot has only three items, led by the re-election of Musk, board chair Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel, and includes no merger proposal. Any deal announced in December would likely require a separate special meeting for Tesla shareholders to vote on it.
The two companies already share a growing list of projects, including the Terafab semiconductor plant in Texas. Tesla’s next generation Roadster, which uses cold gas thrusters built on SpaceX hardware, turned up on display at SpaceX headquarters last month and has become one of the clearest public examples of that overlap.
News
SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
SpaceX puts a $50 billion price on its Arizona supercompute campus ahead of December’s hearing.
SpaceX has put a price tag on the supercomputer campus it wants to build in the southern Arizona desert. In a statement Thursday, the company said it is pursuing a roughly $50 billion supercompute campus in Cochise County, about 80 miles east of Tucson. Together with a separate facility planned at Starbase, Texas, the two projects add up to more than $74 billion in planned investment.
The Arizona figure had not been disclosed before. SpaceX’s involvement only became public on November 4, when company representatives hosted a packed town hall at Cochise Elementary School for an application filed under the name Tombstone Resources LLC. A SpaceX representative told residents the filing used another name because putting SpaceX on it “draws attention” from outside the county, local station KVOA reported.
The application describes a 747-acre site near the Willcox Playa with up to nine buildings of about 493,000 square feet each. SpaceX plans to bring the campus online in four phases of roughly 1.5 GW, reaching 6 GW at full build, backed by a 24 GWh battery system and about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades. At that size, it would draw about 2.5 times more power than every data center in Maricopa County combined, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.
SpaceX says the project will create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, and that it could cut electricity bills for members of the local cooperatives by up to 20 percent. The campus would use dry cooling with no industrial groundwater use. Its application estimates ongoing water needs of 7 to 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 homes consume.
Power is the bigger question. The site sits next to the Apache Generating Station, a coal and natural gas plant with about 1 GW of capacity that had been slated to retire by 2028. SpaceX told residents its investment could expand the station to more than 6 GW.
Local opposition is organized. A petition asking the county to deny the permit has gathered about 2,400 signatures, and the nearby playa is a landing spot for federally protected sandhill cranes, which SpaceX says its design accounts for. The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, with written comments due November 27. If approved, construction could start in March 2027.
The Texas project faces a vote the same day. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement for SpaceX’s $24 billion gas plant and supercompute facility at its own December 9 hearing, as Teslarati reported. SpaceX said Thursday the Starbase site has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs, and it committed $220 million to Brownsville’s water and wastewater systems, $40 million of which has been paid.
Both campuses would expand a footprint still centered on the Memphis area, where SpaceX’s Colossus data centers run largely on gas turbines and the company won a permit for a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi earlier this year. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute. The Arizona campus alone, at full build, would be more than three times that size.
Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.