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Why does SpaceX market space better than NASA?
NASA may be truly making progress, but when compared to SpaceX, it seems more like thus far, they just have a guitar amp that “goes to 11”.
Unless you live under a rock (where exactly are these rocks, anyhow?), you’ve heard the news that SpaceX completed the 4th successful first stage landing of its Falcon 9 rocket after launching to a very high orbit. This was the third one in a row to land on an oceangoing droneship, setting the event up for a pathway to becoming routine business.
Waiting for Falcon 9 at the Park
I was in Florida last week and had the opportunity to go to Jetty Park in Cape Canaveral to watch the launch on its first scheduled date of Thursday, May 26th.
Unfortunately, I had to catch a flight before the next launch window opened after the first one was scrubbed, and I ended up catching the live stream from home on Friday; however, I still don’t regret having rearranged my flights to be there Thursday. Seeing the enthusiasm for the launch first-hand isn’t something I could have fully appreciated from a webcast.
Cars were piled in all over the park by the time the original launch time arrived. People were under sun shades, having picnics, and there were even a few tailgaters – an awesome concept in itself. The only damper is the inability to guarantee the launch will actually happen as scheduled, but since when has that impeded a viable tailgating excuse?
I’m not sure whether this type of activity happens for all launches, but it made me think about some of the discussions and my observations from earlier in the week.
SpaceX at the Space Congress
I also attended the first day’s events for the 44th Space Congress wherein commercial space technology was the primary topic. Bob Cabana, former space shuttle astronaut and current director of the John F. Kennedy Space Center, was the keynote speaker to kick off the event.
While taking questions, an audience member mentioned that her neighbor thought NASA had been “shut down”, and more audience members concurred that they’d had similar discussions with others. The purpose of the question was to gather Cabana’s opinion on why people weren’t more aware of NASA’s activities, but he didn’t entirely have an answer. I later overheard him speaking to someone else about how they were doing so many “great things” and didn’t understand why people weren’t more aware of them. As a SpaceX enthusiast, of course, I found the problem amusing. I mean, rockets involve at least 99 problems, but SpaceX does not have one with publicity. [Sorry, I had to.]
However, I still questioned why SpaceX was having an awareness impact on space travel that NASA, in all its social media, outreach efforts, and resources couldn’t seem to mirror. Was it that the technology SpaceX was developing more reminiscent of Hollywood and science fiction? Was it all just better marketing overall? Better video music?
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Cue the First Panel
After more questions and a short break, the panel on the progress being made in NASA’s Commercial Crew program began with guests Danom Buck from Boeing and Benji Reed from SpaceX.
Boeing’s Commercial Crew capsule, CST-100 Starliner. Credit: BLM Nevada under CC by 2.0.
The Commercial Crew program involves the development of the next generation of transport technology for human space travel to and from the International Space Station (and eventually beyond). Or in other words, it’s the program to get America launching people from American soil again rather than buying rocket seats from the Russians.
The overall panel discussion was interesting, but I will admit that I kept waiting for Boeing to get to the “good” part. 
As a member of the general public, my interpretation of their technology was that it was a reworked version of the capsules used on the Apollo program and not much else. Their landing system consisted of high-speed-impact capable air bags versus SpaceX’s propulsive landing, i.e., “hovering”, Dragon capsule.
While I understand that there are significant improvements in the works with Boeing’s craft, I know I’m not the only one to be unmoved by the lack of apparent novelty in the landing system, particularly because I had recently seen this video of Elon Musk responding to an MIT student’s question comparing SpaceX’s system to Boeing’s:
https://youtu.be/PULkWGHeIQQ?t=48m7s
I kept waiting for the right question to break down the professionalism between the two company representatives (“Fight! Fight! Fight!”), but alas, nothing of the sort happened. I wasn’t entirely convinced that Danum was very excited about Boeing’s technology, either. Maybe I wasn’t being fair to Boeing. After all, Benji’s presentation began with this familiar SpaceX recap video:
Crossover Landing Technology Between Dragon and Falcon 9
Credit: SpaceX
I did get a chance to ask Benji my own question wherein I inquired about how much technology crosses over between the Dragon capsule’s propulsive landing system and the Falcon 9’s first stage landing system. I was curious whether it was mostly just software sharing since landing the crafts were likely to use similar calculations, but the equipment involved was too different to be relatable.
His response consisted of an explanation about how the development environment at SpaceX is set up to encourage collaboration among systems engineers (open floor layout, connected teams next to one another). Implied answer: He either wasn’t sure specifically but assumed there was some crossover, or he knew some specifics, but wasn’t going to give them for one reason or another. Or perhaps it was some mix of the two.
Cue Lunch and the Next Panel
The speaker during lunch was Col. Eric Krystkowiak, the 45th Space Wing Launch Group Commander. The 45th Space Wing Launch Group is located at Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida where the May 27th Falcon 9 lifted off from. The first Falcon 9 ground landing also took place there, something Col. Krystkowiak spoke about during his presentation: “They’re thinking…still can’t believe the Air Force let us do that.”
The Air Force’s customer service considerations.
As a lifelong Air Force brat, I may have been partial in my reception to the talk due to the familiar social gathering “zone” it reminded me of.
The presentation format and overall humor were very good (isn’t anything that quotes Seinfeld?), and although they have to remain impartial as government representatives, it certainly felt as though the Air Force genuinely liked the SpaceX team and was leaning towards their business model to support in their commercial spaceflight customer service role moving forward. Perhaps they just appreciate SpaceX’s wherewithal and determination to push through bureaucracy to really enable innovation.
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Oh, and I think someone asked about the lawsuit SpaceX filed against the Air Force, but I don’t remember the specifics of either the question or the answer. Hey, it was lunch time!
The Journey Ends
Jumping forward again to the original Thursday launch date, once it was clear the launch was not happening before my flight home (shout out to the very nice lady listening to the AM radio updates), I had to book it to the airport. Then, ironically, it turned out my Uber driver had spent seventeen years as a defense contractor with Raytheon working on satellite technologies.
It really was a space kind of week!
Space geek that I am, I took the opportunity to have him provide first hand insight into what that type of job was like. I was particularly interested in why contract work like that always went over time and over budget. His answer was that essentially, when NASA approaches its contractors, they are asking for things to be done that have never been done before, thus it’s hard to predict exactly what the future will hold as far as the development of the technology.
Fair enough, but once again, SpaceX shines here. There’s never been a company quite like them before, doing quite the things they’re doing in quite the way they’re doing them.
Maybe just being first has its merits? After all, history tends to reward the winners. Most Americans don’t know who the first American in space was, but they know the Russians beat us there to begin with, and they know we beat everyone to the Moon. Then again, Sally Ride tends to be mistaken by Americans as the first woman in space, but Russian Valentina Tereshkova was actually first.
The question of what makes SpaceX so different in marketing space technology is still a difficult one for me as my personal reasons for admiring their progress has little to do with the aesthetics of the achievements. I admire the true progress they’re making and the relatability of what they’re developing to what their larger goals are.
NASA may be truly making progress towards a “Journey to Mars”, but when compared to the advancements SpaceX has achieved, it seems more like thus far, they just have a guitar amp that “goes to 11”.
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Thoughts, anyone?
Author’s Note: I’ve uploaded more pics of the Space Congress and the park on launch day to my Flickr account. Nothing spectacular – just FYI.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
