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SpaceX to build small version of BFR’s spaceship for use on Falcon 9, says Elon Musk

A view of spaceship (BFS) separating from BFR booster (BFB). (SpaceX)

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to announce a new development program: in order to gain experience with the new design and recovery strategy, SpaceX engineers and technicians will apparently build a miniature version of BFR’s winged spaceship able to launch atop Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy.

According to Musk, the company aims to conduct the first orbital flight of this mini-BFS as early as June 2019, just eight months away.

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Described as a “SpaceX tech tree build”, Musk seems to be implying that the strategic purpose of this new development is to act as a stepping stone between Falcon 9 and BFR, two dramatically different launch vehicles relying on a variety of entirely distinct technologies. Based on the fact that Musk believes the mini-BFS could reach orbit as early as June 2019, it seems likely that the miniature spaceship will essentially just be a strengthened Falcon 9 upper stage with fins and a heat shield attached versus a more extreme departure, where the stage would literally be a mini-BFS.

In the latter scenario, SpaceX could use the opportunity to extensively test – albeit on a smaller scale – a number of immature BFR technologies, including all-composite propellant tanks, autogenous pressurization, a sea level-optimized rocket engine on an orbital upper stage, methane and oxygen (methalox) propellant, actuatable tripod fins, new heat shield materials, and more. If SpaceX has been working on this for several months, there is still a chance that those technologies will be tested on this step-change Falcon 9 S2 variant, but it seems improbable that Musk would have been able to stay totally silent on the plans during his September 2018 update to the BFR program.

Falcon 9 upper-stage recovery

Going off of what little information we have, it seems more likely that the “mini-BFR ship” described by Musk is an effort to realize Falcon 9 upper stage recovery and test BFR’s orbital spaceship recovery strategies than it is an extensive development platform for all critical BFR technologies. Prior to today’s tweet, Musk announced early this year (April, to be precise) that SpaceX would attempt to recovery Falcon 9’s upper stage with a “giant…balloon”, or an inflatable decelerator to use the technical terminology.

Given this new development, it’s unclear if those plans are still on – as a small spaceship, Falcon 9’s upper stage would likely be able to reenter Earth’s atmosphere without the need for something like a single-use inflatable decelerator, which would have always been a suboptimal crutch for the recovery of any orbital spacecraft, be it Falcon 9 or BFR. With this new plan, it appears that SpaceX wants to kill at least two birds with one stone, building a platform capable of flight-testing a handful of new technologies critical to BFR’s success while also potentially realizing the dream of a fully-reusable Falcon 9.

A gif of Raptor throttling over the course of a 90+ second static-fire test in McGregor, Texas. (SpaceX)

Given recent reports from Reuters that Musk has demanded that SpaceX’s Starlink team work towards the first launch of an operational batch of satellites by mid-2019, his target date for a mini-BFS Falcon 9 upper stage is likely no coincidence. Given the potential risk of being the first to launch on an unproven variant of Falcon 9, it’s possible (if not probable) that SpaceX will conduct its own launch of the rocket prior to flying paying customers – a perfect way to avoid wasting that launch would be risking a few of SpaceX’s own Starlink satellites in place of a customer’s payload.

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Musk seems to be confident that SpaceX has effectively ‘solved’ propulsive rocket landings, stating that the purpose of this new variant will be dedicated to testing an “ultra light heat shield and high Mach control surfaces”. Judging from a number of recent job postings focused on new thermal protection systems (and affixing them to composite structures) and an official request for information (RFI) from NASA Ames about its lightweight TUFROC heat shield material, this is a major focus and one of several critical paths for BFR development.


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!

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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SpaceX’s newest logo confirms everything about what it’s become

SpaceX officially absorbed xAI under the SpaceXAI brand, completing the largest private merger in history.

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SpaceX made its corporate transformation official in May 2026 when Elon Musk posted on X that xAI would cease to exist as a standalone company. “xAI will be dissolved as a separate company, so it will just be SpaceXAI, the AI products from SpaceX,” he wrote.

A new SpaceXAI logo was announced today, visually embedding the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity, which can be seen as a deliberate design choice that signals the merger is not a partnership but a full absorption and XAi a core function of the same company. The same way Starlink is not a separate brand but a SpaceX product. The announcement closed the loop on a process that began February 2, 2026, when SpaceX acquired xAI in the largest private merger in history, valued at $1.25 trillion. SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion.


The reason SpaceX bought xAI was stated plainly by Musk at the time of the deal: to build orbital data centers. SpaceX had simultaneously filed with the FCC to launch up to one million satellites designed to function as AI compute nodes in low Earth orbit, escaping what Musk described as the energy constraints limiting AI development on Earth.

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xAI provided the AI software stack, with Grok, the X platform, and the Colossus supercomputer infrastructure in Memphis with over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, while SpaceX provided the rockets, Starlink, and the capital base to fund it. The two companies needed each other. xAI was burning $2.5 billion in losses on $250 million in revenue. SpaceX was generating an estimated $8 billion in profit on $15 billion in revenue and needed an AI narrative to command the valuation it was targeting for its IPO.

SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app

What SpaceX has done, regardless of how the orbital AI vision ultimately plays out, is walk into a public market as something no company has been before: a rocket manufacturer, satellite internet provider, AI software company, social media platform, and supercomputer operator under one ticker. Whether that combination is worth $2 trillion depends entirely on which of those businesses you believe in most.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

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.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

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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:

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“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.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Phone? Not quite, but close: analyst

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Photo: Boss Hunting.com.au

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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