SpaceX
SpaceX’s Mr. Steven highlights ambiguity of Falcon fairing catches with port return
SpaceX’s fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven highlighted the maddening and exhilarating uncertainty of unpublicized fairing recovery attempts with a return to Port of San Pedro on October 18th, the morning after spending a day at sea for the second Falcon fairing drop-and-catch test.
Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin was on site to watch Mr. Steven’s 1AM Pacific port return and was able to capture the arrival, showing a familiar test fairing resting on the vessel’s deck, perfectly intact, with the recovery net fully retracted.
Schrödinger’s Fairing
Beginning with a dry run on October 8th, SpaceX technicians and engineers have spent the last 10 days testing Mr. Steven more intensely than ever previously observed, centering around a campaign of apparent Falcon fairing drop tests. Although it’s possible that these tests are more captive-carry trials than true drop tests, it seems more likely – judging by the fact that NOTAMs, notices to airmen, were only filed for 2 of the 3 attempts – that the helicopter is actually releasing a fairing half around 11,000 feet (3300 m) and letting it glide towards Mr. Steven.
Previously, SpaceX executive Hans Koenigsmann and CEO Elon Musk have mentioned a probable drop test campaign if operational (post-launch) fairing recovery attempts were unsuccessful. Mr. Steven has yet to successfully snag a fairing out of the air over the course of four post-launch catch attempts, evidence that – just like landing Falcon 9 boosters intact – recovering orbital-class rocket hardware in a state that allows for future reuse is extraordinarily difficult, regardless of the subsystem. However, SpaceX has managed to successfully recover fairing halves intact and in a condition good enough to make Koenigsmann, Vice President of Reliability, visibly excited during an IAC 2018 presentation.
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- Hans Koenigsmann was extremely excited about the condition of this particular fairing half, and included this photo in his IAC 2018 keynote. (SpaceX)
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- One half of SpaceX’s Iridium-6/GRACE-FO just moments before touchdown on the Pacific Ocean. (SpaceX)
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- Close. (SpaceX)
The problem with those intact halves is that they have been recovered only after soft landings in the ocean – once immersed in saltwater, the sheer expense of cleaning a fairing to the point that it would be able to host another sensitive satellite payload is apparently too high to be worthwhile, at least from a perspective of economical reusability. The (quite literally) miniscule line that thus appears to be separating failed fairing recovery attempts from successes also means that it’s extraordinarily difficult to know whether the fairing half that returned on Mr. Steven yesterday morning is indicative of a breakthrough success or another successful failure.
Clearly, the fairing is perfectly intact from a purely structural perspective, meaning that its recovery hardware – cold gas thrusters and a parafoil – worked nominally. What is impossible to tell is whether its autonomous guidance systems were able to successfully direct it to Mr. Steven’s net, or whether Mr. Steven himself was able to maneuver beneath the falling fairing in time to catch it. And yet, a fairing half still sits visibly intact on Mr. Steven’s deck, story and fate unknown. With any luck, SpaceX will offer an official confirmation of some sort once success is in hand. For now, we wait.
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Elon Musk posted a candid admission on his social media platform X on June 9, declaring that he had been “clearly wrong” about Anthropic. The statement marked a notable reversal from his earlier skepticism toward the AI company.
In September, Musk had written, “Winning was never in the set of possible outcomes for Anthropic,” reflecting his view at the time that the startup had lacked the foundation or even the trajectory to succeed in what is an incredibly intense race for advanced artificial intelligence.
Musk’s latest post came amid discussion of Anthropic’s reliance on external compute resources. He praised the company’s progress, stating that Anthropic is “obviously currently the leader in AI” and that “no company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable,” with expectations of a strong follow-up in Mythos 2.
The tone shifted dramatically from dismissal to acknowledgement of superior performance.
I was clearly wrong about Anthropic. They are obviously currently the leader in AI. No company has released a model as good as Mythos/Fable and they will undoubtedly have Mythos 2 ready soon.
And I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor.…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 9, 2026
The context of Musk’s comments added significance. Anthropic has been operating under a recent compute deal with SpaceXAI, Musk’s AI infrastructure-focused venture. The pair entered a short-term GPU lease agreement initiated in May, providing Anthropic access to critical computing power for training and deploying its frontier models.
SpaceXAI signs agreement with Anthropic for massive AI supercomputer access
Some observers had speculated that Musk could leverage this dependency to disadvantage a rival. Musk directly addressed the possibility, writing, “I would never cut them off in a way that hurt them badly, even as a competitor. That’s not my style.”
To support his commitment to ethical competition, Musk referenced concrete examples from his other companies. Tesla famously open-sourced its entire portfolio of electric vehicle patents in 2014. The move was designed to accelerate the global adoption of sustainable transportation technology rather than protect proprietary advantages.
Tesla also made its Supercharger network available to competing electric vehicle manufacturers, transforming what could have remained an exclusive charging ecosystem into a shared infrastructure that benefits the broader industry and reduces barriers for EV adoption.
Musk further pointed to SpaceX’s practices, noting that the company launches satellites for competing commercial systems “with no increase in price or use of unfair terms.” He extended the principle to his social platform, observing that “even my worst enemies attack me on this platform,” underscoring preference for open discourse over retaliation.
These examples have illustrated Musk’s long-standing philosophy that long-term technological progress is best served by open competition and infrastructure sharing rather than leveraging market power to stifle rivals. In the fast-evolving AI sector, where compute resources and model capabilities determine leadership, Musk’s stance suggests a willingness to compete on innovation and performance alone.
Musk’s admission arrives as SpaceXAI itself advances its own frontier models while maintaining business relationships across the ecosystem. By publicly correcting his earlier assessment and reaffirming principles of fair play, Musk highlights a model of competition that prioritizes advancement of the field over short-term tactical advantages.
Investor's Corner
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
NASA’s Roman Space Telescope heads to orbit this August aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with massive scientific ambitions.
SpaceX is set to play a central role in one of NASA’s most anticipated science missions in years. The company’s Falcon Heavy rocket, currently the most powerful operational launch vehicle in the world, will carry the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope into orbit on August 30 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Roman is now in final preparations inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where on June 26 technicians used a crane to lift the observatory into a specialized stand for fueling and pre-launch testing.
Roman is named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief of astronomy, whose career helped shape how the agency approaches space science.
NASA chose SpaceX Falcon Heavy because of Roman’s needs to reach a specific orbit far from Earth, well beyond where a standard Falcon 9 can deliver it. The Falcon Heavy, which first flew in 2018, has since become NASA’s go-to option for missions that need serious muscle without the cost and complexity of older launch systems.
Celebrating SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster launch, seven years later (Op-Ed)
Roman will carry a field of view at least 100 times wider than the Hubble Space Telescope, meaning it can photograph enormous swaths of the universe in a single shot rather than the narrow slices Hubble captures. That difference in scale is significant. While Hubble reshaped our understanding of the cosmos over 30 years, Roman is built to work faster and wider, surveying hundreds of millions of galaxies at once.
One of Roman’s most compelling capabilities is its potential to discover and photograph planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, and with enough precision to directly image planets that would otherwise be lost. That means scientists could study the atmosphere and surface characteristics of distant worlds rather than simply confirming they exist. Combined with Roman’s sweeping field of view, the telescope could detect thousands of exoplanets, and some of those planets may be in habitable zones where liquid water could exist. No telescope currently in operation has this level of power and capability. That capability alone could change what we know about other worlds, and perhaps finally answer the question: are we the only intelligent lifeforms in existence?
What Roman actually finds once it reaches orbit is an open question, and that is exactly what makes this launch worth watching.
Elon Musk
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.
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.
We are now @SpaceXAI. pic.twitter.com/ema66xDWC9
— SpaceXAI (@SpaceXAI) July 6, 2026
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.
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.
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.
Tesla shows rapid teardown of Model S and X lines, paving the way for Optimus at Fremont
Elon Musk admits he was ‘clearly wrong’ about Anthropic
