SpaceX
SpaceX’s third Falcon Heavy launch is just one month away
SpaceX is exactly one month away from Falcon Heavy’s next scheduled launch, an important mission for the US Air Force known as Space Test Program 2 (STP-2). Carrying 24 satellites of various sizes, Falcon Heavy is scheduled to lift off for the third time as early as June 22nd.
In support of the mission, SpaceX will need to completely integrate Falcon Heavy and prepare the rocket for a routine static fire test approximately one week prior to launch, sometime in mid-June. STP-2 will be critical to both SpaceX and the USAF for a number of reasons, ranging from rocket reusability to the future of US military launch procurement.
ICYMI: LightSail 2 is set to launch next month aboard a #SpaceX Falcon Heavy! Our citizen-funded solar sail is officially scheduled to lift off on 22 June 2019: https://t.co/J2AC5JQ1Kr pic.twitter.com/lC1MJoeh3C— Planetary Society (@exploreplanets) May 21, 2019
Rapid Falcon Heavy reuse
From a technological standpoint, Falcon Heavy Flight 3 will be a milestone in large part due to its reuse of two Falcon Heavy side boosters, previously flown on April 11th as part of Falcon Heavy’s Arabsat 6A commercial launch debut. Around eight minutes after launching the ~6450 kg (14,200 lb) satellite on its way to an exceptionally high transfer orbit of 90,000 km (56,000 mi), side boosters B1052 and B1053 completed flawless landings at LZ-1 and LZ-2.
Both boosters were quickly ‘broken over’ (brought horizontal) and transported to Pad 39A’s main hangar for inspection and refurbishment. Relative to almost all other Block 5 boosters, Falcon Heavy Flight 2’s side boosters were subjected to a uniquely gentle reentry thanks to a lower velocity stage separation. As such, they should be easier to turn around than most, but given that the boosters are also acting as partial pathfinders for the reuse of actual Falcon Heavy hardware, they are unlikely to break any records.
Sadly, the first Falcon Heavy Block 5 center core – B1055 – was toppled in high seas while still aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), cutting short any possibility of future reuses of the thoroughly scorched booster. For unknown reasons, be it an unrelated USAF requirement or SpaceX simply choosing caution, plans already accounted for a new center core flying on STP-2, although both Arabsat 6A side boosters were to be reused. Believed to be B1057, that new Falcon Heavy center core completed its Texas acceptance testing in late April and shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida soon after.
An Air Force first
Aside from offering a chance for SpaceX to tie its 72-day Falcon 9 turnaround record twice, STP-2 has unexpectedly become a keystone of the US military’s interest in certifying flight-proven rockets for military launches. The USAF has described the reuse of Falcon Heavy boosters on STP-2 as a step forward for all future reusable launch vehicles, but the reality is that SpaceX is and will remain the only player in town until 2022 at the earliest. The next closest entrant – Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket – is unlikely to be ready for its launch debut before late ’21 or early ’22. ULA’s “SMART” reuse of Vulcan rocket engine sections is unlikely to be ready before the mid-2020s, likely 2024-2026.
SpaceX, however, has already reused Falcon 9 boosters more than 20 times on orbital-class missions, and the frequency of reuse is only likely to increase with the introduction of the final major Falcon 9 and Heavy upgrade, known as Block 5. Designed with a nominal lifespan of 10+ launches, each booster can support a huge number of missions and also offers the potential to dramatically reduce launch costs down the road. Additionally, as noted by VP of Launch Reliability Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX firmly believes that reliability will come hand in hand with routine reuse, as each recovered booster can serve as a treasure trove of data. Thanks to reusability, SpaceX can fill recoverable boosters to the brim with cameras and gather full-resolution telemetry otherwise inaccessible for an expendable rocket.
The matter of launch costs is not a particularly significant concern of the US military, mainly a consequence of the incredibly disproportionate relationship between the cost of launch and the cost the military satellite payloads. An excellent example of this disparity can be found in SpaceX’s December 2018 launch of the USAF’s first GPS III satellite: SpaceX’s launch contract cost $82M, while the Lockheed Martin-built spacecraft aboard cost no less than ~$600M.
However, reusable rockets are quite plainly the future of space launch, evidenced by SpaceX’s meteoric rise and rapid cannibalization of the global commercial launch market. As a partial result, the survival of ULA – a Lockheed Martin-Boeing cooperative that builds the Delta IV and Atlas V rockets – is almost completely dependent upon military development and launch contracts. Blue Origin, however, is now offering the promise of an independently stable launch provider thanks to continual funding from owner Jeff Bezos, and reusability will be an absolute necessity if its massive New Glenn rocket is to succeed.
In short, the USAF is faced with a simple proposition: get behind reusable rockets or risk falling behind. SpaceX is more than happy to ease the conservative military branch into the new era, and Falcon Heavy’s STP-2 launch will be a major step in the right direction. Thanks to its reuse of two side boosters, Air Force officials will be able to observe the process of rapid refurbishment firsthand, providing information they will then use to develop certification requirements for flight-proven rockets. More generally, STP-2 will also act as a dedicated demonstration that SpaceX and the USAF will use to fully certify Falcon Heavy for military launches, hopefully ending Delta IV Heavy’s decade-long monopoly over military heavy lift.
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Elon Musk
Celebrating SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster launch, seven years later (Op-Ed)
Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
When Falcon Heavy lifted off in February 2018 with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as its payload, SpaceX was at a much different place. So was Tesla. It was unclear whether Falcon Heavy was feasible at all, and Tesla was in the depths of Model 3 production hell.
At the time, Tesla’s market capitalization hovered around $55–60 billion, an amount critics argued was already grossly overvalued. SpaceX, on the other hand, was an aggressive private launch provider known for taking risks that traditional aerospace companies avoided.
The Roadster launch was bold by design. Falcon Heavy’s maiden mission carried no paying payload, no government satellite, just a car drifting past Earth with David Bowie playing in the background. To many, it looked like a stunt. For Elon Musk and the SpaceX team, it was a bold statement: there should be some things in the world that simply inspire people.
Inspire it did, and seven years later, SpaceX and Tesla’s results speak for themselves.
Today, Tesla is the world’s most valuable automaker, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.54 trillion. The Model Y has become the best-selling car in the world by volume for three consecutive years, a scenario that would have sounded insane in 2018. Tesla has also pushed autonomy to a point where its vehicles can navigate complex real-world environments using vision alone.
And then there is Optimus. What began as a literal man in a suit has evolved into a humanoid robot program that Musk now describes as potential Von Neumann machines: systems capable of building civilizations beyond Earth. Whether that vision takes decades or less, one thing is evident: Tesla is no longer just a car company. It is positioning itself at the intersection of AI, robotics, and manufacturing.
SpaceX’s trajectory has been just as dramatic.
The Falcon 9 has become the undisputed workhorse of the global launch industry, having completed more than 600 missions to date. Of those, SpaceX has successfully landed a Falcon booster more than 560 times. The Falcon 9 flies more often than all other active launch vehicles combined, routinely lifting off multiple times per week.
Falcon 9 has ferried astronauts to and from the International Space Station via Crew Dragon, restored U.S. human spaceflight capability, and even stepped in to safely return NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams when circumstances demanded it.
Starlink, once a controversial idea, now dominates the satellite communications industry, providing broadband connectivity across the globe and reshaping how space-based networks are deployed. SpaceX itself, following its merger with xAI, is now valued at roughly $1.25 trillion and is widely expected to pursue what could become the largest IPO in history.
And then there is Starship, Elon Musk’s fully reusable launch system designed not just to reach orbit, but to make humans multiplanetary. In 2018, the idea was still aspirational. Today, it is under active development, flight-tested in public view, and central to NASA’s future lunar plans.
In hindsight, Falcon Heavy’s maiden flight with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster was never really about a car in space. It was a signal that SpaceX and Tesla were willing to think bigger, move faster, and accept risks others wouldn’t.
The Roadster is still out there, orbiting the Sun. Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s xAI merger keeps legal liability and debt at arm’s length: report
The update was initially reported by Reuters.
SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI was structured to shield the rocket maker from xAI’s legal liabilities while eliminating any obligation to repay the AI startup’s billions in debt, as per people reportedly familiar with the transaction.
The update was initially reported by Reuters.
SpaceX merger structure
SpaceX completed its acquisition of xAI using a merger structure designed to keep the AI firm’s debt and legal exposure separate from SpaceX, Reuters noted, citing people reportedly familiar with the deal.
Rather than fully combining the two companies, SpaceX retained xAI as a wholly owned subsidiary. The structure, commonly referred to as a triangular merger, allows xAI’s liabilities, contracts, and outstanding debt to remain isolated from SpaceX’s balance sheet.
As a result, SpaceX is not required to repay xAI’s existing debt, which includes at least $12 billion inherited from X and several billion dollars more raised since then. The structure also prevents the transaction from triggering a change-of-control clause that could have forced immediate repayment to bondholders.
“In an acquisition where the target ends up as a subsidiary of the buyer, no prior liabilities of the target necessarily become liabilities of the parent,” Gary Simon, a corporate attorney at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, stated.
Debt obligations avoided
The SpaceX xAI merger was also structured to ensure it did not qualify as a change of control under xAI’s debt agreements. Matt Woodruff, senior analyst at CreditSights, noted that even if SpaceX might have qualified as a “permitted holder,” the merger’s structure removes any ambiguity.
“The permitted holder definition includes the principal investor and its affiliates, which of course is Musk. That would presumably mean SpaceX is treated as an affiliate, so a change of control is not required,” Woodruff stated. “There’s really no realistic possibility that this would trigger a default given the way it is structured.”
Despite the scale of the transaction, which values xAI at $250 billion and SpaceX at $1 trillion, the deal is not expected to delay SpaceX’s planned initial public offering (IPO) later this year.
SpaceX has not issued a comment about the matter as of writing.
Despite many recent rumors and various reports, Elon Musk confirmed today that SpaceX is not developing a phone based on Starlink, not once, but twice.
Today’s report from Reuters cited people familiar with the matter and stated internal discussions have seen SpaceX executives mulling the idea of building a mobile device that would connect directly to the Starlink satellite constellation.
Musk did state in late January that SpaceX developing a phone was “not out of the question at some point.” However, He also said it would have to be a major difference from current phones, and would be optimized “purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.”
Not out of the question at some point. It would be a very different device than current phones. Optimized purely for running max performance/watt neural nets.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 30, 2026
While Musk said it was not out of the question “at some point,” that does not mean it is currently a project SpaceX is working on. The CEO reaffirmed this point twice on X this afternoon.
Musk said, “Reuters lies relentlessly,” in one post. In the next, he explicitly stated, “We are not developing a phone.”
Reuters lies relentlessly
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026
We are not developing a phone
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2026
Musk has basically always maintained that SpaceX has too many things going on, denying that a phone would be in the realm of upcoming projects. There are too many things in the works for Musk’s space exploration company, most notably the recent merger with xAI.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
A Starlink phone would be an excellent idea, especially considering that SpaceX operates 9,500 satellites, serving over 9 million users worldwide. 650 of those satellites are dedicated to the company’s direct-to-device initiative, which provides cellular coverage on a global scale.
Nevertheless, there is the potential that the Starlink phone eventually become a project SpaceX works on. However, it is not currently in the scope of what the company needs to develop, so things are more focused on that as of right now.
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