SpaceX
SpaceX President talks BFR and Mars exploration in laid-back Madrid Q&A session
Speaking at a Q&A session hosted for a Madrid university’s Master’s of Business Administration students, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell talked for nearly an hour about the launch company’s next-generation BFR rocket, the reality of long-term life on Mars, and more, revealing a number of interesting tidbits in the process.
Almost entirely led by questions from the unusually well-informed audience, the graduate students and professors predominately kept the famous SpaceX exec more or less focused on the company’s future, delving into the reasoning behind BFR. Shotwell had only praise for the next-generation launch vehicle, which is targeting initial hop tests in late 2019 and its first full launches as early as 2021, a delay of several months from previous schedule estimates targeting hops in early 2019 and orbit by 2020.
Aside from schedule updates, Shotwell had more still to say about the rocket:
- “The flexibility that [BFR] offers will change how we do everything in space.”
- “BFR has the capability to open its payload bay, bring [a] satellite back in, close it, pressurize it, work on it (repair, upgrade, etc), and redeploy it”
- “BFR will basically allow people to work and live in space”
Although she offered some self-deprecating humor on SpaceX’s often-optimistic schedules for future projects, she was for the most part positive about the company’s ultimate aspirations of completing and perfecting BFR, stating without hesitation that “something terrible [would] have to happen at SpaceX for us to not be on our way to Mars and back in 10 years.”
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- SpaceX’s BFR visualized just before launch at a heavily-upgraded Pad 39A. (SpaceX)
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- Note the 2017/early-2018 variant’s single delta-wing and extendable leg pods (silver). (SpaceX)
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- We’re not here just yet, but SpaceX is pushing hard to build BFR and get humanity to Mars as quickly as practicable. (SpaceX)
Shotwell acknowledged that some of the hurdles in the way of those goals could become headaches, particularly the decision to build the rocket’s propellant tanks solely out of carbon fiber composites, but also expressed her belief that most of the difficulty of designing and building BFR’s advanced Raptor engine was already behind SpaceX. Roughly two times as powerful as Merlin 1D and dramatically more efficient, SpaceX’s Raptor development team has conducted extensive hot-fire testing (at least 1200 seconds) of the engine, optimizing it to the point that the company is already building (and maybe already hot-fire testing) flight-grade hardware.
Other miscellaneous comments showed Shotwell at her best, ad-libbing one-liners that were lucid, accurate, and entertaining.
- “We’ll be going to Mars … with NASA and with ESA. It’s gonna be like extreme camping… for 100 years. And then it might be okay.”
- “[Space] tourism is inevitable but [SpaceX] doesn’t want to do it too soon”, the goal is to launch “test pilots before families”
- “The first cars on Mars will be Teslas.”
Watch the full Shotwell Q&A – graciously recorded by the business student and SpaceX subreddit member LordsofDecay – at the link below.
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SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
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The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
Elon Musk’s massive Terafab project, which will be the first true conglomeration between each of his major entities, is set to get its final location soon, the CEO said on Tesla’s recent earnings call.
“The Terafab, we expect to announce a location soon, and provide more details about our plans in that regard. We’ll leave that to the product, the launch announcement rather than try to squeeze it into an earnings call,” Musk said last Wednesday.
Tesla Terafab set for launch: Inside the $20B AI chip factory that will reshape the auto industry
Terafab was announced by Musk back in March and was essentially a massive, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing project that would provide all the chips the three companies needed for their AI initiatives without needing third-party companies.
The plant will produce over 1 terawatt of AI compute each year, and will help back up projects like Optimus, Full Self-Driving, and other AI-based projects that Musk’s companies are working on.
In April, less than a month after the project was launched, Intel announced it would join the project, contributing manufacturing expertise and consulting to Terafab as a whole. Intel is one of three chip manufacturers that produce sub-5 nanometer chips at scale. TSMC and Samsung are the other two.
However, there was no true indication of where Terafab would end up, but most believe it will likely be somewhere in Texas. Business Insider has reported that SpaceX plans to build out Terafab in Grimes County, Texas, but this is unconfirmed.
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Musk confirmed recently that it would not be on Giga Texas property, as it is simply too large.
The sheer scale of TERAFAB is going to be insane.
Elon said it wouldn’t be suitable for anywhere on Giga Texas property because it’s too big:
“We couldn’t possibly fit the Terafab on the GigaTexas campus. It will be far bigger than everything else combined there.
Several… pic.twitter.com/79GbhNNuf4
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 23, 2026
Terafab holds much of Musk’s grand ambitions for the future within its construct. It holds so much responsibility for the future and the biggest projects that Musk’s companies can imagine.
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“I think this is a very big announcement and it deserves to have its own day in the spotlight and not be squeezed into an earnings call,” he said. “I do think Terafab is going to be an amazing initiative and a necessary one, and one without which we will be constrained in our ability to scale Optimus production, because we simply won’t have enough AI chips.”
He continued by stating that Terafab is necessary for scaling Optimus, which Musk said could be the biggest product of any kind of all time. “It’s crucial to solve that, and we’ll have to solve memory, logic, and packaging in order to scale Optimus.”
SpaceX performed a secret test on a specific portion of Starship with its recent 13th test flight last week, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
Starship’s 13th test flight took place last Friday, and in many aspects, it was one of the most overwhelmingly successful launches in the project’s history.
All of the mission objectives were met without incident, both the Super Heavy Booster and Ship managed to perform safe splashdowns in the Gulf of America and the Indian Ocean, respectively, and the deployment of Starlink satellites came and went without any complications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
However, there was more on the agenda for SpaceX with Flight 13. Musk revealed an internal test of the ship’s heat shield tiles, as the space exploration company wanted to push them to the limits after previous issues.
Many noticed that Starship’s initial launch seemed to be more accelerated than normal, and that was not a mistake. Musk revealed that SpaceX decided to give Flight 13 an intentionally aggressive acceleration rate in an effort to test how well the tiles would remain attached to the ship:
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This flight intentionally had much higher acceleration to test how well the heat shield tiles would remain attached at high dynamic pressure.
Test was successful.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
SpaceX had issues with some of the heat shield tiles remaining attached early on in the Starship program. The first six test flights presented some kind of anomaly with them, so the company’s big focus with them was to figure out a way to keep them intact through the duration of the flight.
Things truly improved as Flight 10 showed that ceramic tiles generally stayed attached to the ship far better due to refined attachment, as SpaceX utilized pins instead of adhesives. Flights 10 through 13 truly showed some clear progress with the heat shield tiles, and this latest test seems to be where some real progress was noticed, especially by Musk.
The 13th Starship launch last Friday was the second with Starship V3, SpaceX’s latest and greatest iteration of the spacecraft. Goals and ambitions are getting even grander as the project continues to progress. Musk has already hinted that SpaceX will likely try to catch Starship with Flight 14.
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