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SpaceX's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket expected to reach major launch milestone in 2020
Hours after SpaceX launched its 240th new Starlink satellite into orbit, Elon Musk took to Twitter to cryptically reveal that the company’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket could “reach triple digits this year” if everything goes according to plan.
Designed and built by SpaceX in the late 2000s, the Falcon 9 rocket launched for the first time in June 2010. Developed for the unfathomably low price of $300 million from clean-sheet design to first orbital launch, the original single-core Falcon 9 rocket – known as V1.0 – was about 48m (160 ft) tall, weighed 333 metric tons (735,000 lb) fully fueled, and was capable of launching almost 10.5 metric tons (23,000 lb) into low Earth orbit (LEO). Famously, when provided with Falcon 9’s basic specifications and characteristics, an independent NASA study estimated that the rocket’s development would have cost the agency anywhere from $1.7 billion to $4 billion to design and build.
NASA came to this conclusion in 2011, less than a year after Falcon 9’s first launch, and that the disconnect between the status quo held by NASA and the broader US spaceflight industry and what SpaceX tangibly achieved came to almost perfectly symbolize the rocket’s first six or so years of operations. Although SpaceX stumbled hard with two catastrophic rocket failures in June 2015 and September 2016, the company ultimately picked itself up, learned from those still-agonizing lessons, and has since shaped Falcon 9 into one of the most capable, reliable, reusable, and prolific launch vehicles ever flown. That latter characteristic – the sheer volume of launches Falcon 9 has come to represent – is what CEO Elon Musk was referring to earlier this week.
Specifically, after Wednesday’s flawless launch, Falcon 9 has now launched 80 times in its 9.5-year career, while Starlink V1 L3 marked the workhorse rocket’s 52nd consecutive success of 79 total. Impressively, while those 52 launches represent almost 65% of all of Falcon 9’s missions, SpaceX has dramatically improved the rocket’s reliability and availability over the last few years. In short, Falcon 9 has completed 52 consecutively successful launches in exactly 36 months (January 2017 to January 2020), meaning that nearly two-thirds of its lifetime launches have occurred in less than a third of the time Falcon 9 has been operational.
Put a different way, since the start of 2017, SpaceX has – on average – launched Falcon 9 more than four times (1.4 launches/month) as often as the rocket managed in its first 6.5 years of operations (1 launch every 2.7 months). Tweeting on January 29th, 2020 in response to an overview of the number of launches performed by each operational US rocket, CEO Elon Musk hinted that he believes “Falcon 9 will achieve triple digits” in 2020.
In other words, Musk thinks that SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket will be able to reach more than 100 lifetime launches by the end of 2020 — a feat that will require at least 20 additional Falcon 9 launches over the next 11 months. Speaking hours after SpaceX completed its third launch in January 2020 alone, it’s not hard to imagine – assuming, as Musk did, that “all goes well – that Falcon 9 will manage another 20 launches this year.
Averaged out, SpaceX has performed a launch every 9.7 days in January. Extrapolated to the rest of the year and assuming no improvement, SpaceX could theoretically perform as many as 37 launches in 2020. It’s worth noting, however, that SpaceX’s third launch of the month was ready for flight as early as January 21st but was delayed more than a week by bad weather – obviously out of the company’s control. Had weather permitted, SpaceX even had a fourth launch planned this month – a Starlink mission that is now expected sometime in early February.
In simple terms, it would take one or several major upsets to prevent Falcon 9 from reaching >100 lifetime launches later this year. Even if every single customer launch abruptly slips into 2021, SpaceX has still said that it has plans for 20-24 dedicated Starlink launches in 2020 alone, potentially singlehandedly carrying Falcon 9 over the 100-launch crest.
Falcon 9’s next launch – the fourth Starlink v1.0 mission – is currently scheduled no earlier than (NET) early February, followed by another Starlink mission later that month and Cargo Dragon’s final space station resupply mission NET March 2nd.
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Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
