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SpaceX ships 200th Falcon second stage, highlighting the flip-side of booster reuse
SpaceX has built and shipped its 200th Falcon second stage, highlighting the often underappreciated rocket’s record of achievement on the ground and in flight.
Approximately 13 years ago, in late 2009 or early 2010, SpaceX shipped the first flightworthy prototype of the first iteration of its Falcon 9 second stage. In June 2010, Falcon 9 lifted off on its inaugural test flight and, with the help of that second stage, successfully launched a boilerplate mockup of Dragon spacecraft into orbit. Since Falcon 9’s surprising inaugural success, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets have launched another 187 times for a total of 188 launches and 189 assembled rockets. Every one of those launches has required a new second stage, and all but one (Crew Dragon’s In-Flight Abort test) required a new Merlin Vacuum engine.
While SpaceX is most famous for the successful realization of rapidly reusable Falcon boosters, the company’s overall success is also inextricably linked to Falcon second stages, which are and always will be expended after every launch. For every spectacular Falcon booster landing or reuse record, a Falcon second stage either unceremoniously burns up in Earth’s atmosphere or finds itself stranded in orbit. As a result, even as SpaceX’s reusability has allowed it to launch more than ever before with a fleet of just 10-20 Falcon boosters, the company has had to expand the production of Falcon second stages extraordinary levels.
SpaceX just completed its 188th Falcon 9/Heavy launch, so the 200th flightworthy second stage and Merlin Vacuum (MVac) engine are probably scheduled to launch sometime in January 2023. In the last 365 days, SpaceX’s Falcon rockets have completed 59 successful orbital launches. Every launch has required a new second stage, so SpaceX, on average, has consistently built, shipped, and tested a new Falcon second stage every 6.2 days for more than a year.
Thanks to SpaceX’s record-breaking 2022 launch cadence, which has resulted in Falcon 9 launching more in one calendar year than any other rocket in history, the Falcon second stage has likely become the most-produced orbital rocket stage in decades. Barring surprises, SpaceX is on track to achieve CEO Elon Musk’s goal of 60 Falcon launches in 2022. But SpaceX isn’t done yet, and CEO Elon Musk says that the company is targeting “up to 100 launches” in 2023. After nearly doubling between early and late 2021, that will require Falcon second stage production to increase another ~67% year-over-year.
In its 12.5-year career, Falcon 9 has suffered three failures. In October 2012, on its third launch, one of Falcon 9’s nine Merlin 1C booster engines failed in flight. The main mission – a Dragon cargo mission to the International Space Station – was saved by the second stage, which autonomously compensated for the lost performance, but a secondary payload (Orbcomm’s first OG2 satellite prototype) was lost as a result. In June 2015, a faulty strut inside Falcon 9’s second stage caused a helium pressure vessel to break loose and rupture, destroying the rocket mid-flight. And in September 2016, during a prelaunch static fire test, a similar pressure vessel inside an upgraded Falcon 9’s second stage spontaneously sparked, causing an explosion that destroyed the rocket while it was still on the ground.
As a result, while problems with Falcon second stages have technically caused both of Falcon 9’s only catastrophic failures, it’s still true that a free-flying Falcon second stage has never failed in flight. The same is true for the second stage’s Merlin Vacuum engine: over hundreds of burns and more than 70,000 seconds of operation, MVac has never failed in flight.
After Falcon 9’s successful November 3rd, 2022 launch of the Eutelsat Hotbird 13G communications satellite, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket family has completed 160 launches without failure, arguably making it the most reliable rocket family in history. To achieve that feat with its partially-reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, SpaceX has had to master reusable and expendable orbital rockets to a degree that only a few other companies or space agencies in history can claim to have matched or exceeded, and that none have achieved simultaneously.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
