Connect with us

News

SpaceX’s sootiest Falcon 9 booster yet returns to port after record reuse

Falcon 9 booster B1051's titanium grid fins have developed a rainbow patina over a almost a dozen hypersonic reentries. (Richard Angle)

Published

on

Three days after acing record-breaking tenth launch and landing, SpaceX’s sootiest Falcon 9 rocket booster yet has returned to Port Canaveral to begin the processing of preparing for its eleventh flight.

Almost exactly three years ago, speaking in a conference call focused on the debut of SpaceX’s ultimate “Block 5” Falcon booster upgrade, CEO Elon Musk revealed that Block 5 boosters were “designed to do 10 or more flights with no [scheduled] refurbishment” and “at least 100 flights [with moderate scheduled maintenance.]” Relative to the Space Shuttle, the only other operational orbital-class reusable rocket in history, 10 flights with little to no refurbishment would be an extraordinary achievement

Around 36 months later, albeit a year and a half after Musk anticipated SpaceX might reach that milestones, a Falcon 9 booster has successfully completed ten orbital-class launches and lived to tell the tale.

Falcon 9 B1051 is the first liquid rocket booster ever to complete ten launches and the rocket certainly looks the part. (Richard Angle)

26 months after the booster first took flight in support of Crew Dragon’s March 2019 uncrewed orbital launch debut, Falcon 9 B1051 has narrowly beaten several of flight-proven siblings to become the first liquid rocket booster of any kind to complete ten launches. Just four days prior to that historic tenth flight, Falcon 9 booster B1049 became the second SpaceX rocket (after B1051) to ace nine launches and landings.

SpaceX quickly processed booster B1049 after its own port return and Falcon 9 B1051 narrowly missed greeting its still-vertical sibling by just a few days. Together, over the course of the 19 orbital launches those two Falcon 9 boosters have supported in ~30 months, B1049 and B1051 have collectively delivered more than 260 metric tons (~570,000 lb) of satellites and spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO), geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), and the International Space Station (ISS).

Advertisement
Falcon 9 B1051 is pictured in January 2019 before its first launch. (SpaceX)
Two and half years and ten launches later, the booster looks decidedly “flight-proven.” (Richard Angle)

That performance is roughly equivalent to two expendable Saturn V Moon rocket launches for a total launch cost to SpaceX likely less than $500 million, while five of those 19 launches also brought in revenue on the order of $400M to $500M. In effect, even the small handful of commercial launches B1049 and B1051 have completed likely generated enough revenue to wholly amortize the cost of a dozen or more additional launches. SpaceX has still had to pay for propellant, maritime recovery assets, any necessary refurbishment, and the hundreds of satellites both boosters have launched, but Falcon booster reusability still offers an extraordinary return on investment even with that multitude of caveats.

Falcon 9 B1051’s safe return also means that SpaceX should have no trouble turning the booster around as it prepares to push past the ten-flight target behind Block 5’s upgrade. In recent months, multiple SpaceX executives have stated that SpaceX intends to push well beyond that ten-flight goal as boosters with more and more flight experience continue to come back in excellent condition. CEO Elon Musk even indicated that SpaceX may intentionally fly Falcon 9’s fleet-leader (B1051, in this case) until something on the booster fails during a launch or landing. SpaceX’s own Starlink launches offer the perfect opportunity for that kind of pragmatic risk-taking.

Falcon 9 booster B1051’s titanium grid fins have developed a rainbow patina over ten hypersonic reentries. (Richard Angle)
(Richard Angle)
B1051’s aft engine and landing legs section certainly looks like it’s been through 10 launches and hypersonic reentries. (Richard Angle)

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

Advertisement
Comments

Investor's Corner

Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’

Published

on

Credit: MarcoRP | X

Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.

In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.

In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:

“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”

This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.

The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.

The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.

This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.

Continue Reading

Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

Published

on

SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.

“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.

It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”

Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.

There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:

“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”

SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.

Continue Reading

News

Tesla expands massive safety feature worldwide in latest update

Published

on

Credit: Tesla

Tesla has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”

Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.

For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.

The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):

“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”

Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.

Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.

The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.

Continue Reading