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SpaceX’s Starbase environmental review delayed another month
The FAA says that it will take at least another month to complete a crucial environmental review of orbital Starship launches from SpaceX’s South Texas Starbase facilities.
The agency now expects that Starbase’s Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) will be completed no earlier than March 28th, 2022, delaying the process at least another four weeks on top of an initial delay from December 31st, 2021 to February 28th, 2022. However, while the FAA gained some infamy for repeatedly delay SpaceX Starbase launch operations in late 2020 and early 2021, there is growing evidence that other US government agencies – not the FAA itself – are primarily responsible for most of the review’s delays.
Namely, information acquired through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request indicates that US Departments of Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) and National Parks Services (NPS) are the primary sources of recent delays and the only real sources of discord this late in the process. As an example, as of the end of October 2021, the NPS had a list of at least 31 comments on SpaceX’s Starbase Draft PEA, each of which would have required a detailed response and additional back-and-forth to refine each response. The critiques and requests cover virtually every aspect of orbital Starship launches from Starbase, including FAA launch license details, recent SpaceX land acquisitions, impacts on a local Civil War battlefield landmark, pad lighting, air quality, noise, paint colors, road closures, Raptor thrust, contingency plans, and more.
Meanwhile, in a general review, the Department of the Interior (DOI) – speaking on behalf of the FWS and NPS – raised concerns about “launch site blast area hazards, closure of FWS and NPS lands, environmental justice (EJ) concerns, NHPA Section 106 and 110(f), [endangered] species, air quality emissions, and climate change impacts. It’s difficult to say how many of the concerns raised are actually serious. For example, the point repeatedly made by the DOI, FWS, and NPS is that hypothetical emissions from a natural gas power plant SpaceX proposed to build in its Draft PEA would violate EPA rules.
However, since that draft was published, there is growing evidence that SpaceX is behind a brand new power distribution line set to connect Boca Chica and Brownsville, Texas. The new lines appear to be sized to provide Starbase with enough power to entirely preclude the need for the construction of any dedicated power plants on site. Only a backup power source of some kind would be necessary. Assuming SpaceX is actually behind the development, it’s difficult to believe that the company hasn’t communicated that change of plans to the FAA and other Starbase PEA stakeholders.
As another example, the Fish and Wildlife Services’ own list of complaints includes the bizarre request that SpaceX increase its estimate for the number of failures that will occur during future Starship testing fivefold from 10% (already an extremely pessimistic figure) to 50% because “[nine] of 16 tests or hops that have occurred [at Starbase]…resulted in some type of anomaly with fire or debris.” While true that many of SpaceX’s developmental Starship tests have resulted in major failures or explosions, the FWS appears to fundamentally misunderstand the purpose of those failures and SpaceX’s approach to development, which is to learn from failures and prevent their reoccurrence. Something would have to go terribly wrong for half of all future Starship ground and flight tests to result in failure when SpaceX’s goal is to develop Starship into a reliable launch vehicle – not to futilely test prototypes forever.
Ultimately, it remains to be seen if SpaceX and the FAA will be able to secure the DOI, FWS, and NPS approvals required to finish the Starbase PEA. If the parties can’t come to some kind of agreement, SpaceX may be forced to effectively restart the environmental review process from scratch and pursue a more thorough Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Completing an EIS could easily take years, potentially forcing SpaceX to give up on South Texas as a site for regular orbital Starship launches.
While CEO Elon Musk recently implied that SpaceX would never abandon Starbase and might use the site as a sort of dedicated research and development facility, it’s difficult to believe that the cost of operating and maintaining an entire Starship factory and orbital launch site would make sense from a programmatic or financial perspective given that SpaceX appears likely to build a Florida Starbase for East Coast Starship launches. SpaceX already has full environmental approval to launch 24 Starships per year from its Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A facilities.
Elon Musk
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks hit a new stage, and one hurdle remains
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks are reportedly advancing, and a deal could arrive by December.
Tesla and SpaceX are moving closer to a combination, with a deal announcement possible as soon as December, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The companies have also discussed a scenario in which the announcement slips into early 2027.
Boards and advisers on both sides are now working through the terms of the deal and the governance structure of the combined company, according to the report. One open item is how many SpaceX shares Tesla investors would receive. Bloomberg had previously reported that the two companies were aiming to announce a deal in the first half of next year and close it before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, so a December announcement would pull that schedule forward by months.
Tesla shares rose as much as 1.9% to $398.35 after the report, while SpaceX gained 0.6% to $140.63. SpaceX carries a market value of about $1.9 trillion following its June IPO, and Tesla is valued at about $1.55 trillion, which would make a combination the largest corporate deal on record. Neither company responded to requests for comment.
The talks became official on October 20, when Elon Musk said on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call that both companies had formed special committees of independent directors to study a merger, as Teslarati reported. Musk said he could not take part because he is “a conflicted party” and called the process “an odd kabuki dance.” He also noted that Tesla would need approval from 50 percent of all outstanding shares, a bar the company missed in 2025 when a board declassification proposal won support from only 39.4 percent.
China remains the biggest structural problem. Bloomberg’s sources said the companies still need to work out how to isolate Tesla’s large and profitable manufacturing business in China from SpaceX’s U.S. government and defense contracts. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta described those two factors last month as “key dynamics that are at odds with each other” for regulatory and shareholder approval. Musk has repeatedly said Tesla has no plans to separate its China business, a position he restated in August after ARK Invest predicted a merger announcement before the end of the year.
Washington adds another layer. Democrats took control of Congress in this month’s midterms and have pledged to investigate Musk’s business and political activities, which could bring added scrutiny to a deal involving one of the Pentagon’s most important launch and satellite contractors.
The report also lands three weeks before Tesla’s December 3 annual meeting at Giga Texas. That ballot has only three items, led by the re-election of Musk, board chair Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel, and includes no merger proposal. Any deal announced in December would likely require a separate special meeting for Tesla shareholders to vote on it.
The two companies already share a growing list of projects, including the Terafab semiconductor plant in Texas. Tesla’s next generation Roadster, which uses cold gas thrusters built on SpaceX hardware, turned up on display at SpaceX headquarters last month and has become one of the clearest public examples of that overlap.
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SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
SpaceX puts a $50 billion price on its Arizona supercompute campus ahead of December’s hearing.
SpaceX has put a price tag on the supercomputer campus it wants to build in the southern Arizona desert. In a statement Thursday, the company said it is pursuing a roughly $50 billion supercompute campus in Cochise County, about 80 miles east of Tucson. Together with a separate facility planned at Starbase, Texas, the two projects add up to more than $74 billion in planned investment.
The Arizona figure had not been disclosed before. SpaceX’s involvement only became public on November 4, when company representatives hosted a packed town hall at Cochise Elementary School for an application filed under the name Tombstone Resources LLC. A SpaceX representative told residents the filing used another name because putting SpaceX on it “draws attention” from outside the county, local station KVOA reported.
The application describes a 747-acre site near the Willcox Playa with up to nine buildings of about 493,000 square feet each. SpaceX plans to bring the campus online in four phases of roughly 1.5 GW, reaching 6 GW at full build, backed by a 24 GWh battery system and about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades. At that size, it would draw about 2.5 times more power than every data center in Maricopa County combined, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.
SpaceX says the project will create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, and that it could cut electricity bills for members of the local cooperatives by up to 20 percent. The campus would use dry cooling with no industrial groundwater use. Its application estimates ongoing water needs of 7 to 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 homes consume.
Power is the bigger question. The site sits next to the Apache Generating Station, a coal and natural gas plant with about 1 GW of capacity that had been slated to retire by 2028. SpaceX told residents its investment could expand the station to more than 6 GW.
Local opposition is organized. A petition asking the county to deny the permit has gathered about 2,400 signatures, and the nearby playa is a landing spot for federally protected sandhill cranes, which SpaceX says its design accounts for. The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, with written comments due November 27. If approved, construction could start in March 2027.
The Texas project faces a vote the same day. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement for SpaceX’s $24 billion gas plant and supercompute facility at its own December 9 hearing, as Teslarati reported. SpaceX said Thursday the Starbase site has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs, and it committed $220 million to Brownsville’s water and wastewater systems, $40 million of which has been paid.
Both campuses would expand a footprint still centered on the Memphis area, where SpaceX’s Colossus data centers run largely on gas turbines and the company won a permit for a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi earlier this year. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute. The Arizona campus alone, at full build, would be more than three times that size.
Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks hit a new stage, and one hurdle remains
SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
