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SpaceX tweaks Starlink Gen2 plans to add Falcon 9 launch option
SpaceX says it has revised plans for its next-generation Starlink Gen2 constellation to allow the upgraded satellites to launch on its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket in addition to Starship, a new and unproven vehicle.
Set to be the largest and most powerful rocket ever flown when it eventually debuts, SpaceX’s two-stage Starship launch vehicle is also intended to be fully reusable, theoretically slashing the cost of launching payloads into and beyond Earth orbit. Most importantly, SpaceX says that even in its fully-reusable configuration, Starship should be capable of launching up to 150 tons (~330,000 lb) to low Earth orbit (LEO) – nearly a magnitude more than Falcon 9. However, once said to be on track to debut as early as mid-2021 to early 2022, it’s no longer clear if Starship will be ready for regular Starlink launches anytime soon.
In August 2021, SpaceX failed a major Starlink Gen2 revision with the FCC that started the company along the path that led to now. That revision revealed plans to dramatically increase the size and capabilities of each Gen2 satellite, boosting their maximum throughput from about 50 gigabits per second (Gbps) to ~150 Gbps. Just as importantly, SpaceX’s August 2021 modification made it clear that the company would prefer to launch the entire constellation with Starship, although it included an alternative constellation design that would lend itself better to Falcon 9 launches.
In January 2022, SpaceX chose to solely pursue the constellation optimized for Starship, strongly indicating that the company believed the rocket would be ready to support Starlink launches in the near future – or at least around the same time the constellation receives its Gen2 FCC license. With the benefit of technical Starlink Gen2 satellite details and renders provided by SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk in Q2 2022, a single Starship Gen2 launch using the current satellite and rocket designs and carrying 54 satellites could potentially deploy around 7-8 times more usable bandwidth than a Falcon 9 with Starlink V1.5, meaning that Starship could achieve similar deployment results with just a few launches per year.
In theory, that makes it at least somewhat easier for Starship to make a major impact even as SpaceX works to ramp up the brand-new rocket’s launch cadence, a task that has almost always taken several years.
However, additional changes made to its Starlink Gen2 FCC license application in August 2022 suggest that SpaceX has at least partially tempered that all-in bet on Starship. The most important modification: developing a different Starlink Gen2 satellite variant that will be optimized to fit inside Falcon 9’s much smaller payload fairing. According to SpaceX, despite the seemingly major form-factor changes required to make Gen2 fit, Starship and Falcon 9-optimized satellites will still be “technically identical.”
The implication is that the satellites launched on Falcon 9 will still offer the same performance as those launched on Starship, albeit in a different form factor. Nonetheless, the only thing SpaceX guarantees in the document is that the Falcon 9-launched Gen2 satellites won’t be more powerful than those launched on Starship, presumably preserving the applicability of existing analysis in the current Starlink Gen2 application. It’s thus possible that Falcon 9-optimized Starlink Gen2 satellites will have to sacrifice some of their performance relative to the unconstrained Starship-optimized variant.
With a usable diameter of 4.6 meters (~15 ft), Falcon 9’s payload fairing is about 50% narrower than the payload bay present on early Starship prototypes. Without a major redesign, Starlink Gen2 satellites optimized for Falcon 9 will likely need to sit vertically inside the fairing, the standard version of which stands 6.7 meters (~22 ft) tall before its conical tip begins curving inwards. Weighing about 1.25 tons (~2750 lb) and measuring 7 meters (~23 ft) long, Starlink Gen2’s design may only need a few moderate tweaks to fit on Falcon 9, but they’ll have to be stacked vertically instead of horizontally. Falcon 9’s established performance of roughly 16.5 tons (payload adapter included) to LEO means that the rocket will be limited to around 12 or 13 Gen2 satellites per launch, however, making the task somewhat easier.
If SpaceX can squeeze that many Starlink Gen2 satellites inside of Falcon 9’s existing reusable fairing, it could still boost the efficiency (total bandwidth per launch) of each Starlink mission by ~50% relative to the same rocket carrying 50-60 Starlink V1.5 satellites. It’s no surprise, then, that SpaceX appears to be doing everything it can to begin launching Starlink Gen2 as quickly as possible, whether or not Starship is ready to help.
Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
