News
SpaceX Starlink job posting signals serious interest in a growing multi-billion dollar market
A new SpaceX Starlink job posting hints that the company is very interested in an established multi-billion dollar market for high-quality satellite internet – a use-case its Starlink constellation should be a perfect fit for.
One of the biggest sources for a recent boom in global demand for satellite broadband services, in-flight connectivity (IFC) is a rapidly growing market well on its way to multi-billion dollar annual revenues within the next few years. Almost anyone with any experience traveling by air is likely familiar with the promises and pitfalls offered by in-flight WiFi, which can often feel extremely convenient and futuristic while still bringing up old memories of DSL internet and flip-phones. Arguably, most – if not all – of the downsides of modern in-flight connectivity and the patchwork addition of onboard servers carrying limited offline entertainment options are caused by technical limitations in the existing IFC ‘pipeline’.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is just a few months into the years-long process of manufacturing and launching a vast constellation of thousands of Starlink internet satellites, designed to blanket every inch of the Earth with high-quality internet service. With internal goals stretching as high as ~40,000 satellites, Starlink could one day offer enough bandwidth to singlehandedly satisfy the internet needs of hundreds of millions – if not billions – of customers worldwide. In the interim, however, how and where SpaceX chooses to commercially deploy its nascent constellation will be critical in its first few years of operations, and in-flight connectivity is one such place where Starlink could theoretically crush existing options and come to dominate the growing market.
A few days ago, SpaceX published its first job posting exclusively dedicated to “aeronautical terminals”, referring to a type of Starlink user terminals (an antenna and associated hardware) optimized for installation on aircraft fuselages. Thanks to an almost $29 million Starlink contract awarded by the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) contract in 2018, SpaceX has already built and successfully tested aeronautical terminal prototypes on military aircraft, with even more ambitious tests soon to come. As such, it would be reasonable to assume than a new job posting for such terminals would be focused on SpaceX’s military work.
Instead, SpaceX’s February 21st listing explicitly refers to the new position as an opportunity to “[certify] Starlink aeronautical terminals [for] commercial and business jet aircraft…[and] play a critical role in deploying an industry-changing In-Flight Communications (IFC) service”, unequivocally confirming the company’s interest in entering the broader IFC market.
While SpaceX has already launched an incredible 240 Starlink v1.0 satellites in the last two months alone, the company has yet to reveal any specific information about the user terminals customers will use to connect to the orbiting network. Earlier this year, CEO Elon Musk did briefly mention that the terminal would look like a “thin, flat, round UFO on a stick”, while COO and President Gwynne Shotwell stated last year that the terminal would be “beautiful” at Musk’s request. Aside from those comments and a few even older ones, the no-less-critical Starlink component remains a bit of a mystery, although we do know that SpaceX intends to mass produce millions of the devices itself.
Still, SpaceX has made it clear that it’s already testing terminals with some success, noting late last year that it managed to deliver bandwidth of ~610 megabits per second (Mbps) to a US military aircraft through a single flight-optimized terminal. That testing was performed with 60 ‘v0.9’ satellites, meaning that all Starlink satellites launched after May 2019 should be able to offer even more bandwidth thanks to the addition of higher-capacity ‘Ka-band’ antennas.
While much is still unknown, the available details paint a fascinating picture of Starlink’s potential in the IFC market. Driven by unprecedentedly ambitious and strict cost targets, SpaceX already builds, owns, and operates its own Falcon rockets, Starlink satellites, and (soon) Starlink terminals – including variants optimized for consumer, aeronautical, and ground station use. In short, SpaceX is building the most vertically-integrated space-based service in the history of commercial space.
What can effectively be considered a very early pre-alpha of the Starlink satellites, terminals, and network has already demonstrated the ability to deliver bandwidth of more than 600 Mbps to a single in-flight aircraft, at least five times better than the best solutions currently available (~100 Mbps). Thanks to their location in low Earth orbit (LEO), Starlink satellites will also be able to offer latency (the gap between when you click and when something happens) as good as or better than what most people have access to on the ground.
By building and owning every critical aspect of the complex pipeline needed for its Starlink network, SpaceX has full control from start to finish. With Falcon 9 rockets and Starlink satellites, this has meant that SpaceX can reach cost targets that are up to several times cheaper than competing solutions and do so while meeting or beating their technical capabilities. With in-flight connectivity, the rockets, satellites, terminals, and ground infrastructure needed to create a functional network all factor heavily into the prices that can be offered to end-users and as of 2020, there simply isn’t an IFC provider on Earth in a position to compete with the level of vertical integration SpaceX may be able to offer.
If SpaceX can launch several thousand satellites and figure out how to affordably mass-produce unprecedentedly high-performance terminals (still up for debate), it’s safe to say that Starlink is going to run through existing IFC providers like a brick wall. Aside from potentially beating them on cost, Starlink – offering perhaps 600-1000+ Mbps per plane – could theoretically allow 100-200 airline passengers to simultaneously stream videos, browse the web, and even game in flight as if they were on the ground. Existing providers are physically incapable of competing with something like that without extensive infrastructure upgrades.
According to Satellite Markets & Research, the annual revenue of passenger aircraft IFC broke $1 billion for the first time in 2018 and the overall market is expected to be worth at least $36 billion (~$3.5B/year) from 2019 to 2029. Major provider Inmarsat estimates that the IFC market could be worth up to $15 billion annually by 2035. With a bit of luck, SpaceX could easily secure a major portion of that pot within just a handful of years.
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Investor's Corner
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Elon Musk says Starship Flight 15 will try to catch the ship itself, a first.
Elon Musk says SpaceX’s next Starship flight will try something nobody has done before, by catching the ship itself. Speaking to roughly 2,000 people at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on Saturday, Musk said Flight 15 is about four to six weeks away and “probably launches a little bit before Thanksgiving, is my guess.”
That is a slip from earlier reporting, which had pointed to a launch as early as October 19. Musk explained why the date keeps moving. “We’re making a bunch of improvements to the rocket between every flight,” he said, adding that there are often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small changes. This time the list is short, “but some of them take a fair bit of work and we’ve got to go inside the tank to make some of these changes.”
“We’re going to try to catch the ship, which is a super big deal,” Musk said. “If we do so, that’ll be the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket.” SpaceX has already caught the Super Heavy booster with the tower’s mechanical arms, and has talked about catching the ship since late 2025, but the upper stage has never been caught.
Musk also laid out what comes after. “The next big milestone would be to refly both the booster and the ship,” he said, describing a Flight 16 where “all parts of an orbital rocket are reflown.”
The reason SpaceX wants this comes down to cost and cadence. Every Starship ship so far has ended its flight in the ocean, and SpaceX expects most of those water landings to end in fireballs. A ship that returns to Starbase intact can be inspected and flown again. SpaceX’s IPO filing, says Starship V3 is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, that SpaceX aims to cut the cost to reach orbit by 99% or more versus the historical average, and that tower catches should allow “multiple launches per day.”
The payoff goes beyond cheaper launches. The next generation Starlink V3 satellites are too large for Falcon 9 and can only fly on Starship, which can carry up to 60 per flight. Flight 14 on September 28 deployed the first 26 of them after Starship reached orbit despite an early engine shutdown, as Teslarati reported. Musk blamed engine computer software, and said the heat shield “was extremely robust,” which he claimed in August had solved Starship’s biggest challenge.
NASA’s Moon plans depend on the same capability. NASA’s inspector general has described a lander mission that needs a propellant depot in low Earth orbit and more than 10 tanker flights, with SpaceX targeting one tanker launch every six days. That schedule only works if ships and boosters come back fast and fly again. Also, ship to ship propellant transfer has not been attempted yet.
One interesting hurdle yet to be explored is bringing the ship back to the launch site, with reentry over land, which will undoubtedly come with a lot of aviation safety reviews.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
News
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.
Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.
One month after launch, we’ve scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days https://t.co/EagJy2JAsm
— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 10, 2026
Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.
RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.
Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
