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SpaceX’s upgraded Starship set for test flight despite sore NASA contract losers
Within the last week, while SpaceX has been diligently working to ready an upgraded Starship prototype for its first launch, former competitors Blue Origin and Dynetics – both of which recently lost a historic NASA Moon lander contract to SpaceX – have filed “protests” and forced the space agency to freeze work (and funds).
That means that NASA is now legally unable to use funds or resources related to its Human Lander System (HLS) program or the $2.9 billion contract it awarded SpaceX on April 16th to develop a variant of Starship to return humanity to the Moon. However, just like SpaceX has already spent a great deal of its own time and money on Starship development and – more recently – a rapid-fire series of launches, the company appears to have no intention of letting sore losers hamper its rocket factory or test campaign.
Instead, on the same two days Blue Origin and Dynetics loudly filed official protests with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), SpaceX performed two back-to-back static fire tests with a Starship prototype and Raptor engines outfitted with “hundreds of improvements.” Technical challenges and unsavory weather conditions forced SpaceX to call off a launch planned sometime last week but the company now appears to be on track to launch Starship prototype SN15 as early as Tuesday, May 4th.
In principle, the ability for companies to protest US government contracting decisions is a necessity and (nominally) a net good but it can easily be misused – and often in damaging ways. In the case of Blue Origin and Dynetics, it’s difficult not to perceive both protests as examples of the latter.
Blue Origin effectively disagrees with every single major point made and conclusion drawn by NASA’s Source Selection Authority (Kathy Lueders) and a separate panel of experts – often to the point that the company is strongly implying that it understands NASA’s contracting process better than the space agency itself. Blue Origin partners Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are both partially or fully responsible for several of their own catastrophic acquisition boondoggles (F-35, Orion, SLS, James Webb Space Telescope, etc.) and are part of the military-industrial complex primarily responsible for turning US military and aerospace procurement into the quagmire of political interests, quasi-monopolies, and loopholes it is today.
The primary argument is generally shared by both protestors. In essence, Dynetics [p. 23; PDF] and Blue Origin [PDF] believe that it was unfair or improper for NASA to select just a single provider from the three companies or groups that competed. They argue that downselecting to one provider in lieu of budget shortfalls changed the procurement process and competition so much that NASA should have effectively called it quits and restarted the entire five-month process. Blue Origin and Dynetics also both imply that they were somehow blindsided by NASA’s concerns about a Congressional funding shortfall.
In reality, NASA could scarcely have been clearer that it was exceptionally sensitive about HLS funding and extremely motivated to attempt to return humans to the Moon by 2024 with or without the full support of Congress – albeit in fewer words. As Lueders herself noted in the HLS Option A award selection statement, the solicitation Blue, Dynetics, and SpaceX responded to states – word for word – that “the overall number of awards will be dependent upon funding availability and evaluation results.”
Additionally, implications that NASA somehow blindsided offerors with its lack of funding are woefully ignorant at best and consciously disingenuous at worse. Anyone with even the slightest awareness of the history of large-scale NASA programs would know that the space agency’s budget is all but exclusively determined by Congress each year and liable to change just as frequently if political winds shift. Short of blackmailing members of Congress or wistfully hoping that other avenues of legal political influence and partnership actually lead to desired funding and priorities appearing in appropriations legislation, NASA knows the future of its budget about as well as anyone else with access to the internet and a rudimentary awareness of history and current events.
It became clear that Congress was likely to drastically underfund NASA’s HLS program as early as November 2020 – weeks before HLS Option A proposals were due. The latest appropriations bill was passed on January 3rd, 2021, providing NASA $850 million of the ~$3.4 billion it requested for HLS. Historically, NASA’s experience with the Commercial Crew Program – public knowledge available to anyone – likely made it clear to the agency that it could not trust Congress to fund its priorities in good faith when half a decade of drastic underfunding ultimately delayed the critical program by several years. That damage was done by merely halving NASA Commercial Crew budget request from 2010 to 2013, whereas Congress had already set itself on a path to provide barely a quarter of the HLS funds NASA asked for in the weeks before Moon lander proposals were due.
Ultimately, the protests filed by Blue Origin and Dynetics are packed to the brim with petty axe-grinding, attempts to paint SpaceX in a negative light, and a general lack of indication that either company is operating in good faith. Instead, their protests appear all but guaranteed to fail while simultaneously forcing NASA to freeze HLS work and delay related disbursements for up to 100 days. Given that SpaceX is now technically working to design, build, qualify, and fly an uncrewed Lunar Starship prototype by 2023 and a crewed demonstration landing by 2024, 100 days represents a full 7-10% of the time that’s available to complete that extraordinary task.
Ironically, the protests made by Blue Origin and Dynetics have already helped demonstrate why NASA’s decision – especially in light of unambiguous budgetary restrictions – to sole-source its HLS Moon lander contract to SpaceX was an astute one. Had a victorious Blue Origin or Dynetics been in a similar position to SpaceX, it’s almost impossible to imagine either team continuing work to a significant degree in lieu of NASA funding or direction. SpaceX, on the other hand, hasn’t missed a beat and looks set to continue Starship development, production, and testing around the clock regardless of NASA’s capacity to help.
In other words, with a little luck, the actual schedule impact of a maximum 100-day work and funding freeze should be a tiny fraction of what it could have been if NASA had selected an HLS provider more interested in profit margins and stock buybacks than creating a sustainable path for humanity’s expansion beyond Earth.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk calls Earth’s data centers “peanuts” next to what SpaceX is planning in orbit
Elon Musk says SpaceX capex efficiency is underestimated as orbital data centers loom by 2028.
Elon Musk is pushing back on one of the biggest worries hanging over SpaceX stock. In a reply on X on Sunday, Musk said the company’s capital expenditure efficiency is severely underestimated. He was responding to a Milk Road Stocks post citing analyst Kyle Reidhead, who estimates SpaceX will need to spend roughly $470 billion over the next five quarters.
Reidhead built that figure around the target SpaceX set on its third quarter earnings call: 13 gigawatts or more of compute by the end of 2027. In his breakdown, Nvidia captures 83 to 89 percent of the spending. SpaceX ended the quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute and guided to $35 billion to $40 billion in fourth quarter capex, as Teslarati reported.
Musk did not attach a number to his claim, but the earnings call shows the argument. CFO Bret Johnsen said new compute currently pays for itself in under a year at today’s pricing, and Musk said that window could shrink to six months next year. Using that pace, Reidhead argues about $230 billion of the $470 billion could come from operating cash flow and about $60 billion from SpaceX’s roughly $90 billion cash pile, leaving around $180 billion to borrow. Musk confirmed last week that SpaceX had already closed a new $40 billion debt raise to buy GPUs.
The ground buildout is not the end goal. It is what is meant to pay for the move to orbit. Replying on Friday to charts built from Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s SpaceX model, Musk wrote that “Terrestrial compute will be peanuts compared to orbital compute,” adding that orbital compute deployed per month “probably exceeds terrestrial around the end of 2028 and then far exceeds it in 2029.”
Maguire’s model shows how steep that path is. It has capex climbing from $88 billion this year to $290 billion in 2027 and $369 billion in 2028, with SpaceX burning $77.8 billion in cash this year and $122.6 billion next year before turning $114.9 billion cash positive in 2028. Musk’s response to the model was, “I think we can do better.”
The orbital half runs through Starmind. SpaceX plans to operate up to 1 million AI satellites flying in clusters of about 10, linked by roughly 10 terabits of bandwidth, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027 out of its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, according to SpaceX’s space safety page. Musk has said each Starmind spacecraft will carry more than 250 kW of solar power.
Getting there depends on launch volume. Maguire’s model assumes 250 Starship flights in 2028, up from two this year and 38 next year. The nearer test is financial: SpaceX guided to $33 billion to $37 billion in first quarter 2027 revenue, more than double the $14.58 billion it booked in Q3, and Musk reposted that guidance again on Sunday morning.
Elon Musk
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is now the centerpiece of the company’s newly revised Referral Program, which launched on October 29.
Instead of referring people to purchase vehicles and the referrer receiving $250 in Tesla Credit, the new program now incentivizes Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
If a Tesla owner is on an FSD trial and uses a referral code to subscribe to Full Self-Driving, the person whose Referral Link was used will receive one month of FSD (Supervised). Their code can be utilized 12 times per year, with January 1 marking the reset date.
Realistically, this means that if your Referral Code is used by 12 Tesla owners on an FSD trial, you will receive a full year of FSD for free.
🚨 Here is Tesla’s new Referral Program for Full Self-Driving (Supervised):
When someone subscribes to FSD using your link, you’ll get a month free. Up to a year of FSD is available to you for free!
If you’d like to use my link: https://t.co/g00IX9OCE3 https://t.co/GFBzEO2jjS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The previous program made it pretty difficult to get referrals; buying a vehicle is obviously a much larger financial strain than subscribing to Full Self-Driving for a month.
Of course, the previous Referral Program also offered a tangible benefit: $250 in credits you could use on Service, Supercharging, or anything in the Tesla Shop. It truly could pay for someone’s travel for a year. It recently bought me a new backpack and a T-shirt.
However, this new program is much more attainable for those who do not have a massive online presence of a slew of friends in the Tesla community who will use the code and max out subscriptions for vehicle purchases.
Woke up to maxed out Referrals! Thank you guys, that’s awesome!
Share your referral link below so others can use it! https://t.co/kesbwTcoTV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The Full Self-Driving suite will now be the keystone of the Referral Program, which makes it more inclusive and more fun for everyone with an awesome benefit.
It also gives the impression that Tesla is truly focused on FSD subscriptions, something that saw a tremendous increase in volume in Q3, as 75 percent of deliveries for the quarter came with an FSD subscription attached.
Full Self-Driving data is so instrumental to the suite’s improvement that this kind of program benefits Tesla as much as it does the consumer.
Elon Musk calls Earth’s data centers “peanuts” next to what SpaceX is planning in orbit
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
