SpaceX
SpaceX will build and launch Starship/Super Heavy in Texas and Florida, says Musk
According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the company has plans to both build and launch BFR’s Starship upper stages and Super Heavy boosters at facilities located in Boca Chica, Texas and Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Indicative of SpaceX and Musk’s rapidly evolving plans for the next-generation, ultra-reusable launch system, the to stainless steel over carbon composites appears to continue to have a range of trickle-down consequences (or benefits) throughout the rocket’s design, production, launch, and operations. Given the 3+ radical, clean-sheet design changes the BFR program has undergone in about as many years, it’s hard to definitively conclude much about the latest iteration. Nevertheless, Musk’s indication that stainless steel BFRs may now be built simultaneously at multiple locations suggests that the construction of steel Starships and Super Heavies could be radically easier (and cheaper) than their composite predecessors.
Over the last several months, SpaceX’s manufacturing plans for the massive Starship and Super Heavy vehicles have effectively been up in the air from a public perspective. Official statements provided in January suggested that the first prototypes would be built in-situ after word broke that SpaceX had prematurely terminated a lease with the Port of Los Angeles, where the company had – throughout 2018 – been planning to construct a dedicated seaside BFR factory.
Likely for a variety of reasons, all of which are unknown, SpaceX apparently no longer has a pressing need for dedicated traditional manufacturing facilities at this point in time. Instead, the company is relying extensively on the largely unprecedented practice of building its first suborbital and orbital Starship and Super Heavy vehicles outdoors, much to the visible discomfort of aerospace industry practitioners, followers, and fans alike.
At a bare minimum, SpaceX’s decision to fabricate and assemble large-scale methalox rocket stages with quite literally zero protection from the elements may be one of the most ‘nontraditional’ things the habitually disruptive company has ever done. At the opposite end of the spectrum, building rockets outside could be perceived as an unfathomably foolish endeavor, radically increasing the risk of dangerous manufacturing defects, foreign objects debris (FOD) mitigation, and – ultimately – major vehicle failures. From such an external perspective, wholly lacking any insight from SpaceX itself, it’s difficult to conclude much of anything.
On the one hand, a highly-disciplined adherence to the tenets of best aerospace industry practices and responsible engineering could probably mitigate the risks of en 
Given that the production of orbital-class, super-heavy lift rockets has really only been attempted twice (Saturn V and Russia’s N1), both times with custom-built, environmentally-controlled factories, it’s likely that SpaceX is already suffering from the inherent uncertainty of the tasks at hand; forging new ground – especially in highly technical fields – is rarely easy or forgiving. Given the aforementioned challenges of building large and reliable rockets at all, challenges that regularly topple vehicles built in traditional factories, it will likely remain an open question if SpaceX can consistently build reliable, technologically-advanced rockets and spacecraft outside until those vehicles have quite literally proven themselves in orbit.
Toot Toot! Hopper is chomping at the bit today!
?@BocaChicaGal https://t.co/0ZEXcKOWwH pic.twitter.com/PEm7c12KTi— Chris B – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) March 18, 2019
Difficulties aside, it’s easy to understand why SpaceX (or maybe just Elon) is willing to at least attempt something that has never been done before. If the company could find a way to reliably build complex, high-performance rockets without the need for expensive factories, it could radically change the paradigm of rocketry by reducing the often eye-watering upfront costs of building giant launch vehicles. The ability to build rockets almost independently of dedicated factories or assembly facilities would also allow SpaceX to – as Musk said – build their vehicles where they launch, further minimizing the significant challenges and costs of transporting extremely large structures more than a couple of miles.
Regardless of the major challenges standing between SpaceX and its stainless steel Starship/Super Heavy aspirations, Elon Musk appears to be as confident as ever, frankly stating that Starship’s rate of progress “far exceeds” that of Falcon and Dragon. In other words, the apparent instability of the BFR program may actually end up being to its benefit, potentially resulting in a finished product that simultaneously takes less time to come to fruition and is ultimately much closer to its original design intent. At risk of putting the wrong words into Musk’s mouth, it seems that he believes that SpaceX might be able to arrive at a Starship/Super Heavy combo much closer to Falcon 9 Block 5 than Falcon 9 V1.0 and do so far sooner than most believe is possible.
Only time will tell. In the meantime, there will be plenty of fireworks, beginning as early as this week with the first static fire test – and potential hops – of SpaceX’s massive Starship Hopper. Stay tuned for updates!
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SpaceXAI announced today that it had signed an agreement with Anthropic to give the company access to its Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee.
It is a monumental deal as Anthropic will gain access to all of the compute at the plant, delivering more than 300 megawatts of power and over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs within the month.
Anthropic’s Claude AI account on X announced the partnership:
“We’ve agreed to a partnership with SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity. This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API.”
The company is also:
- Doubling Claude Code’s 5-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, and Team plans;
- Removing the peak hours limit reduction on Claude Code for Pro and Max plans; and
- Substantially raising its API rate limits for Opus models.
We’ve agreed to a partnership with @SpaceX that will substantially increase our compute capacity.
This, along with our other recent compute deals, means that we’ve been able to increase our usage limits for Claude Code and the Claude API.
— Claude (@claudeai) May 6, 2026
SpaceX also published its own release on the new agreement, noting that it is “the only organization with the launch cadence, mass-to-orbit economics, and constellation operations experience to make orbital compute a near-term engineering program rather than a research concept.”
CEO Elon Musk also commented on the partnership and shed light on intense meetings he had with senior members of Anthropic last week, stating, “nobody set on my evil detector.”
Same here.
By way of background for those who care, I spent a lot of time last week with senior members of the Anthropic team to understand what they do to ensure Claude is good for humanity and was impressed.
Everyone I met was highly competent and cared a great deal about…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2026
This has turned the argument that SpaceX is as much an AI company as a space exploration company into a very valid argument:
SpaceX is following in Tesla’s footsteps in a way nobody expected
Nevertheless, this is an incredibly valuable and important move in the grand scheme of things. AI scaling is fundamentally bottlenecked by compute, and demand for Claude has surged, bringing terrestrial power grids, land, and cooling operations hitting limits everywhere.
Anthropic has been aggressively signing multiple large-scale deals to be competitive in the space, including:
- Up to 5GW with Amazon
- 5GW with Google and Broadcom
- Strategic $30b Azure deal with Microsoft/NVIDIA
- $50b U.S. infrastructure investment with Fluidstack
Access to Colossus 1 gives Anthropic immediate relief on NVIDIA GPU capacity. For SpaceXAI, it turns its rapid buildout into revenue. It also showcases its ability to deliver at world-leading speed and scale.
Most importantly, it plants the seed that its much larger vision, orbital AI compute, is totally viable.
Starlink V3 satellites could enable SpaceX’s orbital computing plans: Musk
Within the month, Anthropic will begin using 100 percent of Colossus 1’s compute, directly expanding capacity for Claude Pro and Max subscribers and the API. This means fewer limits, faster responses, and support for heavier workloads.
In the long term, meaning 2026 and beyond, there will be a continued rollout of other multi-GW deals Anthropic has signed, and an early exploration of orbital compute with SpaceXAI.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Board has set a Mars bonus for Elon Musk
SpaceX has given Elon Musk the goal to put one million people on Mars.
SpaceX’s board approved a compensation plan for Elon Musk that ties his pay directly to colonizing Mars and building data centers in outer space. The details surfaced this week after Reuters reviewed SpaceX’s confidential registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, making it one of the first concrete looks inside the company’s financials ahead of a public offering.
The pay package will reportedly award Musk 200 million super-voting restricted shares if the company hits a market valuation milestone, with the most ambitious targets going further. To unlock the full award, SpaceX would need to reach a $7.5 trillion valuation and help establish a permanent human settlement on Mars with at least one million residents. Additional incentives are tied to developing space-based computing infrastructure capable of delivering at least 100 terawatts of processing power.
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
Long before SpaceX filed anything with the SEC, Elon Musk had already spent years framing Mars colonization as an insurance policy against human extinction. The philosophy traces back to at least 2001, when Musk first began researching Mars missions independently, before SpaceX even existed. By 2002 he had founded the company with Mars as the stated long-term goal.
In a 2017 presentation at the International Astronautical Congress, Musk outlined the specific vision that still underpins SpaceX’s architecture today. He described a self-sustaining city on Mars requiring roughly one million people to become viable, the same number now written into his compensation package.
SpaceX’s Starship, still in active development, was designed from the ground up to support the eventual colonization of Mars. Musk has stated publicly that getting the cost per ton to Mars below $100,000 is necessary to make mass migration economically feasible. Everything from Starship’s payload capacity to its full reusability targets flows from that single constraint. One can say that Musk’s latest compensation package has put a formal valuation on Mars for the first time.
SpaceX is targeting an IPO around June 28, Musk’s birthday, at a valuation of approximately $1.75 trillion. Between the Mars rover contract, the Golden Dome software group, Space Force satellite launches, and now a pay structure built around interplanetary colonization, SpaceX has become the single most consequential contractor in American space and defense. The IPO will put a public price tag on all of it for the first time.
News
UPDATE: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy that launched a Tesla into space is back on a mission
SpaceX Falcon Heavy returns after 18 months away to deliver a satellite that only it could carry.
UPDATE: 10:29 a.m. et: SpaceX is standing down from today’s Falcon Heavy launch of the ViaSat-3 F3 mission due to unfavorable weather. A new target date will be shared once confirmed.
After an 18-month absence, SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is returning to mission on Monday morning when it’s scheduled to lift off from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center at 10:21 a.m. EDT.
The mission is called ViaSat-3 F3, and the heavy satellite payload needs to reach geostationary orbit, sitting 22,236 miles above Earth where its speed matches the planet’s rotation. Getting a satellite that heavy to that altitude demands more thrust than a single-core Falcon 9 can deliver.
This marks the Falcon Heavy’s 12th flight overall since its debut in February 2018, and its first since NASA’s Europa Clipper mission in October 2024.
Arguably, the most exciting element for spectators will be watching the booster recoveries in action when the two side boosters, B1072 and B1075, will attempt simultaneous landings at Landing Zone 2 and the newer Landing Zone 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, while the center core will be expended over the ocean.
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
Following satellite deployment, expected roughly five hours after launch, ViaSat-3 F3 will spend several months traveling to its final orbital slot before undergoing in-orbit testing, with service entry expected by late summer 2026
As Teslarati reported, NASA awarded SpaceX a $175.7 million contract on April 16, 2026, to launch the ESA Rosalind Franklin Mars rover aboard a Falcon Heavy no earlier than late 2028, which would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars. That contract came on top of an already deep pipeline that includes the Roman Space Telescope, the Dragonfly Saturn mission, and multiple national security payloads.
SpaceX executed 165 missions in 2025 and now accounts for approximately 85% of all global orbital launches. With Starlink surpassing 10 million subscribers and an IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation still ahead, Monday’s launch is one more data point in a company that has quietly become the backbone of both commercial and government space access worldwide.
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