News
SpaceX closes in on West Coast Starlink launches with lease for drone ship dock space
Amid a major hiring push and calls for monthly launches, SpaceX has taken its latest step towards launching Starlink satellites from the West Coast with a lease for rocket recovery ship dock space at the Port of Long Beach.
News of the port lease broke on April 26th with a tweet from the mayor of Long Beach, California after the Port of Long Beach (POLB) Commission voted to approve SpaceX’s 24-month sublease with an effective start date of May 1st, 2021. From 2014 to 2020, a massive floating rocket launch complex and associated service ships once used by SeaLaunch called POLB’s Pier 16 home while mothballed and the company left behind a decent amount of infrastructure when it vacated the facility last year.
That includes a ~5600 square meter (~65,000 sq ft) warehouse and office space formerly used to process SeaLaunch payloads and Ukrainian Zenit rockets, as well as a pier and dock space generally optimized for loading and unloading large rockets from rocket transport ships. In other words, Pier 16 is a perfect fit for SpaceX’s needs.
The news came as a surprise because SpaceX already has a lease for several berths and dock space at Port of San Pedro, which – along with Port of Long Beach – makes up the greater Port of Los Angeles. SpaceX has used those facilities for the better part of a decade – initially to support Dragon spacecraft recoveries but later as a hub for drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) and fairing recovery ship Mr. Steven (later Ms. Tree).
SpaceX has a bit of a sordid history with port leases over the last several years after twice entering and backing out of Port of Los Angeles (San Pedro) lease agreements to build a Starship factory directly on the water in 2018 and 2020. This time around, POLB commission documents indicate that this new lease is not the third in a line of ill-fated Starship factory plans – but instead a simple relocation of existing West Coast Falcon rocket recovery operations just two miles east of their current home.
It’s unclear why exactly SpaceX is leasing much larger berth and dock space at a port in competition with its current Port of Los Angeles landlord or if Pier 16 will be an addition to – or a replacement for – its current berths to the west. At approximately $100,000 per month, Pier 16 will be substantially more expensive, ruling out cost savings, which could mean that SpaceX has reason to believe that its West Coast rocket recovery operations are going to experience a substantial uptick in activity in the near future.
Indeed, in retrospect, SpaceX’s current Port of San Pedro berths and dock space have always been fairly limited, offering just enough space for a few small tents on concrete and a drone ship and two support vessels to park end to end. Assuming SpaceX moves all operations to Pier 16 and closes out its San Pedro lease, the new facilities should offer a bit more dock space along the pier itself, as well as far more room – and an existing warehouse with offices – to process recovered Falcon boosters and fairings.
Over half a decade of operations, SpaceX recovered Falcon boosters with drone ship JRTI just seven times (of eight attempts) on the West Coast, making it clear why the company simply chose to make do with close quarters and a barebones dockside setup. Now, however, SpaceX appears to be preparing its Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) launch site and associated Port of LA recovery assets for a far more ambitious period of Falcon 9 launch activity.
Other observations support that conclusion. Over the last six or so months, SpaceX has been aggressively hiring to fully outfit its VAFB SLC-4 launch pad after supporting just two West Coast launches in the last ~28 months. Most notably, hiring ‘flyers’ distributed on social media by SpaceX employees touted a target of monthly launches from the company’s West Coast pad – an unprecedented cadence over the decade SpaceX has leased it.
First reported by Spaceflight Now, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell recently revealed that the company intends to begin dedicated polar Starlink launches from Vandenberg as early as this summer – July 2021 if taken literally. Other “industry officials” reportedly corroborated those plans.
With its hiring campaign finally starting to slow down and a new Port of Long Beach lease set to open on May 1st, the only real ‘missing link’ for SpaceX’s plans to restart regular West Coast Falcon 9 launches is the fleet of ships the company will need to recover Falcon boosters and payload fairings. To maximize efficiency, dedicated polar Starlink launches will require Falcon 9 boosters to land far downrange and will be even more challenging than the rocket’s now-routine missions to low Earth orbit (LEO), which require almost every ounce of performance the rocket can give.
SpaceX transported its second drone ship – Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) – across the Panama Canal from Port of LA to Port Canaveral, Florida in 2019, where it still operates today. To achieve SpaceX’s planned cadence of up to 48 launches in 2021, the company will almost certainly need both drone ships on the East Coast. A third drone ship – named A Shortfall Of Gravitas (ASOG) – has been in the works for years, though SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has long described the vessel as an addition to the company’s Florida fleet that would enable Falcon Heavy to land all three first-stage boosters at sea for maximum payload capacity.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if SpaceX intends to send that third drone ship directly to California to support an imminent series of polar Starlink launches.
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
