SpaceX
What SpaceX’s successful reuse of Dragon Spacecraft really means
Following Saturday’s auspicious launch and and first stage recovery, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft has successfully rendezvoused and docked with the International Space Station. Bringing with it more than 5,000 pounds of food, water, scientific experiments, and technology demonstrations, the company’s eleventh mission under their first Commercial Resupply Services contract is exceptional for a very unique and specific reason: the vehicle has flown before, bringing cargo to the ISS on SpaceX’s fourth CRS mission to the ISS. This accomplishment makes the Dragon currently docked at the ISS the only commercial spacecraft in human history to be launched into orbit more than once, continuing a tradition of auspicious firsts.
CRS-11 just after liftoff. Note the core designation “35” under the landing leg. (SpaceX)
Slightly more than two months after the first ever successful reuse of an orbital-class rocket, SpaceX now has two extraordinary demonstrations of success in favor of the company’s pursuit of democratizing affordable access to space. Reusability is and has been SpaceX’s method of pursuing that goal for at least a decade, with Musk publicly exhorting the potential benefits of rapid and complete reusability as early as 2007. It is almost a running joke within the community of aerospace and SpaceX fans that Musk will compare commercial airlines to orbital launch services at least once every time he is interviewed, but his point is and has long been clear. If all one has to do to run a transportation service is refuel after every trip, the price of a ticket or cargo transport drastically decreases. While many have slyly laughed or dismissed this goal in the past, often using the Space Shuttle as an example of the futility of reusability as a tool for cost reduction, it is quite hard to deny what SpaceX has accomplished so far.
The reuse of a Cargo Dragon is also arguably far more significant than it may initially appear. SpaceX has not provided any concrete information on the process of refurbishing the capsule, and it is entirely unclear if the “reuse” entailed much more than furnishing the CRS-4 pressure vessel and Draco thrusters with a new trunk, solar array, external shell. It is possible that, just like SES-10, the process of refurbishing a spacecraft for the first time resulted in little to no cost savings, and that this refurbishment took anywhere from several months to more than a year, with the CRS-4 capsule returning from orbit in late 2014. However, given the absolute rarity of reused capsule-type spacecraft, the data that engineers likely gathered throughout the process of refurbishing the Dragon would arguably make the whole process worthwhile even in the worst case scenarios described above. Hans Koenigsmann, Vice President of Mission Assurance at SpaceX, also noted in a press conference following CRS-11’s launch that the refurbishment of the capsule was somewhat uneventful, stating that the CRS-4 capsule had no unanticipated damage from the rigors of reentry and ocean landing and that SpaceX was already ready to consider using the capsule a third time. It’s likely that SpaceX will begin to rely more heavily on Cargo Dragon reuse as they refocus a majority of their manufacturing efforts on Dragon 2.
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- The CRS-4 Dragon just before capture. (NASA)
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- CRS-4 reentered in late 2014 and was recovered in the Pacific Ocean. (SpaceX)
SpaceX and Musk’s (in)famous ultimate ambitions are to make humanity a multiplanterary species, partly as a way to combat the extinction risks that an asteroid or comet strike pose, and partly because it is simply a staggering challenge that has the potential to make many humans “excited to wake up in the morning”. In order to make this happen, Musk saw that access to orbit was far too expensive for a colony on another planet to ever be sustainable, and that resuability was the only immediately obvious and accessible method through which the price to orbit could be decreased by several magnitudes. SpaceX is now almost routinely recovering Falcon 9 first stages when the mass of the payload allows it, and with a fifth and final version or “Block” of the vehicle optimized for rapid reuse set to debut later this year, Musk and others at the company have begun ruminating once more about the possibility of recovering and reusing the second stage of the Falcon 9. Benchmarked somewhere around 30% of the price of the vehicle, routine loss of the second stage effectively prevents the price of the Falcon 9 from dropping much below $20-30 million US dollars. While a nearly 50% or greater reduction in price would be an exceptional accomplishment, it is still far from from the multiple orders of magnitude reduction Musk hoped for when he set out to develop reusable rocketry.
A prototype of Dragon 2 being tested in an anechoic chamber. (SpaceX)
This is where the reuse of Dragon pops its head up. With second stage recovery now being considered theoretically and Dragon 2 (Crew Dragon) preparing to begin regular launches in either Q4 2017 or Q1 2018, SpaceX has a good deal of experience to gain from learning how to safely and rapidly recover and reuse vehicles reentering the atmosphere at orbital velocity. Compared to recovering the first stage, this is another endeavor entirely. The fastest speed at which a recoverable first stage can ever realistically reenter the atmosphere is currently capped at around 5200 mph (2300 m/s), and is usually much closer to 3000 mph. An orbital capsule like Dragon, however, enters the atmosphere from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at around five times that speed, typically close to 16,000 mph. In the context of recovering the second stage of Falcon 9, one must consider that most of SpaceX’s commercial manifest is made up of geostationary satellites, which require more energy to reach a higher orbit, and consequently would require the second stage to survive even higher reentry velocities in order to be recovered.
Returning from Mars, as SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System would have to, results in even higher reentry velocities of at least 25,000 mph for a reasonably quick journey. This is the most important detail in explaining the true value of simply reusing a Dragon capsule as SpaceX has just now done. By taking its first steps towards routinely reusing truly orbital spacecraft, SpaceX is advancing their knowledge reusability in practice and consequently taking concrete steps to prepare themselves for the difficult challenges that lie ahead in their pursuance of enabling sustainable colonization of Mars. Dragon 2 (Crew Dragon) promises to eventually rid the refurbishment process of the many headaches that salt water intrusion undoubtedly creates by returning via supersonic retropropulsion to a landing pad, much like Core 35 did this past Saturday.
Looking slightly further into the future, SpaceX has already announced plans to launch two unnamed private customers in a Dragon 2 on what would likely be a circumlunar free return trajectory, or around the Moon and back. The reentry velocity would be very similar to the velocity required to return to Earth from Mars, and certainly much faster than any reentry from geostationary orbits of Earth. If SpaceX manages to successfully and reliably recover and reuse orbital vehicles reentering at such high velocities, then the company will have made extraordinarily promising progress towards achieving their central goal of drastically lowering cost to orbit and thus enabling humanity to gain footholds on other planets.
So, take this Dragon reuse as you will. It may well be a major step along the way to colonizing Mars, or it may simply be an exciting practical implementation of SpaceX’s philosophy of reuse. Either way, this is a Dragon that is certainly worth celebrating.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
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Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.
It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.
Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.
The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.
Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.
The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.
SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.
There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.
The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.
Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites
It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.
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Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.
Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.
SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.
The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.
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