Investor's Corner
Tesla Motors is More Like NASA than GM
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, We Have Liftoff
I never get too excited or depressed about Tesla’s stock price. Stock analysts worry, and a lot. I can’t imagine how they ever sleep at night knowing that during those hours they are completely off the influence grid. Because Tesla went public it made a new bed and as a consequence, has at least two major challenges it must constantly consider.
- Build a new kind of personal transportation that must compete with a 100+ year old industrial age vertical
- Fund itself through a traditional stock market model while not making what that model values as part of their mission
Disclaimer: I own a modest number of Tesla shares and have for years, but it’s not my retirement plan and never will be. For me the primary investment is the Mission of Tesla, which for now means the Model S. I’ve owned one since June 2013.
The idea that someone would have the courage (and smarts) to start a car company from scratch and be able to differentiate it from all other automakers, as well as their products in every way, was extremely attractive to me. Others have tried, Tucker, DeLorean, but they were trying to compete with essentially the same formula. That rarely works out. In this case we have disruption and not the bullying kind which is what we often see in tech sector firms.
Car Guys are Wired that Way
I was nearly born in a car. My mother used to regale me with the story of how she just barely made it to the hospital. Five more minutes and I would have emerged while in the back seat of a 1954 Chevrolet Delray. Growing up I was surrounded by relatives who raced cars, worked on automobile, both personal and commercial, and sold them to the public. I remember sitting in my Uncle’s Chevrolet sales room in Ohio while we were visiting one summer and seeing a sign that read, “A new Chevrolet is sold every minute.” Gasoline and oil ran through my veins and I inhaled more carbon monoxide helping my dad in the garage than was probably good for me. For the record, here’s a list of all the cars my father owned. I think it was all of them. The year column indicates when the car was manufactured, not when he purchased it.
[Image source: ModelScoil.com]
Yes, there’s a very big gap between 1969 and 1982. Completely unexplained. Maybe we both failed to make entries in the diary. Never mind, it’s more fun to call “slacker.” We lost my father to cancer in 1992. He would have been proud to say he preceded his latest car in death by a full year. I frequently imagine what it would be like to pull up in his driveway with my Model S and take him for a ride.
As you can see, my father’s list is heavily weighted toward U.S. carmakers, especially GeneralMotors.The recent stories about how GM covered up defective parts for decades was disturbing to me as someone who rode in, drove and owned them as an adult. The last time I owned a GM car was 1989. I switched because I couldn’t afford to pay the maintenance fees.
Mission Control, We are Go for Launch
When President John F. Kennedy challenged America to “land a man on the moon and return him safely” in 1961, it was the catalyst for a series of missions meticulously planned and executed by NASA. Most had doubts we could do it successfully. The ones who believed worked at NASA. They developed a phased approach with three programs; Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Mercury set out to successfully orbit the earth, study the ability to operate in space and recover both the astronaut and his craft. Gemini’s role was to study the effects of long term space missions on astronauts, perfect re-entry procedures and give astronauts extended practice time in a weightless environment. Once these were accomplished, the third program could begin. Apollo was about landing a man on the moon and returning him safely. I was enthralled with the space program growing up. I held my breath at every launch, was glued to the television for each mission and wondered what would come next.
Palo Alto, We May Have a Problem
Tesla is on a similar path. They started with the Roadster as a commercial prototype that would tell them lots about the viability of an electric car. From that came the Model S, an amazing form of Personal Transportation that won Motor Trend’s Car of the Year in 2013 and was rated the safest automobile ever built in tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the same year. I view the forthcoming Model X, a SUV version of the Model S, together as a stepping stone to the third stage; the Model III. A smaller, much more affordable car within reach of a large number of U.S. households. Assuming they can progress, the Model E will bring them closer to accomplishing the Tesla mission:
To accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.
The cost of the three NASA programs is hard to pin down, but many sources say that Mercury cost about cost $277 million in 1965 dollars, Gemini cost $1.3 Billion in 1967 dollars and Apollo $20.4 Billion in 1970 dollars. Obviously these number increase greatly when you convert them to today’s dollars. These missions were a stunning achievement and brought innovative technology to the private sector in numerous ways. In other words, we all gained benefit from these programs.
The point of quoting the cost figures is to bring perspective into the discussion. Today’s dollars always appear small when we look back a decade or two. The difference in these programs is that NASA was appropriated the funds from Congress, Tesla must navigate the murky waters of being a public company.
Elon Musk’s release of all of Tesla’s patents was a courageous move. He realizes that no single car company can deliver enough electric vehicles to make a real difference in the planet’s climate. The intellectual property is out there. Others can choose to assist or ignore.
BMW and Chevrolet have purchased, taken apart and reassembled the Model S in their war rooms. Why? Most likely to see how they can defeat Tesla. It’s a competitive game after all, including how Tesla sells its cars. A combined mission here, like the one NASA mounted would be an amazing feat of American collaborative engineering on a level never before achieved, this time on ground vehicles. Automakers coming together, including Tesla, could bring about a change much faster than we could even imagine. I know I’m describing a fantasy in the world of stocks and profits.
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Can Tesla really do it? Well, they landed the real estate for the Gigafactory. A great start. I believe it can be done and am pulling for them to succeed. Actually more than pulling for them. I drive the car and and am an ambassador for the brand everyday. I wish them success, not just to disrupt, but to innovate on a grand scale. To change history. A chance like that doesn’t come along all that often.
Image Credits: NASA, Tesla Motors, ModelScoil.com
Originally posted on ModelScoil
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) got an absolutely crazy price target rating from Raymond James after the company experienced a tough first few weeks following its Initial Public Offering (IPO).
Despite the tumultuous start, SpaceX has plenty of believers, and the company’s massively successful Starship launch last Friday, its 13th test flight of the massive rocket, went so smoothly that Raymond James analysts pushed its price target on the company to roughly 7 times its current trading level.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The firm officially put a “Strong Buy” rating and an $800 price target on the stock. It currently trades at around $113. Its all-time high is $225.64, reaching this trading level shortly after shares first went public.
Raymond James’ price target is tied to the firm’s confidence after Starship’s 13th test flight. Analysts at the firm said it was an incremental step that reduces engineering risks, citing the widely successful heat shield test that CEO Elon Musk recently detailed, the smooth deployment of Starlink V3 satellites, and a successful in-space engine relight.
SpaceX also managed to see Starship splash down safely in the Indian Ocean, while the Super Heavy Booster fell down to the Gulf of America with no incidents.
It is interesting to see these launches have such a tremendous impact on the stock and what investors think of it. After SpaceX initially delayed the Starship launch last week, shares fell tremendously. Most probably did not realize that the stand-down is a standard practice, especially if everything is not perfect.
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The mission was initially aborted due to an issue with Raptor engines. This was resolved, and Starship launched last Friday after another delay on Thursday, which was caused by weather.
Now that analysts have seen what SpaceX launches are capable of and how impressive the feat is, firms are adjusting their price targets accordingly, making it known that they have high expectations for the space exploration company.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
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— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
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