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ULA set to ship Vulcan rocket to Florida for Moon lander launch
After many years of delays, all the parts of the United Launch Alliance’s next-generation Vulcan Centaur rocket are about to converge on Florida for their first launch.
Unveiled in 2015, ULA has been working on Vulcan Centaur since at least 2014. Following Russia’s first illegal invasion of Ukraine, countries around the world attempted to punish the aggressor mainly through economic sanctions. In the US, those sanctions included bans on the import of most Russian aerospace technologies, including the RD-180 engines that still power ULA’s Atlas V workhorse rocket in 2023. In 2014, ULA announced that it would work with Blue Origin to integrate the startup’s BE-4 engine into a new rocket booster to end its reliance on Russian engines.
More than eight years later, that BE-4 engine is finally ready for flight, and the rest of the first two-stage Vulcan rocket appears to be right behind it.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
Eastward-bound
In a burst of New Year activity, CEO Tory Bruno confirmed that Vulcan Flight 1’s core stage (booster) has been fully assembled, buttoned up, and loaded onto ULA’s transport ship. The aptly named RocketShip will ferry the booster from ULA’s Decatur, Alabama factory to Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it will enter the final stages of launch preparation at the company’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) LC-41 pad.
Simultaneously, ULA has finished proof testing Vulcan’s first Centaur V upper stage, a larger and more advanced version of the Centaur III stage ULA and its predecessors have been flying for decades. Centaur V is almost twice as wide as Centaur III and is designed to hold two and a half times more propellant, enabling significantly higher performance in some scenarios.
Additionally, while ULA has partially abandoned plans for a reusable upper stage called ACES (Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage), some of those improvements may still be added to Centaur V. Compared to Centaur III, Centaur V’s longevity in space will grow from 8 to 12 hours. ULA is also developing a “mission extension kit” that will allow it to operate for multiple months – unprecedented for a rocket stage powered by cryogenic propellant.
Photos taken by a local paper appear to indicate that ULA is shipping one or more payload fairing (nosecone) halves alongside Vulcan’s first flightworthy booster. While unconfirmed, it would make sense for ULA to ship Vulcan’s booster and fairing together. Another tweet from Tory Bruno indicates that ULA intends to ship Vulcan’s booster and upper stage together, increasing the odds that all components will be aboard RocketShip when it departs for Florida.
A New Workhorse
Vulcan Centaur is ultimately designed to fully replace ULA’s existing Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. Building and operating two very different rockets simultaneously is undoubtedly one of the reasons that ULA’s launch costs are so much higher than SpaceX’s, and simplifying to a single production line is one clear way to achieve major cost savings. ULA hopes that the simplest version of Vulcan will eventually cost about $100 million per launch – still far more than SpaceX’s base Falcon 9 price [PDF] but potentially more competitive than Atlas V. That’s unclear, though, as Bruno has previously stated that Atlas V’s launch costs have fallen to about $100 million apiece thanks to unrelated cost savings.
Regardless, Vulcan Centaur will be a capable rocket and its price is close enough to SpaceX’s extremely competitive Falcon 9 for it to be a mostly valid option for launch customers who want diversity or want to avoid SpaceX for less rational reasons. Vulcan has secured more than 70 launch contracts thanks to ULA’s intimate relationship with the US military and Amazon’s reluctance to launch its Project Kuiper internet satellites with the company behind Starlink, a direct competitor.
Fitted with two BE-4 engines, six solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and unknown upgrades, ULA says the most capable version of Vulcan Centaur will be able to launch up to 12.1 tons (26,700 lb) to the Moon, 15.3 tons (33,700 lb) to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), and 27.2 tons (60,000 lb) to low Earth orbit (LEO). To high orbits, the most capable Vulcan variant will fairly competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. To low orbits, it will generally match or slightly exceed the performance of an expendable Falcon 9, but likely for a much higher price. By every measure, the simplest and cheapest Vulcan variant is significantly less capable than even a partially reusable Falcon 9 and will likely cost 50-100% more.
Moon or bust
Indicating ULA’s confidence in the unflown rocket, the main target of Vulcan’s first launch is the Moon. Vulcan Flight 1 will carry two main payloads: the first two Amazon Kuiper satellite prototypes and Pittsburgh startup Astrobotic’s first Peregrine Moon lander. After deploying both Kuiper satellites in low Earth orbit, Centaur V will fire up again and attempt to send the 1.3-ton (~2850 lb) Peregrine lander directly to the Moon – also known as a trans-lunar injection (TLI) burn. Developed as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, Peregrine will be tasked with entering orbit around the Moon and eventually landing up to 70-90 kilograms (150-200 lb) of payload on the lunar surface.
The first Peregrine Moon lander is fully assembled and currently in the middle of extensive integrated testing. If successful, ULA CEO Tory Bruno says that Vulcan will likely be ready to launch sometime in Q1 2023, though Q2 2023 is more likely.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.
Walking the Optimus production line in Fremont pic.twitter.com/ABS0tuRibW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2026
Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.
The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.
In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.
Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.
The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.
Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Optimus Development Timeline
- August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
- 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
- 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
- 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
- January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
- April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
- July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing
Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.
The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
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.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
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.
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
