SpaceX

We have solved the problem of space junk by burning it. A SpaceX lithium trail just proved to be a terrible idea

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For decades, the aerospace industry has had a consensus solution to the problem of space junk: burn it. A fairly simple phenomenon that is based on the satellite reentry when it ends its useful life in the atmosphere so that it begins to suffer friction and completely disintegrates. But the reality is that we are facing a huge problemsince physics reminds us that matter is neither created nor destroyed. We have captured him. Science is realizing that we are not removing space junk, we are just vaporizing it into metallic aerosols that are changing the chemistry of our own sky. And the definitive clue to this problem was found on the night of February 19, 2025where a team of German researchers pointed a laser into the sky over Kühlungsborn. What they detected in this case at about 100 kilometers altitude, in the thermosphere, was something that should not be there, since there were large amounts of lithium. And it wasn’t there for no reason, since it just coincided hours before with the re-entry of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which had disintegrated over the Atlantic between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Something new. The signal measured in this case was not very subtle, since was 10 times bigger to the usual concentration in that region, and this finding was collected in an article because it marks a great milestone: it is the first time that the metallic contamination released from a specific piece of space junk at the exact moment of burning has been observed “live” and from Earth. The metallic iceberg. The incident with this Falcon is not something isolated in our society, but is a symptom of the structural change we are experiencing. In 2023, a team of researchers already used different devices to be able analyze more than 50,000 aerosol particles in the stratospherewhich is the layer where our ozone layer resides, at about 15-30 km altitude. What did they see? Historically, the metals found in the stratosphere came from meteorites that entered our planet. But today it is estimated that 210 tons of aluminum per year in the atmosphere comes from the disintegration of satellites and rockets, compared to the 20 tons per year that vaporize naturally from meteors. But lithium is not the only metal in the atmosphere of our planet, since scientists have detected more than twenty elements, among which aluminum, copper, lead or silver stand out… This is something that does not fit with the normal composition of meteorites, but it does coincide with the materials that different aerospace companies use to create their rockets and satellites. There is no planning. The pace of launches has skyrocketed in recent years, and if today we are close to 10,000 objects orbiting the Earth, we have to know that only Starlink aspires to have more than 40,000 satellites in Earth orbit low. But the problem is that the useful life of these devices is short, so their inevitable fate is to end up vaporized over our heads. Its effects. Science here is quite clear that the effects of filling the stratosphere with these metals are currently unknown. But the projections suggest that we should not be calm because elements such as aluminum and copper are important catabolizers that can affect the delicate ozone layer. In addition to this, metallic particles can act as special condensation nuclei, altering the microphysics of polar stratospheric clouds. And if that were not enough, adding anthropogenic material to sulfuric acid aerosols changes their size and ability to scatter sunlight. Ironically, we are altering the reflectivity of the stratosphere, the same layer that some scientists want to use for climate geoengineering, without knowing what the consequences will be. The planetary limit. The models here suggest that, if the planned megaconstellations materialize, the fraction of stratospheric particles contaminated with aluminum from satellites will rise from the current 10% to around 50%. In other words, the load of metals in the stratosphere could grow by around 40% compared to natural levels. Here for years space agencies have assumed that disintegrating satellites was a completely harmless and clean practice. The example of the Falcon 9, which has validated the warnings of the scientific community, shows us that the Earth’s orbit and our atmosphere make up a connected ecosystem. In this way, launching tens of thousands of objects into space and then burning them on our own roof may be a solution to keep space clean, but we are dirtying the sky in return. In Xataka | Spain and Portugal have joined forces to launch satellites with a mission: to monitor catastrophes in real time

the merger of SpaceX with xAI is an example

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There is an idea that sounds almost radical in 2026, but that has actually been operating for decades in several European countries or in the form of internal experiments in companies: that workers have a real seat on the boards of directors of the companies where they work. The debate has returned to the front line due to a proposal from Yolanda Díaz, third vice president and Minister of Labor, based on the report of the International Commission of High Level Experts “On Democracy at Work”. Curiously, one of the best metaphors to understand what this report proposes is not in a factory or an SME: it is in the upcoming merger of the Elon Musk’s business universe. Díaz’s proposal. The Ministry of Labor presented a report which proposes two major changes in the relationship between companies and workers: giving workers more voice in the strategic decisions of companies and facilitating access to company property. The underlying idea is simple and has been applied for some time in certain managerial ranks and industries, in which part of the remuneration is in the form of shares or participations in the company itself. The report suggests that, if a workforce is an essential part of a company, their participation should not be limited to negotiating salaries or schedules, but rather to be an active part of its management. For this reason, it proposes introducing more worker representation on boards of directors. Not as a symbolic gesture, but with real weight. The proposal is staggered: in medium and large companies (50 to 1,000 employees), a portion of the board seats would be reserved for staff representatives, with percentages that would grow depending on size. Furthermore, the report states that companies should make it easier for employees have a part of the capitalwith formulas that can range from participation plans based on shares, to more structured models in the form of trusts or funds. SpaceX: employees who are “owners”, but without a voice. In Silicon Valley, and especially in startups, it is very common for companies pay part of salary in sharesoptions or units that are consolidated over time or based on objectives. This means that thousands of workers end up being, de facto, partial owners of the company they work for. However, and here the shock appears, these workers/owners do not have a voice in the decisions made by the company, leaving so much your workplace as your propertyin the hands of third parties. In a merger as decisive as the one that has been proposed between SpaceX and xAI (or in any similar operation in the Musk ecosystem as the one that occurred before between X and xAI), employees find out about these decisions after the fact, through internal channels and without leaving room to maneuver. Europe has been doing it for years. One of the keys to the report is that it does not propose an isolated occurrence, but rather an adaptation of models that already exist and on which research has been done. The best known case is Germany, where the co-management model It has been integrating worker representatives into supervisory or administrative bodies in large companies for decades. Also has been tested in Norway in a law implemented in 2020, or with the Rebsamen law of 2015 in France. These previous studies have shown that the participation of workers in company decision-making improves labor relations, greater investment in training and long-term productivity, although the effects may vary depending on the sectoral context and institutional design. The report insists that Spain is behind in this area and recalls that the article 129.2 of the Spanish Constitution It already marks the obligation to promote the participation of workers in the company. The proposal, therefore, is presented as a way to ground that mandate in a modern model that improves labor relations. It is a paradigm shift in Spain. The great value of the Ministry of Labor’s approach is that it unites two concepts that normally go separately: labor participation and ownership. Although this remuneration formula that motivates workers to improve your performance and thus improve your personal capital, is not something common in Spain. However, giving workers a greater presence would also give the workforce power to influence on key decisions such as relocations or restructuring that lead to closure “preventing viable companies from being liquidated or sold to predatory investment funds,” the minister said. In Xataka | Elon Musk’s fortune has reached an unprecedented $600 billion. And it’s not thanks to Tesla Image | Flickr (The Left, World Economic Forum)

Musk doesn’t have the best model or the best product, but he has something more important in the AI ​​race: SpaceX

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Elon Musk has done it again: he has changed one of his companies from the right pocket to the left. In 2016, when his company Solar City was in the doldrums, he took advantage of the fact that Tesla was going like a rocket to save the company. Now it is xAI that needs a push in the age of artificial intelligence and, after a few brief rumorsconfirmation came: SpaceX has purchased xAI. Or what is the same: an Elon Musk company has bought another Elon Musk company. It’s an ideal move, but also a morrocotudo mess. In short. The announcement came late into our night. As part of a vertical integration, aerospace will absorb the operations of xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company. It was an extremely rare agreement. When it occurs a business purchasewe know the numbers, but here we only have some ideas about the goal. Musk has been deliberately opaque and has justified the movement as a restructuring to guarantee “freedom of expression”, with a story based on energy, the development of technology and something we have been talking about for some time: the need for exploit outer space as a source of energy and giant heatsink for the increasingly numerous data centers. One million satellites. In fact, the operation came shortly after we learned that SpaceX had filed with the US FCC a project to launch one million Starlink satellites. Currently, there are about 9,000, plus another few thousand companies like Amazon or chinese satellites and Europeans…and astronomers are already complaining about how difficult it is to observe beyond low orbit. With a million satellites from SpaceX alone, the amount of potential space debris will increase stratospherically, but Starlink is not a simple satellite system to have Internet anywhere on the planet: They are potential data centers. Musk himself, when companies like amazon either Google They began to be very vocal about the need for moving data centers into spacepointed out that SpaceX already had them and that it was easy to convert its satellites into computing centers. In space there is Unlimited, uninterrupted energyheat dissipation is much simpler because air or water is not needed as on Earth and the information is transmitted to terrestrial centers using lasers, eliminating the need for Expensive fiber optic interconnections. SpaceX works. And, in Musk’s statement, it is stated that this demand for energy and computing power to feed AI is almost impossible to cover with terrestrial solutions, so the most logical thing is the space exodus from data centers. And, of course, one plus one equals two: SpaceX has the infrastructure and xAI needs it. But beyond the synergy, there is another reality. SpaceX has become a solid and profitable company. It is the only one that, right now, can routinely transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station. It has become an essential piece for both NASA and the Department of Defense and, in addition, it has the aforementioned Starlink system that has crept in, perhaps too much, into the communications infrastructure of countries like Ukraine. xAI burns money. On the other hand, xAI shows the symptoms of a company focused on artificial intelligence. This valued at more than $230 billion and has raised several tens of billions in several rounds of financing, but is burning money at a rate of approximately one billion a month. This is typical, as we say, of companies in the growth phase, and the executives themselves have stated that they have plans and resources to keep spending aggressively, but everything has a limit. xAI requires enormous amounts of energy, resources, computing and is developing its own chips. All of that costs money, and putting data centers in space with existing infrastructure like Starlink’s can help ease the burden. In the economic and energy sense, it is a brilliant operation. When other technology companies want to start filling the space with their data centers, SpaceX will already be there. Morrocotudo mess. Therefore, and in the end, what Musk has done is unite a company in an aggressive investment phase with another that is solid and has established contacts with the US government. SpaceX is the highest xAI carrying vehicle and it looks like a win-win manual. Now, it’s also a tremendous mess. Because xAI is not just xAI: it is (Twitter), and now SpaceX has all that power under one umbrella. xAI manages military intelligence and we have already mentioned that Ukraine threw itself into the arms of Starlinkrelying on its infrastructure during the conflict with Russia. SpaceX is no longer just an aerospace company, it is that and much more: a brain, a social network with private data of tens of millions of people. And in a Europe that is fighting for their technological sovereignty and information protection, SpaceX can go from being a partner for a specific mission to something to look askance at. Image | The White House (edited) In Xataka | From $100 billion romance to silent divorce: NVIDIA and OpenAI’s relationship is disintegrating

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, has just announced the purchase of xAI, founded by Elon Musk

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Until very recently, this was just a rumor. Today, SpaceX just told it as a fact. The aerospace company has published an official statement in which it states that it has acquired xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk. The text does not go into details of the operation, but it does set the tone: it talks about integrating AI, rockets and space connectivity as part of the same strategy. And, although the announcement is forceful, it leaves many important questions in the air that still have no answers. SpaceX frames the operation as part of a vertical integration. The official statement is signed by Musk and has a more ideological than corporate tone, with references to “freedom of expression” and an almost existential mission. But, beyond the story, the document leaves out some elements that are important to understand this movement: there are no figures or details of how the agreement materializes. In development. In Xataka | Genie 3 is awesome at creating worlds for video games. But the problem with video games was never creating worlds

Space reuse seemed like a SpaceX thing. China is already trying to replicate the formula with LandSpace

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For decades, access to space was conditioned by a simple and very expensive logic: each launch was an almost unrepeatable operation, with rockets designed to be used only once. That model turned cost per kilo into a structural barrier for the entire industry. Reuse broke that inertia and changed the rules of the game, not as an incremental improvement, but as a different way of thinking about launches. Today, that idea has become the bar for who can compete in the new space economy. The trajectory that is currently taken as a model was not born from a comfortable position. In 2008, SpaceX faced a sequence of technical failures with the Falcon 1 that left the company with no financial margin. Elon Musk even admitted that a fourth explosion would have meant the end of the project. The turning point came first with a successful launch to orbit and, almost three months later, with a NASA contract to transport cargo to the International Space Station. That combination gave oxygen to a company that was still far from demonstrating sustained reliability. When launching is no longer the most expensive. The traditional model assumed that launch was the most expensive and risky part of any orbital mission. NASA analyzes place Historical costs in a typical range of between $10,000 and more than $20,000 per kilo in low orbit, with an average cost around $18,500/kg. The drop in prices associated with reuse altered that balance: with Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, the cost per kilo fell into the range of $3,000 to $1,500. By reducing the cost of travel, the door was opened to launch more often and rethink the scale of projects. Why LandSpace is coming into the picture now. In this new scenario of more frequent and scale-oriented launches appears LandSpace. Founded in 2015, a few years after China opened the space sector to private capital, the company has positioned itself as a player focused on building a complete chain from design and manufacturing to launch. Its program aims to recover and reuse the first stage, and in parallel it is committed to liquid oxygen and methane launchers, a combination linked in the industry to cost reduction strategies. This approach fits with China’s need to deploy large satellite constellations in the coming decades. Zhuque-3 from LandSpace With the Zhuque-3LandSpace proposed something unprecedented in China for an orbital-class launcher: attempting to recover the first stage in a real flight. The launch made this vehicle the largest Chinese commercial launcher ever flown and the first by a private company in the country to attempt a vertical landing after completing its primary mission. The profile was carefully planned, with a recovery area built specifically for it in the Gobi Desert. LandSpace has not given figures on the probability of success, and the flight was functioning as a recovery test in real conditions. Zhuque-3 from LandSpace Similar to Falcon 9, with nods to Starship. The comparison with SpaceX is not a rhetorical device, it is in the design itself. Zhuque-3 adopts a very recognizable pattern: nine engines in the first stage, return maneuver, aerodynamic control with grid ends and legs for a vertical landing. At the same time, it is not a carbon copy of the Falcon 9. The rocket is built of stainless steel and uses methane and liquid oxygen as propellants, two features associated with the development of Starship. SpaceX Falcon 9 The December attempt did not end as LandSpace had planned. After takeoff, the Zhuque-3 completed its initial phase of flight, but the first stage failed to execute the final landing maneuver. According to Reutersthe booster had to start its engines about three kilometers from the ground to stop the descent and carry out a controlled landing, something that did not occur. The result was an impact rather than a vertical landing. The design of the test itself assumed that risk: it was a reuse test, not a complete operational mission. Reuse and risk tolerance. The commitment to reusable rockets forces us to review how risk is understood within the Chinese space sector. The aforementioned agency highlights that the local industry has historically been dominated by state companies reluctant to see visible failures. The entry of private companies like LandSpace is introducing another logic, closer to controlled experimentation. The fact that failed attempts are documented and publicly explained suggests that the priority is beginning to shift from immediate success to the accumulation of experience, a necessary condition for reuse to be more than a promise. Images | LandSpace | SpaceX In Xataka | While Silicon Valley dreams of servers in orbit, Russia prepares a nuclear reactor on lunar soil

In January a SpaceX rocket exploded. Today we know the danger that an Iberia plane was in with 450 passengers in the air

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On January 16, while air traffic in the Caribbean continued its usual routine, three commercial airliners were thrust into a situation that until recently belonged more to science fiction than civil aviation: passing through a possible cloud of rocket debris in mid-flight. Iberia under a space rain. It was a JetBlue plane heading to San Juan, another Iberia plane and a private jet that ended up declaring fuel emergencies and crossing a temporary exclusion zone hastily activated after the Starship explosion from SpaceX a few minutes after taking off. Altogether, about 450 people were traveling on those planes, which ultimately landed without incident, but internal documents of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reveal that the real risk was much higher than what was publicly known at that time. When the protocol is behind. The Starship explosion caused almost 50 minutes a rain of incandescent fragments over large areas of the Caribbean, a scenario in which the impact of a single piece of debris against an airplane could have had catastrophic consequences. However, the warning chain did not work as planned: SpaceX did not immediately report the failure through the official hotline, and some controllers learned of the incident because the pilots themselves they started reporting “intense fire and fragments” visible from the cabin. The exclusion zones were activated late and, furthermore, only covered US airspace with radar, leaving out pockets of international space where, in theory, flying could continue despite the risk. The result was a extreme workload for controllers and situations of added danger, such as excessive proximity between aircraft that forced intervention to avoid a collision. Impossible decisions at 10,000 meters. In the air, theory became a practical dilemma. The pilots were raised a choice that no manual comfortably contemplates: deviate and take risks to run out of fuel over the ocean or continue through an area where space debris could fall. In at least two cases, the only way out was declare emergency to be able to land. Iberia later maintained that its plane crossed the area when debris was no longer falling, and JetBlue assured that its flights avoided the points where debris was detected, but FAA records describe a tense situation in which decisions were made with incomplete information and under extreme pressure. A structural problem. The incident set off alarms both in the airline industry and in the US Government itself, not only because of what happened in January, but because of what comes next. The FAA plans to go from a historical average of about two dozen launches and reentries annually to managing between 200 and 400 every year for the foreseeable future. A good part of this increase goes through Starship, the most powerful system ever developed, with more than 120 meters high and trajectories that, in future missions, will fly over busy air routes in the North Atlantic, Florida or Mexico. The industry’s own history reminds us that the development of new rockets involves failures: approximately one third of launchers active since 2000 failed on their first flight. Half review. After the explosion January, the FAA convened a panel of experts to review protocols for failed launch debris, an initiative that took on even more urgency after another Starship that exploded in March. That second incident was managed better from the aerial point of view, closing loopholes in exclusion zones and avoiding fuel emergencies, and the panel came to identify high risks for aviation safety, such as forced diversions or overloading of controllers. However, in August the agency suspended unexpectedly that internal review, claiming that many recommendations were already being implemented and that the issue would be addressed at another regulatory level, a decision that surprised even some group participants. The defense of SpaceX. SpaceX responded calling the published information misleading and reiterating that public safety is always its priority, ensuring that no plane was really in danger. Your address insist in which the collaboration with the FAA is close and proposes solutions such as real-time monitoring of vehicles and possible debris, so that a problematic launch can be managed almost like a meteorological phenomenon. Meanwhile, the company has moved forward with new evidence of Starship, some longer before disintegrating and others staying within the planned profile, and preparing an even more powerful version for next year. As recognized Its CEO, Elon Musk, is a radical design that will likely have “growing pains.” A warning from heaven. What happened in January was not only a specific scarebut an early warning of a problem that is barely starts to take shape: the increasingly closer coexistence between commercial aviation and a rapidly accelerating space industry. The night when pilots tthey had to choose between the fuel and a rain of space debris showed that current protocols are not fully prepared for this new scenario. The challenge is no longer just to launch bigger rockets more often, but to ensure that the price of that progress is not paid at 10,000 meters above sea level, with hundreds of passengers trapped between the sky and the sea. Image | Adam Moreira (AEMoreira042281), NARA In Xataka | China is launching more rockets into space than ever before. And the reason is very simple: not to depend on Starlink In Xataka | Google doesn’t have rockets, but it is going to install data centers in space. SpaceX and Blue Origin rub their hands

SpaceX is not only breaking records in space

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The Bloomberg Millionaires Index has moved its figures on great fortunes with a fact that is difficult to ignore: Elon Musk has become the first millionaire to exceed $600,000 million in estimated assets. According to he Bloomberg Billionaires IndexMusk’s fortune now amounts to about $638 billion, an unprecedented figure that places him in a completely new league within technological capitalism. The leap has been neither minor nor gradual. In a few weeks, the estimate of his assets has skyrocketed by more than $205 billion, driven, above all, by the expectation generated around the SpaceX IPO. SpaceX: Musk’s new gem. With a Tesla that seeks its place to define itself between an automotive or robotics company, the main engine of Musk’s fortune has moved towards the aerospace industry. SpaceX, majority controlled by Musk, has been one of the most valuable private companies in the world for years. The information about a possible IPO have revived investor appetite and valuations have skyrocketed internal of the company taking it up to 800,000 million dollars. With this, the valuation of Musk’s fortune has also increased. Bloomberg estimates that the company is already worth several hundred billion dollars, and Musk owns around 42% of capital, in addition to reinforced voting rights. Tesla, xAI and the rest of the Musk ecosystem. Although SpaceX makes headlines, It is not the only asset that supports Musk’s fortune. Tesla continues to be the other major pillar and, despite moving in a more complex context for the electric car and increasing pressure from Chinese manufacturers, the company maintains a stock market capitalization that is progressively recovering from reputational disaster What did the participation of its CEO in the cuts that DOGE carried out at the beginning of the year. Added to this are other less visible but relevant participations: xAI, the artificial intelligence company promoted by Musk, is consolidating itself as a business ecosystem highly concentrated in its figure, which amplifies any market movement, both up and down. Fortunes are not exact figures, but estimates. It is worth, however, putting the numbers about Musk’s fortune in context. Great fortunes are not balances in a checking account, but estimates based on the combined value of each millionaire’s business interests, properties and financial assets. And those estimates They vary depending on who calculates them and with what methodology. This is where the differences between indices appear. While the Bloomberg Index locates Musk’s fortune around $638 billion, Forbes offers a figure substantially lower: about 509,000 million. The gap is explained by several factors, including how SpaceX is valued. In other words, neither figure is “correct” in absolute terms. Both are reasonable approximations to an extremely complex heritage, but they serve to determine trends and a comparative value between great fortunes. One step closer to the first billion. Beyond the specific figure, this new record reinforces an idea that has been circulating for some time: Elon Musk is one of the clearest candidates to become the first billionaire in historythat is, being the first person to accumulate a fortune of one million million dollars. Yes SpaceX completes its IPO With the valuations that are being used today and Tesla manages to sustain its weight in the market, the jump to the billion is no longer an extravagant hypothesis and has become a plausible scenario in the near future. Musk’s milestone not only redefines the ranking of the richest in the world. It also underlines the extent to which economic concentration is occurring around a single person or company. In Xataka | Carnegie built libraries, Gates sold them on CD-ROM, Musk locked them in an AI: the history of knowledge control Image | SpaceXFlickr (Gage Skidmore)

desperately finding your own SpaceX

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In the technological field, it is often said that Europe regulates a lot and innovates little. This regulatory obsession is something that the European Union is often criticized for, but it has managed important technical advances in technology (a universal airdrop and the USB-C standardization). However, it is true that, in certain fields, other countries have overtaken us to the right. In spatial matters, it is evident: China is investing a lot and SpaceX takes the lead in reusable rockets. Europe wants to get its act together and has announced a megaproject. One of more than 900 million euros to find its own SpaceX. In short. November 2023 marked the turning point for European space ambitions. The ESA advertisement the European Launcher Challenge, an initiative to foster competition between European orbital launch providers, promote a diverse ecosystem to access space, develop cost-effective solutions and, above all, improve European autonomy in space transportation. During this time, it has awarded contracts of up to 169 million euros to five companies that will have the task of developing these processes, the Spanish PLD Space being one of them. It was essential that European States respond with financing, and we already have the results. A few days ago, the ESA published ‘Document 100’ that details each of the investments made by the participants. Final amount? 902.16 million euros to finance the space program. Not necessary: ​​vital. Not only countries with companies involved in development have put money in: there are others that do not have production plans, but have committed funds to the program. It responds to the movements that have been occurring in the world for almost four years. If ESA, and Europe, want to be relevant in space, they must be self-sufficient, just as Russia, the United States and China are. The problem is that it wasn’t. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Access to Soyuz rockets was cut off. He Ariane 5 European retired in 2023 and Ariane 6 has had a series of major mishaps until its first flight in summer 2024. This goes beyond sending astronauts to the ISS: it implies that, without rockets, critical satellites such as The Galileo navigation or the Euclid telescope. Europe had to foldwith many reviewsbefore SpaceX and from the ESA management itself, they signed the agreement with a “we have no other option.” Show me the money. With those 902 million euros, Europe seeks sovereignty, something it is doing in other areas (rearmament, for example), because he understands that he cannot trust geopolitical agreements that, at one time or another, can be broken. The biggest bets have been made from the countries that have the most interest in the program: Germany It is the one that has contributed the most: a total of 363 million euros. France It is the second with about 179 million euros. Spain will make a contribution of 169 million euros. United Kingdom about 144 million euros. And then, as we say, other countries like Norway with 29 million euros directly to the European Launcher Challenge, but each country contributes another amount to other ESA programs. The amounts are astronomical and go to each person’s homeland. In the case of Spain, for example, 36.77 million are going to PLD Space to develop the MIURA 5 and another 132 million for the rocket construction sector in Elche. The chosen ones. And the companies that will receive the bulk of the financing to develop their programs, which they will later sell to ESA, are the following: Isar Aerospace – German company that develops the Spectrum rocket to carry medium payloads. Rocket Factory Augsburg – Also German, she works on the RFA One launcher which is already in the testing phase. MaiaSpace – French she is developing Reusable vertical landing technology. This is a key piece to reduce the price of each launch, which is what SpaceX is achieving with its rockets. PLC Space – The Spanish one who develops the MIURA 5, a small class launcher, as well as a family of reusable rockets called Miura Next. Orbex – British company that plans to host launches from the Saxavord outpost in the Shetland Islands and is developing the Prime A. Feet of lead. Despite the ambition of the project and the companies involved, we must go with a certain skepticism, precisely because of what I commented at the beginning of the article: the regulatory desire. While the American model has allowed SpaceX’s ambitions to be unleashed, with a huge investment and one NASA turning to Musk’s company To put its astronauts into orbit, Europe has maintained a model of strong government oversight. Recently, some voices they asked whether Europe could create a reusable rocket industry, taking into account that it is something that requires specific market conditions that have not been cultivated in the territory. This is precisely where the ESA wants to put the patch with its European Launcher Challenge thanks to a change in policies and investment. Since 2023, private investment in space technology has skyrocketed in Europe and institutions have point to a change of course to “recover sovereignty in terms of access to space.” It only remains to see how the five companies develop their systems, something that will happen before the end of 2027 with a view to ESA missions towards 2030. Images | OrbexIsar Aerospace, ESA, MaiaSpaceFRG In Xataka | “Elon Musk can monopolize everything,” warns Arianespace, which has been launching all of Europe’s satellites for 40 years

Elon Musk has been refusing to take SpaceX public for 20 years. His new obsession has changed his mind

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If there is something that Elon Musk has been repeating since before Starship was called Starship, it is that SpaceX would not go public until the gigantic Martian rocket was flying regularly. The excuse was that Wall Street likes short-term profitability plans more than multi-generational plans to colonize Mars. But the script has changed: SpaceX is preparing its jump onto the stock market, and not to pay for the trip to the red planet. He does this because he needs a lot of capital for “something more” than Starship and Starlink. The largest IPO in the United States. As revealed BloombergSpaceX plans to launch a Public Offering in late 2026 or early 2027. The company is seeking a valuation of $1.5 trillion (trillion, on an American scale) and more than $30 billion in cash, dizzying figures that would be the largest IPO in the history of the United States, close to the global record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Musk has been leaving breadcrumbs in X for days about this change in strategy. When the first rumors leaked about a financing round that valued the company at 800,000 million, the tycoon denied itclarifying that “the valuation increases are based on the progress of Starship, Starlink… and one more thing, which is possibly the most significant by far.” What is that thing that makes another round of investment insufficient? Orbital computing. What is clear from Musk’s latest tweets is that SpaceX wants to raise a lot of cash with its IPO for more than just Starship and Starlink: to develop space data centers. The logic, that Musk himself considers validis the same one that other companies like Google are following, but with the advantage of being the largest rocket launcher in the world. On Earth, AI data centers have two major bottlenecks: power and cooling. In space, satellites can receive sunlight 24 hours a day without atmospheric interference and with the possibility of dissipating heat on the dark side of the satellite, eliminating complex water systems and air conditioning of the Earth. Beyond Starlink. SpaceX already has a constellation of 9,000 satellites in orbit, many of them interconnected by laser links. The plan would be to take advantage of all the knowledge and technology that the company has to create a new constellation of localized AI: in Musk’s words, the cheapest way to generate AI bitstreams in less than three years. Their roadmap is hard science fiction: scale up to adding 100 GW of capacity per year using high-bandwidth lasers connected to the Starlink constellation itselfwhich is already highly profitable. And from there we move on to factories on the Moon and the use of electromagnetic rails to launch these AI satellites without the need for rockets. The umpteenth gold rush. Figures like Sam Altman, Eric Schmidt either Jeff Bezos They are already moving to have their piece of the pie in the orbital data center business. Google created the Suncatcher project and Nvidia collaborates with Starcloudwhile smaller startups like Aetherflux have announced projects like “Galactic Brain” planned for 2027. The difference is that SpaceX has the launch experience and is building the largest rocket in the world, with the peculiarity that it aspires to be completely reusable. It’s just the beginning. If 1.5 trillion is already a historic valuation, a recent report by ARK Invest projects that by 2030, SpaceX’s enterprise value could be around $2.5 trillion in a base case scenario, driven almost entirely by recurring revenue from Starlink and declining launch costs thanks to Starship reusability. Going public in 2026 would not just be a financial operation: it would give SpaceX the capital it needs to become the backbone of AI computing infrastructure, turning an internet service like Starlink into something that Musk himself considers “much more significant.” Images | SpaceX In Xataka | Building data centers in space was the new hot business. Elon Musk just broke it with a tweet

Sam Altman is trying to buy his own rocket company to compete with SpaceX. The key: data centers

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The rivalry between Sam Altman and Elon Musk has just reached its highest point: space. And all so that OpenAI can deploy its own data centers in space. The news. As revealed by the Wall Street Journalthe CEO of OpenAI has been exploring the purchase of Stoke Space, a Seattle startup that develops reusable rockets, with the goal of building data centers in space. Although talks with Stoke Space cooled in the fall, the move confirms a trend we’ve been observing for months: Silicon Valley is outgrowing the Earth to fuel AI. Sam’s plan. According to the Journal’s sources, Sam Altman was not looking for a launch provider, but rather an investment that would ensure OpenAI majority control of Stoke Space. Stoke Space, founded in 2020 by former Blue Origin engineers, is developing a fully reusable rocket called ‘Nova’ to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9. So that. Altman maintains a tense rivalry with Elon Musk, so the logic of this move would be to reduce OpenAI’s dependence on Musk’s rockets in the event that it decided to deploy servers in space. But above that there is a purely energetic motivation. The computing demand for AI is so insatiable that the environmental consequences of keeping it on Earth will be unsustainable. In certain orbits, however, solar energy is available 24/7 and the vacuum of space offers an infinite heat sink to cool equipment without wasting water. The fever of space data centers. Altman is not alone in this race. What until recently seemed like an eccentricity has become a serious project for big technology companies: And what does Musk say? The irony of Altman pursuing his own rocket company is that the industry’s undisputed leader, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, already has the infrastructure in place. While his competitors design prototypes and seek financing, Musk has cut off the debate with his usual forcefulness: in the face of the discussion about the need to build new orbital data centers, He assured that there is no need to reinvent the wheel: “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites… SpaceX is going to do it.” Images | Brazilian Ministry of Communications | Village Global In Xataka | Building data centers in space was the new hot business. Elon Musk just broke it with a tweet

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