SpaceX

SpaceX is not only breaking records in space

by

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

by

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

by

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

by

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

SpaceX is known for its rockets. What is less known is its growing and striking fleet of aircraft

by

To build the largest rocket in the world, SpaceX needs logistics commensurate with its scale. And that includes a Boeing 737 with the company logo. SpaceX planes. Elon Musk’s aerospace company not only manages rockets and satellites. As it has grown, it has bought airplanes until ending up with a small private airline that connects its centers in California, Texas and Florida. Until a year ago, the entire fleet was made up of private jets, but SpaceX ended up acquiring a complete commercial plane: a Boeing 737-800 that it uses to move workers and components with agility. The history of the N154TS. A few days ago, the Los Angeles “planespotters” recorded a landing of SpaceX’s largest plane, in its black and dark gray livery, with details such as the Starship thermal tiles on the tail. The Boeing 737-800 entered service in 2002 for Air China and was later converted into a cargo aircraft. Now, under ownership of Falcon Aviation Holdings LLC (a subsidiary of SpaceX) makes trips between Los Angeles, Brownsville and Florida, where SpaceX’s three major headquarters are located: Hawthorne, Starbase and Cape Canaveral. The four Gulfstreams. SpaceX is a private company, but thanks to crawlers like GrndCntrl We also know the rest of the fleet. Owned by SpaceX are: a Gulfstream G650ER primarily associated with Elon Musk, two Gulfstream G550s used for critical logistics and executive transportation, and a Gulfstream G450 linked to Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s president and chief operating officer, who lives between Washington and Starbase. The Boeing was the last plane to join the fleet. While a private jet like the Gulfstream moves a few executives, a 737 can transport dozens of engineers and support teams in a single trip, something vital for moving a workforce during a launch campaign. But is it profitable? Buying a commercial plane instead of charter flights only makes economic sense for a company the size of SpaceX. The ability to move engineers with sensitive tools and hardware without going through commercial airport security saves a billion-dollar aerospace company thousands of work hours a year. In addition, there is an undeniable aesthetic component. Like its rockets, the company takes care of the image of its planes. As they commented from Teslaratithe aircraft is not only functional for transporting support equipment between launch sites; It also has a coat of paint that attracts everyone’s attention.

SpaceX changed the space economy. Now he wants to do the same with the cost of satellites

by

The cost of launching cargo into space was, for years, one of the great limits of the aerospace industry. LaNASA documents in several works, including the analyzes of Harry W. Jonesthat during the last decades of the 20th century many pitchers moved in a typical range of between 10,000 and more than 20,000 dollars per kilowith an average cost of around $18,500/kg in low orbit, with the space shuttle far above due to its complexity and operating expense. It was not just the price of the launch systems, but of a model based on disposable components, manual processes and highly specialized operations. The situation remained stable for decades, until SpaceX decided to rethink how the economics of orbital launch should work. Instead of assuming these costs as inevitable, the company opted to reuse stages, optimize processes and manufacture its own engines and systems from scratch. This combination allowed the price per kilo to be reduced to unprecedented levels, although the change did not occur immediately. What is relevant is that, for the first time, a private actor demonstrated that launches could be much cheaper and that price did not have to be a structural barrier for the industry. When launch is no longer the limit, attention shifts to satellites The resulting prices began to change behavior in the sector. With Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, the cost per kilo became in the range of 3,000 to 1,500 dollars, according to NASA calculations based on catalog prices. These figures not only mark a reduction, but a turning point: for the first time, companies, institutions and even governments could rethink the design of missions knowing that launch was no longer the main economic barrier. From there a question arose that until then had no answer: if the trip had been made cheaper, what would happen to what was sent into space? The traditional satellite model was built on the idea of ​​optimizing each unit. It was not important to produce many, but to produce one that could operate for years, with high capacity and low probability of failure. Manufacturers and operators were investing in complex systems, with long development cycles, exhaustive testing and specialized structures to fulfill specific and prolonged missions. This strategy responded to an environment in which launch was so costly and infrequent that it was more profitable to prioritize reliability and durability than to think about scalability or rapid replenishment. One of the first companies to help change this approach was OneWeb, that introduced a manufacturing model designed for scale. Instead of ordering each satellite as an individual piece, the company designed a common architecture and partnered with Airbus to produce repeatable unitswith standardized processes and shorter manufacturing times. The plant installed in Florida in 2019 was presented as the first factory of satellite serial production on a large scale, with two lines capable of removing up to two units a day. It was not about building a better satellite, but about building many. SpaceX took the satellite constellation idea and turned it into its own industrial system. With Starlink, it not only replicated the use of mass-produced satellites, but also linked that production to its launch capacity with Falcon 9, operated by the company itself. This integration allowed the deployment to be accelerated without depending on external release windows or commercial suppliers. The constellation began to grow at an unprecedented rate and, in a few years, it vastly surpassed any other similar project in number and pace. The difference was not only in manufacturing satellites, but in being able to launch them at will. Although OneWeb was one of the first players to apply industrial logic to satellite manufacturing, its constellation has grown at a very different pace than Starlink. At the end of 2025, OneWeb has around 648 satellites in orbit, while SpaceX exceeds 8,000 operational satellitesaccording to the most recent data published by orbital monitoring firms. The difference is not only due to the number of launches, but also to the mode of production. According to an economic analysis published in 2025the estimated manufacturing cost of OneWeb satellites is around $14,000 per kilo, compared to approximately $2,500 per kilo for Starlink satellites. These figures reflect a gap that has more to do with the integration model than with the technology itself. The estimated manufacturing cost of OneWeb satellites is around $14,000 per kilo, compared to approximately $2,500 per kilo for Starlink satellites. The reaction of the sector did not take long to arrive. With the advancement of Starlink, both companies and public institutions Similar projects began to be considered based on constellations with a high number of satellites and sustained deployments. Amazon launched KuiperEutelsat and OneWeb reinforced their alliance to maintain presence in the market and the European Union approved the IRIS2 program with institutional support.China is also working on its own large systems. It is not just about competing in numbers, but about accepting that scale and replacement capacity are part of the new spatial model. When the satellite becomes a replicable product, the way of planning its presence in orbit also changes. It is no longer about launching a mission and hoping it works for as long as possible, but rather about building a structure that can grow, modernize and replace units regularly. The satellite becomes a component of a network, not the center of the mission. This logic favors models based on scalability and continuous replacement, similar to those of other technological infrastructures. Space stops being a destination and becomes a platform. SpaceX demonstrated that the cost of the launch was not a technical limit, but rather a model one. Now it is trying to apply that same logic to satellites, with an approach based on scale, continuous manufacturing and integration with its own launch systems. The result is not only a larger constellation, but a different way of understanding what it means. operate in orbit. The question is no longer how much it costs to get to space, but who can … Read more

Europe has done the only thing it could do to compete with SpaceX and China in space: merge its largest companies

by

Europe has grown tired of watching from the sidelines how SpaceX and, increasingly, Chinaredefine the rules of the game in space. The continent’s response was inevitable: a historic fusion. The three European aerospace giants, Airbus, Leonardo and Thales, have signed a memorandum of understanding to combine its spatial divisions into a single, colossal enterprise. Merge or die. This is not news that we break every day. It is the most ambitious move in the European aerospace industry since the creation of the MBDA missile consortium in 2001. And at the same time, it is not an offensive move, but a strategic survival maneuver. Given the agility of reusable rockets and Elon Musk’s megaconstellations, the fragmentation of Europe had become an unsustainable burden. Now, the plan is to create a European champion with the critical mass necessary to at least be able to compete. A colossus about to be born. The agreement, which It’s been brewing for months. under the code name “Project Bromo”, it will give rise to a new company that, if approved by regulators, could be operational in 2027. The figures used give an idea of ​​the scale of the operation: a combined annual turnover of 6.5 billion euros, and nearly 25,000 employees spread throughout Europe. Airbus will have the majority stake with 35%, while the Italian Leonardo and the French Thales will share the rest almost equally, with 32.5% each. Despite the majority of Airbus, the government of the new colossus will be “balanced” and under joint control, as reported by the companies. What does each one contribute? Each partner will contribute his crown jewels in the space sector. Airbus will contribute with its Space Systems and Digital Space businesses. Leonardo will bring its Space Division to the table, including its valuable stakes in Telespazio and Thales Alenia Space. Thales will mainly contribute its shares in those same joint ventures (Thales Alenia Space and Telespazio) and Thales SESO. Why it was inevitable. The harsh reality is that Europe was falling behind, and very quickly. SpaceX’s disruption has been brutal, especially on two fronts: launch and satellites. While Europe continues recovering lost ground With the development of its Ariane rockets, Elon Musk’s company has not only radically lowered the cost of putting something into orbit, but has flooded the sky with its Starlink constellation and its military version, Starshield. Beating SpaceX is no longer possible. On October 19, the company surpassed a staggering number of 10,000 Starlink satellites launched in just over 300 launches of the Falcon 9 rocket. This network of small satellites has cannibalized the traditional market for large and expensive geostationary satellites, the pillar on which the business of European companies was based. The only thing Europe can do, and what this new giant is destined to do, is recover its technological sovereignty in space and, with it, its security. Image | Airbus In Xataka | “We are the company that has developed an orbital rocket the fastest”: PLD Space, one step away from making history from Spain

NASA has had enough of SpaceX and will offer the return to the Moon to other companies. Elon Musk has not taken it well at all

by

NASA’s strategy to return to the Moon has just been blown up. In a series of television appearances and public statements, the acting administrator of the US space agency, Sean Duffy, has announced a change of course: NASA is going to reopen the public tender to build the manned lunar landing module (HLS), a contract that until now was held by SpaceX alone for the Artemis III and IV missions. Because. The official reason is transparent: “We are in a race against China,” confirmed Duffy in an interview with CNBC. And in this race, “SpaceX is falling behind.” “Competition and innovation are the keys to our dominance in space, so NASA will open HLS production to Blue Origin and other large American companies.” “The president and I want to reach the moon during this president’s term.” The decision ends NASA’s “all-to-SpaceX” bet and reopens a multibillion-dollar battle for the most crucial contract in modern space exploration. As expected, Elon Musk has not remained silent. The hell of space refueling. To understand NASA’s frustration, you have to look beyond the delays in Starship test flights. The real bottleneck is the mission architecture itself. As analyzes Daniel Marín in Eurekathe lunar version of Starship is a giant 52-meter rocket that cannot reach the Moon without first refueling in low Earth orbit. This operation is of unprecedented complexity due to Starship’s cryogenic liquid fuel, which tends to evaporate. This is not a simple fuel transfer; It requires multiple launches of tankers (up to 15 or 20) to fill one or several orbital tanks that will then transfer hundreds of tons of liquid methane and oxygen to the lunar Starship. It is a technology that has never been tested on this scale. While SpaceX continues to deal with problems with its prototypes (Musk assures that version 3 of Starship will be able put 100 tons of cargo into orbit in 2026, but that was precisely the promise with version 2), NASA has gotten nervous. Every SpaceX delay is an unforeseen victory for China, whose lunar program is advancing at a methodical pace to put astronauts on the Moon before 2030. The Chinese Lanyue lunar module is much simpler than Starship. Plan B is Blue Origin. Duffy’s statement is not a bluff. There are already at least two clear alternatives on the table that NASA is seriously considering. Plan B is Blue Origin. But when Duffy mentions Blue Origin, he is not referring to the Blue Moon Mk 2 HLS module that Jeff Bezos’ company is already developing for the future Artemis V mission (and which, ironically, also requires complex orbital refueling). As revealed Eric Berger in Ars TechnicaBlue Origin has been quietly developing a plan B: a modified version of its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander. This vehicle, originally designed for cargo only, would be adapted to carry crew. Its great advantage: it would not require refueling in space. It would be a much simpler and faster solution, that we had already mentioned in Xataka. Plan C is Lockheed Martin. Duffy also said “maybe others.” Those “others” are the giants of the traditional aerospace industry, with Lockheed Martin at the helm. Traditional NASA contractors have assured Duffy that they can build an Apollo-style lunar module in 30 months. The proposal, backed by analysis like this one from SpaceNewswould be based on proven technologies: storable propellants (that do not evaporate like cryogenic methane and hydrogen) and already operational subsystems, such as those of the Orion spacecraft. Bob Behnken, vice president of Lockheed Martin, told Ars Technica who are up for the challenge: “We have been working with a cross-industry team… to address Secretary Duffy’s request to meet our country’s lunar goals.” Does it stick? The price. A contract of this type, cost-pluscould skyrocket to $20 or $30 billion, compared to $2.9 billion in the original SpaceX contract. But for Duffy, price appears to be a secondary factor if it guarantees arriving before China. Elon takes out the flamethrower. Elon Musk’s reaction to the threat of losing his lunar monopoly has been visceral and has come in several waves of tweets. First, Musk defended his company’s work. “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Plus, Starship will end up doing the entire lunar mission. Mark my words.” He then moved on to direct attack against your rival with an incendiary claim: “Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone to the Moon.” The tweet was quickly corrected by Community Notes of X, who reminded Musk that Blue Origin did reach orbit with its NG-1 mission on January 16, 2025. From contempt to insult. Seeing what was coming at him, Musk began to despise the very objective of the Artemis III mission. “A permanently manned lunar science base would be much more impressive than a repeat of what Apollo already did incredibly well in 1969.” A clear message: the race that NASA wants to win is irrelevant. Finally, the SpaceX CEO responded directly to a post by Sean Duffy about the “race against China” with a meme of a Ugandan anti-LGBT activist repeatedly asking “Why are you gay?” A derogatory reaction that makes it clear how bad the announcement felt. Beat China or beat Trump? While the “race against China” is the public justification, Ars Technica suggests a much more mundane domestic political plot. Sean Duffy is not the permanent administrator of NASA, but rather the acting Secretary of Transportation. According to the outlet’s sources, Duffy is immersed in a “fierce internal battle” to keep the job permanently, a position that the billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacmanwho apparently has regained his good rapport with President Trump. Duffy’s television appearances would, in reality, be a political maneuver aimed at a single viewer: the president. By showing himself as a leader of action and results, willing to do anything to “beat the Chinese” and achieve a moon landing during Trump’s presidential term (which ends in January 2029), Duffy … Read more

the first SpaceX employee

by

The race to explode all the resources that the Moon offers You’re going to need new spaceships. If Starship manages to become a fully reusable rocket capable of landing and taking off from lunar soil, we will have a winning horse. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is finding competition where he least expects it. From Jeff Bezos to Tom Mueller. Starship delays are causing talk. If rumors emerged last week that NASA could turn to the Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar module of Blue Origin to take astronauts to the Moon in the event that SpaceX did not arrive in time to beat China, this week a very particular company has joined the race for the moon. In this case, Impulse Space wants to solve the challenges facing the commercial race to the Moon with an unmanned spacecraft capable of delivering up to three tons of cargo. And who is behind Impulse? None other than Tom Mueller, SpaceX’s first employee and the genius who designed the Falcon 9 rocket engines. Agility and pragmatism against Starship. Impulse Space, founded by Tom Mueller not as a new rocket launcher but to solve the challenges of orbital mobility once in space, has set its sights on the Moon. The company revealed its plans to develop a lunar landing module which would enter service in 2028. Mueller places his idea in a “critical gap” in the market: a medium-sized cargo ship. Impulse’s proposal is quite pragmatic. Instead of developing a completely new system from scratch, it will combine the Helios booster, already in development by the company itself for upper rocket stages, with a lander of its own manufacture. Helios would act as a cruise stage, transporting the craft to lunar orbit in a week. One of the keys to its design is that it does not require a complex series of refueling in orbit, like Starship and other systems based on cryogenic fuel. The Impulse module’s engine will use a combination of nitrous oxide and ethane bipropellant, which has already been successfully tested on its Mira orbital vehicle. This choice, according to the company, is safer and less toxic than traditional hypergolic propellants, and in turn avoids the evaporation problems of cryogenic fuels. A competitor who knows the house inside. What makes this ad fascinating is the pedigree of its founder. Tom Mueller was a fundamental player at SpaceX: he led the development of the Falcon 9 engines and now applies that experience to his own company. Including the speed that characterizes SpaceX. Impulse Space boasts of having carried its Mira spacecraft from the design table to operating in orbit in less than 15 months. But Impulse’s lander won’t just compete with Starship. It is located in a very interesting competitive niche. While Firefly’s Blue Ghost aims for lighter loads and future systems contracted by NASA, such as Starship itself or Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 2 focus on enormous loads (30 and 100 tons), the Impulse proposal competes directly with the Blue Moon Mark 1, which also has a capacity of three tons, and which NASA could use to transport astronauts in a mission with several moon landings. But the big advantage of the Impulse design is that it is compatible with a wide range of launch rockets (Falcon 9, Vulcan, Ariane 6, etc.). Its system does not depend on a single supplier, which gives it considerable strategic flexibility. He who laughs last… At SpaceX they don’t consider anything lost (and no one should consider SpaceX a loser in any case, looking at its history). In fact, Musk’s company has just put dates and figures on its lunar ambitions. According to an update on their websiteSpaceX plans to begin its cargo missions to the surface of the Moon in 2028, the same year as Impulse, but with a price that breaks all schemes: 100 million dollars per metric ton, or what is the same, 100,000 dollars per kilogram. To put this in perspective, Astrobotic, another competitor in the sector, sells its flights to the Moon at a price of 1.2 million dollars per kilogram. The difference is abysmal and demonstrates SpaceX’s aggressive pricing strategy, which is only possible with the total reuse of its Starship system. We are, therefore, faced with two opposing philosophies. A bet on the safe side and a bet on breaking the market. Led by two people who worked together for years. Image | Impulse Space In Xataka | The United States has a plan B to win the lunar race against China: change Elon Musk’s ship for Jeff Bezos’s

SpaceX has said goodbye to Starship v2 with an unprecedented maneuver

by

The largest rocket in the world has once again taken to the skies, and it has done so to say goodbye. He Starship’s eleventh test flight It has been the finishing touch to a season with lights and shadows. SpaceX has exhausted the Starship V2 prototypes and has used for the last time the launch pad from which the 11 flights have taken off. One last trick to say goodbye to the Super Heavy we know Once again, the 33 Raptor engines of the Super Heavy booster started without problems to launch the Starship into space. For the second time, the prototype on the platform was the Super Heavy Booster 15, which had already taken off and landed successfully on flight 8. The first big news about Flight 11 arrived after the separation of stages. The booster tested a new engine ignition sequence to stop when returning from space, the same one that the Super Heavy V3 will use. First he turned on 12 engines to brake suddenly (there had to be 13, but one took a while to start). He then turned off all but five to fine-tune his trajectory. Previously, the Super Heavy fired three engines instead of five during this braking phase. As SpaceX propulsion engineer Jake Berkowitz explained, during the flight broadcastusing five motors “adds an additional layer of redundancy for spontaneous motor shutdowns.” But what was noticed was not the redundancy, but the additional smoothness in the maneuver. SpaceX did not intend to recover Booster 15 with the tower’s arms, but rather to virtually rehearse the maneuver over the Gulf of Mexico. The rehearsal went smoothly, but the SpaceX broadcast from the point of view of the rocket did not do justice to the precision of the maneuver. Fortunately, NASASpaceflight cameras captured the moment from shore. With the NASASpaceflight video We witness the last seconds in flight of the Super Heavy V2. And to the last trick that SpaceX has pulled out of its hat. The imposing 70-meter-high steel cylinder, equivalent to a 24-story building, seems to stop time over the ocean. The braking is so smooth and vertical that it gives the sensation of standing still, magically floating dozens of meters above the water. Then it plummets and self-detonates. The deployment of satellites with Starship is already looking much better As for the ship, it completed one of its most roundabout flights in a long time. After finishing his eight minute climbturned off its six engines and began a suborbital trajectory toward the Indian Ocean. He later opened a slot in his cargo bay and slowly deployed but this time gentlyeight Starlink satellite simulators. Starship 38 has shown that SpaceX is very close to being able to deploy cargo with its mega rocket. Starting in spring (in the time of Elon Musk), Starship will begin launching new generation Starlink satellites, much larger than the current ones and with the capacity to offer gigabit bandwidth to customers. Another critical maneuver that they already have under control is deorbiting. For the third time in its history, Starship restarted a Raptor engine in the vacuum of space, which in the future will allow it to return from space to land or make orbital corrections on missions to the Moon and Mars. The final phase of the mission was, perhaps, the most risky. SpaceX had purposely removed even more tile patches from the heat shield with the goal of increasing stress on the vehicle and collecting data on its tolerance limits for the extreme heat of reentry. Despite the mistreatment, the ship survived the inferno surrounded by plasma while the cameras on board once again gave us spectacular views. Just before the end, the ship executed another novel maneuver: a “dynamic turn” to simulate the trajectory that future Starships will take to align with the tower at Starbase. Like the booster, the ship will attempt to be trapped by the mechanical arms of one of the two launch towers. Finally, 66 minutes into the flight, Ship 38 made its iconic turn prior to splashdown, started its engines for a final braking and fell into the water in one piece. Of course, several tiles of the heat shield fell off along the way. The end of an era and a presumed wait for the next Starship In addition to being successful, Flight 11 has been a turning point for several reasons. First, it closes the chapter on Block 2 vehicles, a generation that has had a turbulent history with the failures of Flights 7, 8 and 9 (as well as a large explosion on the ground), but which redeemed itself with the successes of Flights 10 and 11. On the other hand, it is the last mission from Platform 1 in its current configuration. This ramp, which suffered catastrophic damage on the first flight and was rebuilt with a massive flame deflector that shoots water jets, will be completely renovated to accommodate the third generation rockets. However, the next launches will be made from Platform 2, which is about to go live. With V2 retired, attention now turns to V3, the version that will be the first to reach Earth orbit and begin deploying next-generation Starlink satellites. Despite the advanced status of both the V3 prototypes and the second tower, Starship is not expected to fly again for a few months. This new iteration and its engines still have tests to complete before taking flight. Starship 3 will be more powerful, taller (about 124 meters, adding the two stages) and will be better finished. The Super Heavy will have the integrated hot separation ring and a new design in the aerodynamic grilles, which become three. It will debut Raptor 3 engines and fuel lines so large they resemble a Falcon 9. The Starship will include adapters that will allow it to transfer fuel in orbit (an essential maneuver for lunar missions). Although no one is confident that NASA’s Artemis 3 lunar landing mission can occur in 2027, the … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.