SpaceX eyeing orbit and tower catch of ship next flight

After the wild Flight Test 13, SpaceX has started making statements that are strongly implying FT-14 will focus on putting the ship into orbit, with strong implications it will be a single orbit so they can do a tower catch of the ship, and not need to wait overnight (or whatever it would take).

Starship has made precise splashdowns before. This time, however, the ship gently tipped over and came to rest floating in a remote stretch of ocean west of Australia. Previous splashdowns ended with conflagrations, an outcome SpaceX officials have come to expect with each water landing of Starship.

The buoyant Starship looked to be in fine shape after reaching the Indian Ocean. SpaceX engineers flew drones over the vehicle to inspect its heat shield, getting their best look yet at how more than 18,000 ceramic tiles insulating the ship’s stainless steel airframe weathered the trip to space and back. The tiles withstood temperatures up to 2,600° Fahrenheit (1,430° Celsius) as Starship streaked back into the atmosphere at the end of its hour-long flight from Starbase, Texas.
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“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight,” Musk wrote on X Friday evening.

Of course, over the last several months, the topic of the heat shield as the key to achieving the critically important capability for "rapidly reusable" intended for Starship has been referred to several times. 

“This is so critical for refining the heat shield and everything else. The really good news is … you’re looking at a pretty intact-looking heat shield,” Huot said. “We were flying at a significantly higher dynamic pressure, so putting way more stress on this vehicle on the way uphill, and it’s sitting there in the water.” 

(Note: Huot is Dan Huot, a SpaceX communications manager who was providing commentary on the company’s live webcast.)

A drone view of SpaceX's Starship vehicle floating in the Indian Ocean after splashdown on Flight 13. The flame visible in this image dissipated after a few seconds. Credit: SpaceX

And a closeup of the "hot end" of the ship. Everything looks about as "like new" as can be. Barely flown.

A close up of the aft end, focusing on the six Raptor engines while the ship was afloat in the Indian Ocean. Credit: SpaceX

The obvious quality of the ship opened discussion of towing it somewhere to be taken ashore and examined by teams of engineers. The source article makes no mention of the ship sinking, deliberately or on its own, nor do the comments to the article. Nor is there mention of it being towed to Australia. 

The only aspect of the mission that didn't go as planned was the return of the booster to landing offshore Starbase Boca Chica. You'll recall that FT-12 in May also had problems with returning that booster and there were a few paragraphs dedicated to describing how this booster was modified. This flight showed some progress, but engineers have more work to do on recovering this version the Super Heavy booster. SpaceX has previously recovered and re-flown Super Heavy boosters twice with the Starship Version 2 design, but not with Version 3. 

A topic we've talked about here a few times is the critical need for orbital refueling. To use Starship for the Human Landing System, it's going to need several ships worth of fuel, because after burning everything to get to orbit, no ship has much fuel left to leave for that purpose. 

For NASA, an orbital flight puts SpaceX on a path toward orbital refueling. This demonstration is vital for any Starship flight beyond low-Earth orbit, including missions to the Moon in support of NASA’s Artemis program. NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop human-rated versions of Starship and the Blue Moon lander to ferry astronauts to and from the lunar surface.

“Excited for what will be learned from this mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on X after the launch of Flight 13. “When Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up the Moon again!”

A person and title I haven't seen from SpaceX before showed up at the end of this Ars article with some wisdom worth relaying.

“Really critical data collected this mission on a demonstration deorbit burn for Raptor, and a first flight for the next generation Starlink satellites,” Shana Diez, SpaceX’s director of Starship flight reliability, wrote on X.

“It feels like we are ready to kick into gear on delivering payload to orbit, which I am very excited for,” Diez added. “Development vehicles are fun but at the end of the day, we are here to put things into space and I am psyched about this rocket’s game changing capabilities.”

Ms. Diez also added this joke. (Kiko Dontchev's last mention was titled vice president of launch) 

57 years ago today - "The Eagle Has Landed"

57 years ago this morning at 9:27 EDT, Buzz Aldrin crawled into the Lunar Module Eagle and began the lengthy process of powering things up for the short mission life of the module.  An hour later, Neil Armstrong joined Buzz in the LM.

A little over three hours after that, 1:47 PM, they released the latches and separated from the Command Module.  At 2:12, Michael Collins fired thrusters on the CM moving it two miles away from the LM.  Except for that small altitude difference, both vehicles remained in their initial orbit from yesterday's lunar orbit insertion until 3:08 PM when Armstrong fired the descent engine to lower the Eagle's orbit. 

What follows is a 20 minute video depicting the landing which is easily the best modern reconstruction of the landing that I've seen.  It combines video from the window as Armstrong would have seen it with the audio traffic from Mission Control.  The first three minutes gives a modern simulation and animation of how it all worked; after that, it goes to the view recorded on the LM with spacecraft communication on the left speaker and mission control intercom on the right.  Yes, I think it's worth the time.  

The LM touches down at 4:18PM EDT.

At 6:00 PM, Armstrong radios down to mission control that he recommends they start the EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) sooner than planned; at 9 PM.  Although they don't make the 9PM goal, the 10:39 beginning of the EVA is still five hours earlier than the mission plans.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, this was the last vacation I would ever take with my parents. July of 1969 was the summer between my 9th and 10th grade years of school, and I was 15 years old. Like millions of people around the world, I hung by the front of the black and white TV; this one in my uncle's house in New York City.  We watched intently but I don't recall exactly how much we saw or if we watched until 1:11 tomorrow morning when the EVA officially concluded. It's a sobering thought how many of the family members there on that historic day and night have passed away. Both of my parents, my uncle and aunt, and I'm simply not sure how many else. 

Over the years, this meme from Aesop at Raconteur Report has become my default way of thinking of the Apollo program itself. While he clearly means the landing of Apollo 11, I can see the entire Apollo program as a strong contender for the Peak of Western Civilization. 

China is making progress

Making progress in catching up with SpaceX - and Space 2.0 

China recovered their first orbital booster on an offshore drone ship. 

The nation has recovered a rocket during an orbital launch for the first time ever, pulling off the feat during the Long March 10B's maiden liftoff on Friday (July 10). And that recovery was unique: The rocket's first stage nestled softly into a net-like structure carried by a ship at sea.

"This mission marks my country's first successful controlled recovery of a launch vehicle and the world's first network-based recovery of a launch vehicle," the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) announced via social media shortly after the launch. (Translation by Google.) "It signifies a historic breakthrough for my country in the field of reusable rocket technology and will lay a solid foundation for accelerating the improvement of my country's space access capabilities." 

We don't know much about the Long March 10B, other than that it's 63 meters tall (about 207 feet) and the first stage burns kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants, the same as the Falcon 9's Merlin engines. Unlike the Falcon 9, which uses the same propellant for the upper stage, the Long March's second stage uses LOX and liquid methane.  

As we're talking about dealing with China, which means the CCP, there aren't many details available. They say the launch carried a satellite and it successfully achieved "its predetermined orbit," and I'll accept that since there are no claims otherwise. 

The first stage of a Chinese Long March 10B rocket comes down for a landing at sea after successfully sending a satellite to orbit on July 10, 2026. (Image credit: CCTV)

I would like to know what that black smoke coming out of the top of the booster is, and if that's expected, though. 

Up until now, the Chinese launch sector has been working toward other booster landings and recoveries, but hasn't used any for missions like this. I consider this a probable success, and a major improvement. Don't forget we've seen documented situations of Chinese launches culminating in dropping the booster on populated areas. This one is nearly six years ago. 

Honestly, Booster reuse hasn't been as widely used around the industry as I expected it to be.  SpaceX is the obvious and clear leader. Yesterday's post on the 36th flight of B1062 posted that it was the 635th booster landing to date for SpaceX. New Glenn has had a couple of successful landings but hasn't reflown once - the booster that exploded on the launch pad at the end of May was going to be their first attempt. And New Glenn is the only other large vehicle that has attempted landing and reuse. Rocket Lab has landed some of their Electron boosters and done some reuse flights, but Electron lifts much smaller payloads than Falcon 9 does.

SpaceX has been a bit heavily guarding details on how much they save, but rumors go around that a flight they charge in the vicinity of $60 million for actually costs in the $10 to $15 million range. 

Miami-based company launches a nuclear reactor on Transporter-17

During the talk about the Transporter-17 mission out of Vandenberg SFB yesterday, what was probably the most technically interesting payload on the Rideshare mission wasn't mentioned at all. 

The satellite from Miami-based City Labs is named BOHR, short for Betavoltaic Orbital High-Reliability, and it launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission Tuesday alongside 80 other payloads. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket released the BOHR satellite into an orbit between 350 and 400 miles (nearly 600 km) in altitude. 

City Labs bills the BOHR mission as “the world’s first commercial nuclear-powered satellite and first nuclear CubeSat.” CubeSats are modest in scale, and images released by City Labs suggest BOHR is built on a “1U” CubeSat platform, a cubical design measuring about the same size as a softball. BOHR’s power source is a nuclear betavoltaic battery that generates electricity from the decay of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.

It probably goes without saying that City Labs is rather proud of BOHR and talks it up by calling it “a historic step for commercial nuclear power in space” and  “BOHR demonstrates that safe, compact, and regulatory-approved nuclear power systems are ready for routine commercial deployment. This capability enables persistent, always-on payload operations that are not constrained by sunlight or battery life,” to quote Peter Cabauy, CEO of City Labs, in a statement. 

While this photo doesn't look to be as small as a softball, this the BOHR test cubesat system.

This is a test mission for City Labs, who plan to use the experimental NanoTritium power generator in demonstration mode to supply electricity to a payload onboard the BOHR CubeSat. 

The spacecraft itself uses conventional solar power for regular operations, the company said. Betavoltaic batteries are best suited for low-power applications that require a reliable, long-duration source of electricity. These use cases include remote terrestrial sensors—such as in undersea or polar locations—and instrumentation for secure communications. City Labs is also studying the use of its NanoTritium technology to power implantable medical devices. 

Those of us who live near the Cape have seen protestors for anything that can be considered nuclear powered and the BOHR module went through all the tests to clear it for flight. It's important to point out that the company’s betavoltaic power systems are small—in the nanowatt to microwatt range—far short of the electricity required to power a smartphone, much less a large spacecraft or a Moon base. 

BOHR was the first commercial nuclear mission to pass through the Federal Aviation Administration’s new nuclear launch approval process. The FAA authorized City Labs to launch the BOHR mission last September.

[T]he BOHR satellite carries just a tiny amount of radioactive material, and the tritium isotope decays more quickly than plutonium or uranium. It’s also less toxic than other well-known nuclear fuels. “Tritium emits a weak form of radiation, a low-energy beta particle similar to an electron. The tritium radiation does not travel very far in air and cannot penetrate the skin,” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says on its website.

The small amount of power the BOHR reactor can generate underlines the idea that this must be the first step in the development of flight-rated reactors that produce orders of magnitude more power than this one - millions to billions of times more power. How big those steps can be point toward how long it will be before reactors capable of generating usable numbers of watts can be used.

It's a Pathfinder for future reactor systems that will be tested and used in space. 

Fire detectors, 3D printers and more on SpaceX rideshare mission

Early this morning, 12:12 AM PDT at Vandenberg Space Force Base, SpaceX launched one of their Transporter Rideshare missions into a sun-synchronous orbit (as Transporter launches tend to). This flight, labelled Transporter 17, carried 81 different payloads. The flight was carried by booster B1097 on it's 11th flight, so still an "almost new" booster, and landed on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship 8-1/2 minutes after liftoff. 

It's an interesting mix of payloads 

The Transporter-17 mission continued SpaceX’s model of launching dozens of satellites from companies around the world. Once again, the majority of the payloads hitching a ride on this Falcon 9 rocket were manifested by Exolaunch, which has placed satellites on every Transporter mission going back to the start of the Smallsat Rideshare Program in 2020.

On this flight, Exolaunch was responsible for 49 out of the 81 satellites, representing 20 international customers.

An interesting set of payloads was a trio of Earth Observing satellites for the Earth Fire Alliance, which aims to put up a constellation of fire monitoring satellites aimed at tracking wild fires and helping to control them. 

The Earth Fire Alliance stated on its website that it aims for a constellation of more than 20 satellites in low Earth orbit between 2027 and 2029, allowing it to have a roughly one hour revisit rate on wildfires with an ability to detect fires as small as five by five meters. It aims to ultimately have more than 50 satellites in orbit.

“This story is about living with fire: learning from it, adapting to it, harnessing it, and building resilience around it,” the nonprofit wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Inspired by a species of bird that has evolved alongside fire, our Black Kite Trio (BK-3) mission reflects Earth Fire Alliance’s vision of helping people, ecosystems, and communities confidently coexist with fire.”

This is the trio of satellites after being posed for a photograph between final test and loading onto the Transporter carrier.

A trio of FireSat satellites, which were manufactured by Muon Space on behalf of nonprofit Earth Fire Alliance. Image Credit: Earth Fire Alliance

Other Exolaunch-manifested payloads include four of Iceye’s synthetic aperture radar satellites, Bro-31, the first of Unseenlabs’ second-generation satellites designed for space-based radio detection; and Leonav-1, the United Arab Emirates first low Earth orbit PNT (position, navigation, and timing) satellite.

One that caught my eye is they put a 3D printer in orbit. 

Polish-German manufacturing company, Orbital Matter, also flew its Replicator-2 satellite on this mission. It focuses on the capability of 3D printing materials in the vacuum of space.

“It has 4 of our Printer Assisted Deployment Systems (P.A.D.S) onboard, 2 of which will be used to deploy our custom in-house designed foldable solar array. The other two will be standalone printers, one of which is deploying a secret antenna payload,” wrote Robert Ihnatisin, Orbital Matter CEO, on LinkedIn.

“The goal for this mission is to not only show that 3D printing is possible directly in the harsh space environment but also to show that it can be used for deployment right now! This is the latest in a string of missions focused on advancing our printing technology, with each mission getting us closer to the target of large scale and cheap solar power in orbit.”

Image credit: Robert Inhnatisin on LinkedIn

'Acceleration without fuel' - revolutionary thruster aces first tests on orbit

News broke on Space.com this afternoon about successful tests of the first of its kind thruster that uses superconducting magnets to move a satellite in space. 

Zenno Astronautics, a spin-off from the University of Auckland, has flown its new "Supertorquer" system on the Mira satellite built by California-based start-up Impulse Space. The tests began shortly after Mira's launch in November last year aboard the SpaceX Transporter 12 mission and saw the shoebox-size device perform with flying colors, Zenno Astronautics CEO and founder Max Arshavsky, told Space.com.

Superconducting magnetics can convert solar energy input directly into momentum in space, by interacting with the Earth's magnetic field, so the solar energy input takes the place of liquid fuels carried for onboard thrusters. The problem with this approach has been that the hardware to do it was too big, complex, and heavy to fit on a satellite. 

"It's a technology that allows a spacecraft to not tumble violently in space and point in the right direction," Arshavsky said. "The unit has multiple super-conducting magnets that are positioned in different axes. When we power up the magnets, they generate a magnetic field, which interacts with Earth's magnetic field, and because we can control the magnetic field on the satellite, we can control the way in which it turns with respect to Earth."

Shoebox size? Like this? I'll guess that's about a foot along the horizontal axis and around 4" on the vertical. It wouldn't work on some really small satellites, but maybe that's not the target mission. For now.

Zenno Astronautics' Supertorquer attitude control system uses superconducting magnets powered by solar energy to generate thrust aboard satellites. The system was recently tested in orbit. (Image credit: Zenno Astronautics)

If you're familiar with any of the demonstrations of superconductivity like I've seen, you might be thinking, "doesn't that require super cold liquid to soak the wires in?" The wires have to be super, single digit-Kelvin temperatures, but liquids aren't required. Nor does it depend on the environment where it's operating (the satellite) be that cold. 

The unit housing the superconducting magnets is wrapped in layers of insulation and fitted with a heat pump that removes all the excess heat from the system. Every time the satellite needs a push, the superconducting coils power up, drawing energy from a battery charged by the satellite's solar panels. 

Superconducting magnetics are a potentially huge field, Arshavsky talks about using magnetics to make Earth to Mars missions more reasonable. The details there aren't clear to me, but I've never studied things like the solar magnetic field, that I know we live in and are affected by but without important details. CEO Arshavsky has been looking at other applications. 

"Once you have super-conducting technology available in space, you can then create very strong magnetic fields and you can use them for various use cases," he said. "You can accelerate things in space very fast or change the trajectory of a satellite completely without fuel."
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Powerful superconducting magnets could also provide a solution to the problem of cancer-causing cosmic radiation that explorers will encounter during stays on the moon or trips deeper into space.

"When we go to space, we get hurt by radiation, and these superconducting magnets can create umbrellas of magnetic fields around the spacecraft to protect the interior," said Arshavsky. "So we can shield people in space from that radiation."

Zenno Astronautics company plans to fly a larger demonstrator on an undisclosed mission later this year.

Yeah, he's a CEO, so I automatically figure that some percentage is too wishful and it's not all easy or maybe not even doable at all, but it's some pretty interesting stuff. 

Headlines that caught my eye

Some serious stories, others just because they're odd headlines  

First, something we talked about several times, "NASA launches rescue mission to save Swift space telescope from burning up in Earth's atmosphere." 

The Swift Boost mission successfully launched the LINK satellite, built by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies, on Friday (July 3) at 4:36 a.m. EDT (0836 GMT), according to NASA. LINK will rendezvous with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and tow it to a stable orbit, saving it from impending destruction as its trajectory dips farther into the atmosphere. 

The LINK spacecraft is on its way toward the Swift Observatory satellite, and once close enough to the Swift, LINK will spend two to three weeks performing observations of Swift to assess optimal grapple points on the observatory. They say there aren't enough good images of the satellite to plan how to grab it and lift it to a safer orbit. 

Next, how does spaceflight relate to the semiquincentennial? 

There was clearly no spaceflight at the start of the Republic. There was no flight of any kind.

In November 1783, a bit over 7 years after July of 1776, a hot-air balloon designed by the Montgolfier brothers carried two men on a 25-minute flight over Paris, beginning the age of flight and leading to all sorts of speculation about better types of flight to come. 

It was 120 years later before the Wright Brothers first flight on the beaches of North Carolina in 1903. It took less than half that 120 year gap before the first manned spaceflight took place. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin took that ride for the first time on April 12, 1961. Comparatively it's nothing short of amazing that eight years later, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. Let's see... 120 years... 58 years... 8 years? That's an incredible pace of advancement. 

Let me ask a question that may not go over well. 

Have you ever wanted to observe Uranus? 

The planet! Not that. This is a little late, but the headline stands on its own. "Want to see Uranus? July 4 could be your best chance in decades"

Although we often hear that only five planets are visible to the unaided eye, Uranus can also be seen from Earth under the right conditions. As the seventh planet from the sun, it is very faint — near the threshold of naked-eye visibility at roughly sixth magnitude — so viewing it requires a very dark sky with little to no significant light pollution.

The article on Space.com includes several little images to help guide you to the planet, which will only be visible to your naked eye if you live in a place with good, dark skies, and the fact that this should have been a story for Saturday morning means their guides won't be quite right. A planetarium program or the Stellarium web page could get you there. 

Finally, a story that blew my mind in disbelief the first time I skimmed it.  

A Semiconductor manufacturing test bed flew on the booster for today's Starlink satellite/Falcon 9 launch

If it flew with the Starlink satellites, I would have been much less confused, but when it became apparent they really meant on the booster I realized they were talking about an eight minute test - maybe a few seconds longer or shorter.  

Two semiconductor fabrication test beds hitched a sub-orbital ride on the first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched another batch of Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral shortly after sunrise Sunday. 

In addition to boosting 29 satellites for SpaceX’s internet service, the Falcon 9 first-stage booster carried two manufacturing pods for Washington, D.C.-based startup Besxar Space Industries on an eight-minute, 19-second ride to space and back.

If you're used to watching these Falcon 9 launch videos, you'll recall that the booster continues upward after stage separation, typically well beyond the Karman line at 100km, the recognized border of space, and reach a peak altitude of around 120 km.

Besxar says these short-duration, sub-orbital flights with their rapid turnarounds are ideal for fine-tuning its manufacturing process. The test-bed Fabships, called the ‘Clipper Class’, are about the size of a microwave oven.

“With a regular cadence of launch and reentry missions, we can now iterate faster than ever—transforming space into a critical extension of America’s semiconductor supply chain,” said Pilipiszyn, who previously worked for OpenAI in its early days.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars past the Sun during the Starlink 10-50 mission on July 5, 2026. The rocket also carried onboard two Fabships on the rocket’s booster from the Washington D.C. based startup, Besxar. Image: Michael Cain/Spaceflight Now

Like the others, this one has more details to make reading it more worthwhile.

It's time to start asking some bigger questions about Starliner

The foundational question isn't really when it will fly a crewed mission. The bigger question is whether Starliner can ever get to fly as well and safely as it was sold. The ISS is in the last years of its life and Starliner is running out of time to get re-designed or fixed.

Word broke today that NASA's office of the Inspector General (OIG) released an audit of the vehicle Tuesday saying that it's looking likely that Starliner won't be certified for operational flights to the International Space Station until next year. 

The irony here is that Starliner was first expected to fly in 2017. Yeah, 10 years late. Boeing started working on Starliner years before that. 

While the story is covered by both Ars Technica (that link just above) and Space dot com, I'll say here that Space.com might be a better stop, primarily because at the top of their article, they have a full video, nine minutes long, of a talk Administrator Isaacman gave that's good listening. I expect that most readers here are probably fairly familiar with the story of how bad Starliner's Crewed Flight Test went in 2024. Pages have been posted here about it, and this set of search results can re-familiarize you with the story, if needed. Or you can listen to Isaacman's talk hosted at Space.com. 

Interestingly and as expected, Isaacman wasn't remotely afraid to place blame for things NASA did wrong, not just what Boeing did. Writing about the OIG, Space.com author Elizabeth Howell noted:

The authors added that underperformance on CFT can be traced to NASA's overconfidence in the spacecraft design, "unrealistic launch and flight test schedules" made by Boeing and accepted by NASA, and "pressure to adhere to this aggressive schedule." And these issues were compounded by NASA not exercising "data rights," which would have let the agency look at "flight-simulation-training failures" that likely would have helped with crew safety ahead of launch. 

Before it gets too forgotten, people need to remember that when the Commercial Crew Program was starting in 2014, Boeing got this contract and SpaceX didn't. Everyone expected that the safe bet was Boeing. They had the name, decades of experience contracting to NASA, while SpaceX was an unknown. SpaceX had yet to achieve their first successful booster landing and were just getting started in launching for others. That they would completely beat Boeing, so completely that the Starliner Crew of Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams had to ride a SpaceX Dragon capsule back down and it had become so commonplace that nobody thought about not sending the Dragon for them. 

It's not that SpaceX didn't have their own problems, they just solved them years ago - their first booster landing was on December 21, 2015. 

NASA concurred with all of OIG's recommendations to the agency going forward, which are:

• Delay payments to Boeing until Starliner's human-rating certification completes;
• Create a schedule with Boeing for the next Starliner flights;
• Document and resolve all of the CFT issues in "NASA's mishap information system" and update the schedule for Starliner with these issues in mind;
• Make private company flight-simulation testing on hardware and software changes accessible to NASA;
• Make NASA's mishap-classification requirements more clear;
• Prioritize NASA hiring efforts to focus on "critical skillsets" related to commercial crew and to the expected decommissioning of the ISS.

In case you've forgotten what a Starliner looks like, this is probably the 20th time I've used this photo of the Starliner that Butch and Sunni rode up to the ISS, docked to its port. Image Credit: NASA

Towers at Vandenberg intended for the Shuttles taken down for SpaceX

I'm gonna go out a limb to say a lot of you will be aware of this aspect of space history but the space shuttles were expected to fly out of Vandenberg Air Force Base, and a launch complex (Space Launch Complex or SLC, pronounced "Slick") SLC-6 was built for California shuttle launches that never actually happened. Over the years, SLC-6 was used for various launch vehicles: the Titan IV in the early 1990s, Lockheed Martin’s LMLV-1 in 1995, followed by Athena I and Athena II rockets with payloads for NASA and Space Imaging (later GlobalEye) in 1997 and 1999, respectively. The final launch from SLC-6 was of a Delta IV Heavy on September 24, 2022. 

In 2023, SpaceX signed a lease to use SLC-6 for its Falcon launches but has never used it, instead launching its Falcons regularly form SLC-4, which it started doing ten years earlier, in 2013. Fast forward to today.

A series of demolition charges on Tuesday (June 16) brought down the access tower, mobile service tower, and what remained of the assembly building at SLC-6—pronounced “slick-six”—in Southern California. Once the location for the US Air Force’s first effort to put humans into space and later, the West Coast launch site for the space shuttle, SLC-6 will next be used by SpaceX in support of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy missions. 

Flash back to February 1985. NASA’s prototype space shuttle orbiter Enterprise, stacked with an external tank and two solid rocket boosters, stands at Space Launch Complex-6 (SLC-6), flanked by the assembly building (left) and mobile service tower at back when it was called Vandenberg Air Force Base (today it's a Space Force Base). Credit: U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. James Pearson

One year after this photo, on January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds into its flight killing the entire crew of seven. That led the DOD to rethink relying on the shuttle. The Air Force walked away from SLC-6 and never launched a shuttle.

Towers originally built to support early Air Force spaceflight efforts and later never-realized West Coast launches of the space shuttle were toppled at Vandenberg Space Force Base's Space Launch Complex-6 (SLC-6) in California on June 16, 2026. Credit: Space Launch Delta 30/Staff Sgt. Daekwon Stith

“Space Launch Complex-6 represents six decades of American innovation and our unwavering commitment to securing space superiority,” Col. James T. Horne III, commander of Space Launch Delta 30 at Vandenberg, said in a statement. “By modernizing this historic footprint in partnership with our defense industrial base, we are building directly upon the foundation of our pioneers.”

The demolition was known to be planned but was only announced hours after it was completed at 11 am PDT (1800 GMT) on Tuesday. The detonations brought down the access tower first, followed by the mobile service tower and then the large American flag-adorned assembly building. Typical of Vandenberg weather, a marine layer of low clouds and fog added a somber look to the scene.

According to an environmental impact statement they filed, SpaceX seems to expect it will take another 18 months to complete modifications to SLC-6, including the construction of two landing pads for the reusable Falcon 9 first stage boosters. They talk about launching Falcon Heavy missions from SLC-6, which would require the two landing pads, but I see no mention of Starships launching from the left coast in the source article.  

Europe's Isar Aerospace having a tough time getting off the ground

Isar Aerospace is in a unique place for a private space corporation in Europe. They've actually launched a rocket once, back on March 30 '25, but the rocket didn't make orbit, and honestly didn't get much higher than a few launch towers. You may remember seeing it lose control less than one minute after launch as engines either couldn't or wouldn't run, then it crashed in to the water around Andøya spaceport in Norway and exploded.

Isar has been working toward the goal of the second flight of their Spectrum rocket since then and has been trying since this January, but something keeps coming up that stops them. The most recent scrub was this afternoon (Norwegian time) when ground control systems were “detecting off nominal behavior in the vehicle’s fluid systems,” and they scrubbed. Isar hasn't named a next day for an attempt, but remarked the launch window is only open (approved) until June 21. 

The Spectrum rocket has missed three launch windows so far this year. Isar called off a launch attempt on January 21 due to an issue with a pressurization valve, and then halted a countdown on March 25, moments before liftoff, when engineers detected rising temperatures in the rocket’s liquid propane fuel. Isar officials attributed the problem to a delay earlier in the countdown caused by an unauthorized boat in restricted waters along the rocket’s flight path.

Managers stood down from another launch attempt on April 9 to evaluate a suspected leak in a composite overwrapped pressure vessel [COPV]. That led to Isar’s latest try to launch the Spectrum rocket on Monday.

“Scrubs are part of the business,” Isar founder and CEO Daniel Metzler said in April. “Each attempt gives us valuable experience and lessons learned.”

As far as I know, every launch site like Andøya that launches from a site close to a beach has issues with some friction between other users of the water, both fisherman (recreational and professional) and people who just want to visit the beach. The same sort of concerns haunt Isar and the Andøya spaceport. Isar sits at the front of the pack of European startups trying to being commercial launch capacity to the European nations. 

Several other companies—Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg, France’s MaiaSpace, and Spain’s PLD Space, among others—are developing their own small satellite launchers to provide a lower-cost alternative to Arianespace and Avio, Europe’s incumbent launch providers.

Isar sits at the front of pack because they've gotten closer to successful launch than the others. So far. This is the attempt on March 30, 2025.

There were no customer payloads onboard the failed Spectrum launch last year. This time, Isar has placed five small CubeSats and a non-separating technology experiment into the Spectrum rocket’s payload fairing. The second test flight is supported by the European Space Agency’s “Boost!” program and the German Aerospace Center’s Microlauncher Competition, which provide funding for commercial space transport initiatives.

Isar Aerospace is set to receive up to 205 million euros ($238 million) from ESA through the European Launcher Challenge program, augmenting the company’s private fundraising and financing rounds worth more than 800 million euros (nearly $1 billion), including 270 million euros ($313 million) announced just last week. This makes Isar, by far, the most well-capitalized private launch company in Europe.

SpaceX IPO a success

Since a few times during the past week we were dancing around the topic of SpaceX's IPO today, it's convenient to end on that note and talk about it for a minute or two. 

I didn't have to look hard for this; this browser is Firefox under Windows 11 and what I think is the standard installation leaves lots of attention attractors on a blank tab. One of those today was a link to NPR (National Public Radio) who posted a summary of the IPO that seemed correct. 

SpaceX's newly listed stock leapt on its first day of trading on Friday, after an initial public offering that shattered records and made CEO Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire.

SpaceX stock, listed on the Nasdaq under the SPCX ticker, rose 19% on its first day of trading to close at $160.95. It became one of the world's biggest listed companies on its first day on the market, valued above $2 trillion.

The company raised some $75 billion selling more than 555 million shares at its offer price of $135,making it the biggest IPO in history.

While it might have been coincidence, NPR implies that to draw attention to the IPO, they launched a Falcon 9 carrying a load of Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral. Which I happened to miss because of not remembering the correct launch time.  (By the time we get the rocket sounds here, the flight has been going for over two minutes and there's not much chance of seeing anything. Which is fine because I was in the bathroom and wouldn't have been able to get up and go watch, anyway.). 

Musk was at Starbase, Texas and had a group presentation with President Gwynne Shotwell and Chief Financial Officer Bret Johnsen. 

"Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to mars, and ultimately beyond," Musk said, noting it was hard to believe the company had just pulled off the biggest IPO ever.

"I gave SpaceX less than a 10% chance of succeeding at all, to be clear," he said of the company's early days. "In fact I told people this, I said 'look, we're probably going to fail, but you know we should give it a try because if we don't, if there's not a new company that enters space, we will never be a truly space-faring civilization."

One of the places I looked at while looking for news on this had a picture of a guy who started at SpaceX as a welder. As of today's market action, the shares he was given as a bonus made him a multimillionaire. Charles Payne of Fox Business had this take.

A look at SpaceX's plan for orbital data centers

Back on Sunday, in the story about SpaceX's imminent IPO, I mentioned the thing I'd seen about the plan for the new public corporation included data centers in space: "Not one or two - a million AI data centers." It's kind of a mind-boggling concept - and if you're not used to thinking at the scale of the requirements they're facing, it can definitely be off-putting. How do you dissipate the heat your processors generate? How do you get the data down? What do we need that much processing power for? Replacing everything on Earth? 

SpaceX and Elon Musk in particular are the people to listen to because with their Starlink constellation they've put more satellite mass in space than any other company (or country). 

Space.com put up an interview with Elon in a casual setting somewhere in their corporate buildings. It turns out this interview is taken from one SpaceX posted on their X account that's just over a half hour long at 31 minutes. As you can see, this one is half that long. 

I'm not convinced it's a good thing to work toward, probably because I'm not convinced that the future we've glimpsed of how AI will affect everything is a good future. That said, it's worth watching. Is he on to something really important? It's possible. That's a different question than "should I invest in the IPO?" 

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I should add that the next couple of days could end up being spotty. Tomorrow we're having some electric maintenance done on the house - we're replacing our whole-house backup generator, which died back in March and while I don't expect to be taken down, it's more likely than any other day when they're not working on stuff.  This weekend is the ARRL VHF contest from Saturday at 2PM until Sunday night at 11PM - both in my local Eastern Daylight Time.

Well that didn't take long

Yesterday, NASA announced the crew for the Artemis III mission, along with information on the mission itself and what they will be doing.  

By this morning, the complaints that the crew wasn't diverse enough started surfacing. "They're all men! You can't do that!" OK. I made that line up, so here's a real quote for you.

Isaacman wrote on the social media platform X that “I have seen reactions ranging from disappointment to outrage.” One such response on Reddit called the crew announcement “massively upsetting.”

“Women represent 50 percent of the population,” the post read. “They deserve at least one seat on every mission from a government run agency.”

Although he tried, there's nothing that can be said to people who focus on things like that. Everything that Administrator Isaccman said sounded like when people used to say "I'm not a bigot; some of my best friends are black" (or Hispanic or whatever). 

But Isaacman strongly defended the crew selection, saying he had “personally been to space twice with 50 percent female crews. My closest advisors and some of the smartest engineers I know are women. In our latest NASA leadership organization, nearly 50 percent of the center directors and mission directorate leadership are women.

“The last astronaut candidate class selected under this administration was majority female [six women and four men] because they were the best of the best, including one astronaut [Anna Menon] I previously went to space with.”

The article on Spaceflight Now spends its column space talking about how non-discriminatory they are. What do you say to someone who says something like that line, “They deserve at least one seat on every mission from a government run agency.” One seat on a flight with two people, or one seat in a crew of 500 people? What percentage? Does it need to be 50%? What if the ship can only hold five? Do you cut two people in half and sew the halves together? That's how absurd that sounds to me. 

It's a waste of time to worry about such things. Best person for the job, no matter what they look like. If your life is on the line, do you want the best at what they're doing or someone there because they meet someone else's diversity demands? 

NASA announced its 2025 Astronaut Candidate Class on September 22, 2025. The 10 candidates, pictured here at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston are: U.S. Army CW3 Ben Bailey, U.S. Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, Katherine Spies, Anna Menon, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, Dr. Lauren Edgar, Yuri Kubo, Rebecca Lawler, and Dr. Imelda Muller. Credit: NASA

Let me point out that of the 10 candidates, six are women and four are men. I should point out that in the left A, posing on the floor, the blonde is Anna Menon, the former SpaceX engineer who flew on Polaris Dawn with NASA administrator Isaacman, and there are many pictures of her here on the blog. 

This week: SpaceX's IPO Hits the markets Friday

Here's one of those news stories that I keep an eye out for but isn't what I consider particularly big and important news. 

By now, I assume most people remotely interested in the launch industry or space industry have heard of and are maybe even tracking that SpaceX is going public and is going to launch an IPO, or Initial Public Offering, of shares of their stock. 

Space.com carried the story that SpaceX is going to start selling shares of their stock, this coming Friday, June 12th, and they're expected to become the 7th most valuable company in the US at $1.77 trillion. 

The company revealed this week that it plans to sell shares at $135 apiece during the IPO, which will occur June 12 when SpaceX begins trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SPCX.

That share price would give the company a valuation of $1.77 trillion, according to CNBC. Just six American companies are worth more: NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon and semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom. [From 1 to 6 in order - SiG] 

Now I personally don't get involved in trading and I'm not going to play in the IPO, so I don't need to tell you, "dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not a daytrader! Don't put any weight on financial stuff I say." That said, the reference link to CNBC has an article that says one of their experts says the IPO is overpriced and he's not buying. Their article is entitled, "‘Dean of Valuation’ Aswath Damodaran is not buying SpaceX: ‘Too richly priced’". They may not be expecting their article to change the results of the IPO, but the market value isn't settled until the people bidding on the prices of shares are settled and SpaceX may well end up being worth more or less than that predicted $1.77 trillion. 

The market has the final word. Just as every launch is on schedule until the weather speaks, we won't know if SPCX is valued at $1.77 trillion until the dust settles on Friday night - NASDAQ time.

My main concern is that this isn't really an IPO for the SpaceX we've come to know and admire.  They have diversified beyond launch and their Starlink telecommunications into artificial intelligence. 

SpaceX recently acquired xAI, the startup that Musk founded in 2023. xAI owns X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), built the generative AI chatbot Grok and operates Colossus, a supercomputer cluster in Tennessee. 

You've probably heard that they intend to put AI data centers in space. Not one or two - a million AI data centers. They're undoubtedly better suited to do this than any other launch provider but that doesn't mean it's a given that they'll put it all up and everything will work. 

My bias is that I think the whole AI thing going on is the biggest hype cycle in history. There are things that AI seems to be good at, but too much of what we see/hear/read is pi in the sky, if you'll pardon the John Wilder joke. 

Starship Flight Test 12 takes to the air back on May 22nd. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Clearly, New Glenn is NOT launching June 4

(While sitting and watching the second orbital launch of the day from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. this one a group of Amazon Leo satellites on an Atlas V... The first orbital launch of the day was a load of Starlink satellites on a Falcon 9 at about 8AM)

Pretty much all of the talk in the space press is about last night's major disaster with the loss of the next New Glenn rocket. After I posted last night's piece that the next New Glenn launch being No Earlier Than next Thursday I wasted some time watching some videos on YouTube and needed to turn in for the night. As I started to shut down, YouTube offered me a video from Ellie in Space that was saying something terrible had just happened. I looked at a couple of descriptions and thought "this is so bad we'll know nothing tonight that won't be changed by tomorrow" and went to bed. 

That was only a slight overstatement. 

As we've chatted about in the comments to the coming launch that were posted Thursday night, there are two big issues in the aftermath of this disaster and both of them come down to the impact on Artemis. On Tuesday, NASA contracted with Blue to deliver two rovers to the Moon using the Blue Moon Mark I lander, presumably on separate flights. That seems pretty iffy right now. If the New Glenn can't launch, I don't know if the Falcon Heavy could handle the rovers, but the rovers are being designed to fit the Blue Moon Mark I and some modification may be necessary.

An artist’s rendering of a Blue Origin Blue Moon Mark 1 lunar lander deploying Astrolab’s Crewed Lunar Vehicle (CLV-1) on the surface of the Moon.  You'll note the wheels of the rover aren't touching the lunar regolith, and that large bar is holding the rover just above the surface after taking the rover off the top of the lunar lander.  Graphic: Astrolab

While the amount of information has barely changed as the day has gone by, I hope more comes out in the next few days. Yes, including the weekend. Meanwhile, Scott Manley's video "Blue Origin's Rocket Explosion - How Bad Is It?" is good, and better than that Ellie in Space video mentioned and linked to above. I'm afraid there's very little more I can add now.

NASA proposes a lunar settlement development plan

Since Jared Isaacman took over as NASA administrator, one of the topics he has talked about regularly is not just returning to the Moon, and beating China to this little goal, but creating a sustained presence on the Moon; more like colonizing than visiting to say we left footprints. He began talking publicly about creating a base on the Moon. “For those waiting patiently, the grand return is close at hand, and we will not slow down,” he said.

Today, the talk was elevated to a presentation.   

NASA officials announced contract awards for the initial elements of a lunar base on Tuesday, including two rovers that will provide mobility to astronauts.
...
The manager for the lunar base, Carlos Garcia-Galan, said the space agency had selected two companies, Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, to build approximately one-ton rovers that would be ready for delivery to the Moon in 2028. Astrolab will receive $219 million for its “CLV-1” rover, and Lunar Outpost $220 million for its “Pegasus” rover, building upon initial contracts awarded two years ago. Each rover is expected to have a range of 200 km and be capable of driving autonomously, with guidance from operators on Earth, in addition to being driven by astronauts.

From left to right: Models of the Blue Origin Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, Astrolab Crewed Lunar Rover, Lunar Outpost Pegasus rover and Firely's Elytra Dark orbiter are unveiled at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. on May 26, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani)

Garcia-Galan announced that Blue Origin has been contracted to deliver the two rovers to the Moon using their Blue Moon Mark I lander, presumably on separate flights. The two delivery contract awards were said to be worth $280.4 million.

An important point is that despite the Apollo Program and six landings, we have much to learn about what the Moon's surface is really like. As Isaacman put it, “we know so little from what is a combined 80 hours of lunar astronaut EVA time across the Apollo missions, and that was more than a half century ago.”

To that end, one of the central elements of the early Moon Base program is the development of the MoonFall program, which will entail three or four drones each about 1 meter tall, with a mass of 225 kg, including propellant. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is leading development of the MoonFall drones, and these will be delivered to the lunar surface by Firefly Aerospace, Garcia-Galan said.

The goal is to get these spacecraft to the Moon before the Artemis IV lunar landing mission, scheduled for no earlier than 2028, to provide high-resolution imagery of the lunar surface. For most of the Moon, the current imagery resolution is 1 meter, and NASA wants to improve it to 1 cm, Garcia-Galan said.

The MoonFall drones will be deployed for long missions, and their ability to stay longer on the moon and work through the hostile environment will enable them to scout for water (perhaps as ice), provide data on soil mechanics, lighting conditions, and the terrain. Not requiring food, air and a narrow temperature range makes them better suited for a task like this than astronauts. At the end of their flying lifetime, the drones could then be used to set a boundary for the Moon Base. 

“We’re hoping to … establish a Moon Base perimeter with four or three lunar drones,” Garcia-Galan said. “We’re going to be able to basically put them at the corners of the areas where we think we have either key scientific objectives, or we want to build up the Moon Base.” In these positions, he added, the retired drones could also provide a beacon with retro-reflectors, or even perhaps serve as the first lunar cell towers.

This NASA chart outlines the three major steps of NASA's Moon Base program from 2026 through 2032, starting with unpressurized rovers and sorties, and ending with a permanent lunar base. (Image credit: NASA)

This raises problems with the concept of private property and claiming an area on the Moon, due to a small treaty signed in 1967 called the Outer Space Treaty. The treaty essentially says no country can claim sovereignty over territory on the Moon. Even building a base on the lunar surface does not confer ownership of that area under the treaty. But the Outer Space Treaty isn't the only set of agreements that might have to be lived by. You've very likely heard the term "Artemis Accords" but know little to nothing about what's in the Accords. At least that's my summary. 

The Artemis Accords, while recognizing the Outer Space Treaty, allow for the possibility of creating “safety zones” that would establish areas in which “harmful interference” is not allowed. “A safety zone should be the area in which nominal operations of a relevant activity or an anomalous event could reasonably cause harmful interference,” the Artemis Accords state. NASA and China have not formally discussed or mutually approved the concept of safety zones, and some Chinese commentators have been critical of the idea. 

Chinese commentators are critical of ideas that may allow American missions to mine or otherwise get resources from the Moon? This is my shocked face. 

Establishing a perimeter would seem to be the first manifestation of a safety zone on the lunar surface, although Isaacman would not confirm this when asked directly.

“There are areas of great interest on the lunar surface, and we do want to get there and explore them,” he said. “We also obviously want to be very mindful of the Outer Space Treaty, so that we are respectful of other nations that are putting assets on the lunar surface. We would expect that to be reciprocal, but I think that’s just one objective of many that the MoonFall drones intend to accomplish.”

Reviews of Flight Test 12 are coming in

While it's a weekend, some "reviews" of the Starship flight test yesterday are starting to show up in the professional circles. The broad sense of it that I get is that while it obviously wasn't perfect in everything to put a grade on it, the flight was broadly in the "A minus to B plus" band. That's where I put it and there's plenty of room for opinion. 

Stephen Clark at Ars Technica mentions it being better than the first flights of version 1 or 2, which I regard as correct but too easy a landmark to clear. Version 1 was in 2023 and ver. 2 was in 2025. I should hope that their goals for the flight would be loftier than just being better than those. 

You saw NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman's comment on X posted here yesterday, and Ars Technica adds Gwynne Shotwell's similar message to the company. 

“Congrats and a huge thank you to the SpaceX team that always delivers,” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s second in command, wrote in an X post. “This was an incredible first flight of a brand new vehicle. Our collective future flying amongst the stars has become so much closer.” 

Elon Musk's message was a little more brief, but just as positive.

“Congratulations @SpaceX team on an epic first Starship V3 launch landing!” Musk posted on his social media platform X. “You scored a goal for humanity.” 

It's hard to recap everything that worked because most of it did work. The ship’s heat shield appeared flawless during reentry over the Indian Ocean. Onboard cameras over their Starlink showed the aerodynamic flaps staying intact with no obvious melting throughout reentry. Without trying to look this up, I think this was the first mission where the heat shield and flaps didn’t suffer damages. 

That all went well, with the descent culminating in a dramatic maneuver to flip from horizontal to vertical. A final landing burn with the ship’s Raptor engines downshifted from three to two, then to a single engine as the rocket settled to a gentle water landing. Drones and buoy cameras recorded live views of the on-target splashdown. As expected, the ship—wider than and nearly as long a Boeing 777 jetliner—tipped over and exploded in a fireball, putting an exclamation point on V3’s trip halfway around the world from the Texas Gulf Coast.

Earlier in the flight, they tested a new "Pez dispenser" for putting Starlink's coming generation of satellites into orbit. We've seen a Pez dispenser before, but this upgrade carried two satellites on each layer. On Friday, the dispenser deployed 20 mockups of SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink satellites, plus two spacecraft fitted with flashlights and cameras to inspect Starship’s exterior in space. This photo came from one of those two Next Gen Starlink satellites. 

The elongated rectangle in the middle of the ship, with two large bright circular areas to the left of the rectangle, is the Pez dispenser's door that deployed this satellite. Image credit: SpaceX 

The good has to be balanced with the bad - or not so good - and that was the failure of one Raptor 3 engine on SuperHeavy and one Vacuum Raptor 3 on the ship. Neither one affected the mission because the system was so lightly loaded that the control systems could run the other engines a little bit longer to achieve the desired orbit, but it's obviously not the way things are supposed to go. One impact of the Starship engine that stopped running is that restarting the engines in orbit was a mission goal and they didn't attempt that. That almost certainly means the next test flight will also be suborbital - unless they find a simple reason for the engines turning off that absolves the engines of being defective.  

An unexplained issue is that the failed Raptor 3 on Super Heavy apparently led to the booster not coming to zero velocity just before landing in the Gulf, close to Starbase. The booster didn't fire the Raptor engines and slow down to stand on the water for a second or two. It was not immediately clear what caused the early end to the rocket’s boost-back burn: whether the malfunction stemmed from an external problem during stage separation or a separate issue within the booster’s propulsion system.

The pressing fact is that Starship is behind schedule. A bit over a year ago, March of 2025, Elon Musk posted on X that he expected to be launching V3 at a "rate of once a week in [about] 12 months." While it's still "about 12 months" from when he said that, I don't see a test flight 13 coming next week. Or even on the NextSpaceflight schedule at all. 

Trying to find out if tomorrow's big story is what I think it is

As the launch day has moved further out as the week went by, it has reduced my confidence that flight 12 is going to launch when promised. Currently, everything I can find is saying launch will be Thursday 5/21 at 6:30 PM EDT, which was first talked about Monday. 

The reason for my reduced confidence is that around noon EDT, I noticed that another Wet Dress Rehearsal was scheduled and opened the NASA Spaceflight live coverage to see it. I started watching with about 1 hour, 35 minutes on the timer (1:35:00) and they appeared to be in the process of cancelling the test for the day. I didn't spend the rest of the afternoon watching the live stream continuously. 

So the real question is simply if they're going to launch Thursday at 6:30 PM EDT? I have no idea. All I can see is still saying yes, but there have been times where schedule changes don't show up until the next morning. 

The other big story is that the long-talked about IPO for SpaceX suddenly got more understandable now that they've released a bunch of pretty closely guarded financial records. The one that stood out to me was in the 9th paragraph. Everyone knows that Elon Musk is a billionaire, right? Everyone knows he's practically drowning in money. Get a load of this:

Musk’s salary in 2025 was $54,080, a value tied to California’s minimum salary for exempt employees. Gwynne Shotwell, president and chief operating officer of the company, received a salary of $1.08 million in 2025, but including stock awards, her total compensation was valued at $85.8 million. 

Total salary of $54k/year? That's $26/hour. Not even remotely an upper tier income.  Gwynne Shotwell at just over $1 million/year is almost 20x Musk's pay, or $519.23/hr. Salary alone, not stock awards and other compensation. The $85.8 million works out to be $41,250/hr.

There's no real breakdown of the costs for a Falcon 9 mission. The industry reporters quote a base public price of $74 million but estimate it really costs in the neighborhood of $15 million. With approximately 660 Falcon 9 missions, they probably have a pretty good set of numbers on the expenses for launches as the vehicles age, and that appears to be closely guarded. On a different note, I'm sure those numbers don't exist for Starship since it's still in development. 

The numbers that professional buyers will probably be concentrating on are the total size of the SpaceX business - the Total Addressable Market or TAM. 

SpaceX projects a “total addressable market,” or TAM, of $28.5 trillion across its present and future offerings in space, data, and AI services. However, of this amount, only about $2 trillion is directly related to space or the company’s Starlink network. The remaining $26.5 billion is believed to come from AI, largely from enterprise applications. 

“We believe we have identified the largest TAM in human history,” the company states on page 171 of the filing. “We believe our next trillion-dollar market is AI compute, which we contemplate will leverage our rockets and satellites for massive orbital deployment.”

SpaceX estimate of total addressable market. Credit: SpaceX S-1 filing

Not a typical space story

Not a typical space-story, but one that I find heartwarming. It's centered on Space Camp, that summer camp for kids that's near the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and one of the people the story is focused on is one who went there as a kid. That kid is now NASA Administrator, Jared "Rook" Isaacman. 

The article's focus is that Space Camp officials report registrations have doubled this summer since the successful completion of Artemis II's lunar flyby mission in April.

When he was 12 years old, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman attended the week long “Aviation Challenge” program at Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama.

“For the first time, I got behind the controls of an airplane when I attended Aviation Challenge,” Isaacman said on Friday evening during an event at the US Space & Rocket Center. “I became a pilot because I thought that was the closest I would ever get to the stars.”

Decades later, after founding a successful online payments company and flying to space twice as a private citizen aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, Isaacman has returned to Space Camp in Alabama on multiple occasions to meet with participants and share a bit of the awe he experienced as a kid. In 2022, a year after the first of these flights, Inspiration4, Isaacman donated $10 million to kick off a Space Camp expansion.

Donating $10 million to Space Camp is a positive thing if I'm keeping score, even for a borderline billionaire. (As a side note, is there a word for someone whose net worth is over one billion, but not as much as two billion?) It's more than just that, though. He donates his NASA salary to Space Camp, and on Friday, he returned to open the new “Inspiration4 Skills Training Complex.” That's a 50,000-square-foot facility completed with an additional $15 million donation from Isaacman - which will also support development of a new dormitory.

If the Apollo era was representative of how people relate to seeing others on the moon doing interesting things, Space Camp could well be on the way to a continuous period of more activity with many more teens and young adults interested in going. 

Final words to Rook Isaacman:

“Off the success of Artemis II, America’s return to the Moon is just getting going,” Isaacman said during the ribbon-cutting event for the new facility.

“And it is that kind of magic that inspires the next generation to attend Space Camp, get hands-on experiences at this national treasure, unlike anywhere else in the country, and grow up ready to pick up the baton and join in this great adventure.” 

Crewmates on Inspiration4, commercial astronaut Chris Sembroski and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Inspiration4 Skills Training Complex in Huntsville, Ala. Credit: Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images