SpaceX

SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15, which would attempt to catch both the booster and the ship, a first if successful, though the date still awaits regulatory approval. Commentary is split between excitement over the milestone and skepticism about the payload size of 26 Starlink satellites.

Tesla and SpaceX merger officially announced: Tesla and SpaceX merger officially annou

68%

chance

Polymarket

From the stories

SpaceX’s New Starship Reveal Is Incredible!Marcus House

SpaceX targets Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15 and a first-ever double catch

@elonmusk put the stakes plainly on Nov 6: "If both are successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact." The post drew 95,386 likes. SpaceNews and the official mission page list the date as pending regulatory approval. Space.com calls it something that's "never been done before," while USA Today confirms the launch is scheduled from Starbase in Texas with 26 next-generation Starlink satellites deployed one by one during the mission. Spaceflight Now (60,590 views) reports that VP of launch Kiko Dontchev gave the same target at UpSummit on Nov 5, a name also confirmed by MarketScale. The plan is to catch both the Super Heavy booster, Booster 22 per KeepTrack, and the ship on the tower arms. The Space Road narrows the window to 4:45 to 6 p.m. CST on Nov 13 and says the ship returns after more than 22 hours in flight. Drive Tesla separately confirmed the Nov 13 target and first-ship-catch framing on Nov 6. Polymarket's Flight Test 15 market puts the launch at a 97% chance, up 20.9% this week.

SpaceX's "Go For Orbit" documentary, dropped Nov 6, did the hype work

The SpaceX Instagram reel hit 694,958 views and 38,554 likes. It frames Flight 15 as "the first orbital Starship launch carrying advanced Starlink satellites." Marcus House broke the episode down for 452,889 viewers. On r/spacex, the "STARSHIP FLIGHT 15" thread pulled 382 upvotes and the "RETURNING STARSHIP TO THE LAUNCH SITE" thread drew 254. Spaceflight Now credits the Sept 28 Flight 14 review with giving President Gwynne Shotwell the confidence to try a ship catch.

Hacker News isn't impressed by Flight 15's 26-satellite payload

In the HN thread (122 points, 88 comments), tristanj wrote: "Launching only 26 Starlink v3 satellites is a disappointingly small number." By their math that's roughly 52t against the 100t Block 3 advertised capacity. tristanj also says Musk called Flight 14's identical load "only about half loaded" on the Q3 earnings call. The timing roughly matches what Musk said back on Oct 12, when a spacex_spacenews reel (329,537 views) quoted him saying Flight 15 was "hopefully just 4-6 weeks away."

Musk says US government revenue is heading under 10% of SpaceX's total, and the money is moving toward AI compute

Bloomberg reported the Nov 6 comment as a shift away from what was once the company's most important partnership. Two other moves point the same way:

• An Oct 26 $40 billion chip-financing deal with Apollo, also per Bloomberg.
• A proposed $24 billion Texas supercomputer with its own gas-fired power plant, per CoinDesk.

Job postings on Greenhouse point the same direction. Openings include Software Engineer (AI Data Engineering) and a senior version in Vehicle Engineering Software & AI, among 2,911 listed roles. Those are open roles, not confirmed hires.

SpaceX signed a Qualcomm deal on Nov 4 for US mobile network technology, and Starlink is staffing up regionally

CNBC reports Qualcomm will provide network technology for SpaceX's US mobile service. The Starlink Consumer team has open Starlink Growth Lead posts in the Midwest, Northeast, South and West. There's also a Manager, Starlink Enterprise Sales opening. Bettors aren't sold on timing: Polymarket gives a 52% chance SpaceX becomes a US mobile carrier by the market's deadline.

r/technology turned a Nov 4 election-night stock slide into a referendum on Musk valuations

The "Tesla, SpaceX And AI Stocks Slide After Democrats Take Congress" thread hit 5,723 upvotes. u/Few-Living2377 summed up the mood: "When your stock price moves more on election results than product launches, it says a lot about where the real value was coming from." (298 upvotes) Polymarket meanwhile gives a 68% chance that a Tesla-SpaceX merger gets announced.

Space Force is scrambling over SpaceX's plan to retire its most popular rocket

The r/space thread (1,526 upvotes, 939 comments) quotes reporting that SpaceX accounts for 85% of US launches. That makes the Pentagon's dependence the story. On Nov 5, Reuters reported that the FAA proposed launch rule changes seen as a potential boost for SpaceX. Falcon isn't gone yet: Falcon Launch Ops still has a Meteorologist (Launch Operations) opening. On the Starship side, Components Test is hiring a Mechanical Design Engineer (Starship Components).

Ukraine accused SpaceX on Oct 14 of crippling drone missions

Reuters tied the accusation to worsening US-Ukraine ties, though it drew only 10 points on HN. By Oct 25, rawstorymedia (262 likes) reported that Musk acknowledged SpaceX changed how Ukraine's military can use Starlink. Musk followed it with a stark warning about the war.