SpaceX: Launch cadence 1–3+ per week (mostly Falcon 9). Hundreds of successful booster reflights. A Falcon 9 fairing half reached a 40th flight on September 19 (Starlink 15-27: 27 satellites from Vandenberg SLC-4E; booster on its 17th flight, landed on Of Course I Still Love You). 13 integrated Starship flights by late July (Flight 12 = first V3/Block 3 from Pad 2 with Starlink imagers + 4K streaming; Flight 13 = second V3, first deploy of all 20 real Starlink V3 satellites with RF/laser links, in-space Raptor relight, intact soft splashdown and first intact-heatshield views). Flight 14 flew on September 28: Ship 41 on Booster 21 reached Earth orbit for the first time (single-Raptor insertion, about 275 km), deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites with contact confirmed, deorbited after about three hours instead of the published nearly-10-hour profile, and splashed down in the Pacific. Super Heavy splashed down in the Gulf of America. Webcast reports (Reuters, PBS, CBS) described an early ascent-engine shutdown before the go for orbit. Sep 22: Crew-13 was retargeted to October 1 after a Dragon oxidizer leak. Aug 30: Falcon Heavy launched NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from 39A toward Sun-Earth L2; both side boosters landed LZ-2 and LZ-40. Sep 18: NASA added Crew-15, 16, and 17 (CCtCap total 17, readiness 2027–2028). Public company (Nasdaq: SPCX) after June 2026 IPO. Starbase, Bastrop Starlink factory, and Terafab chip complex in Grimes County (Aug 6: SpaceX+Tesla, ~$16.8B phase-1, 100M+ sq ft vertically integrated logic/memory/packaging for Optimus/Cybercab and space-based data-center chips). Starlink primary revenue + Direct-to-Cell; Starshield. xAI / SpaceXAI: Colossus-scale training; product velocity through September 23: Grok Bot voice, vault, and in-chat drafts (Sep 23), Grok connectors in Tesla (Sep 22), Grok 4.7 (Sep 21 — larger base, longer multi-hour RL, same $2/$6 as 4.6; Cursor, Grok Build, API), Grok Voice Transcribe 2.0 (Sep 18), Grok 4.6 (Aug 12 — long-running agents; Copilot + Bedrock + Gemini Enterprise + Microsoft Foundry), Grok Bot (Aug 11 launch; Aug 26 more plans; Sep 3 Enterprise with access/network/audit controls), Grok Build on every plan web/mobile (Aug 19), plus prior Grok 4.5, open-source Build + Workflows, Voice Think Fast 2.0, Workspace/365 add-ins, Imagine Video 1.5 refs, Imagine Image 2.0. Both: high-agency, first-principles, rapid public iteration. Attract aligned top talent.
Source: @SpaceX + @elonmusk (September 28, 2026); spacex.com/launches/starship-flight-14 + sl-15-27, nasa.gov, x.ai/news/grok-4-7 (September 21, 2026)
Independent educational fan project. Not affiliated with Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) or xAI Corp.