Editor’s Note
So today’s issue is partly due to my love of all things SpaceX, and part cop-out. There’s been so much news about SpaceX in the media that I’ve been struggling to pick which stories I want to write about, so I’ve known for the last month or so that I just had to dedicate an entire issue to SpaceX. Plus, I’m traveling on vacation this week to visit my momz in Florida (aka Hell’s Front Porch) and have been on the go from morning to night. If you’ve ever tried to keep up with a retired person it’s like a marathon! I’ll be back in the office next week, so I’ll be returning to my usual full issue.

In today’s newsletter I discuss the lockup of SpaceX shares, SpaceX might be reserving their future Falcon and Starship launches exclusively for their Starlink satellites, SpaceX might be developing a Starbase in Louisiana, no one actually saw the SpaceX rocket crash into the moon, SpaceX is buying a whole lotta batteries from Tesla, I can’t wait for SpaceX Starlink Mobile to launch, and SpaceX is changing their relationship status to “going steady” with Nvidia.

And lastly, full disclosure: I’m a big fan of SpaceX, and also a shareholder. The company is far from perfect, and the same can be said about it’s founder, but I’m definitely Team SpaceX for the long ride. There, I said it!

Let’s get into it!

There's about to be a whole lot of more SpaceX shares on the market now that over 900 million shares are ending their lockup period and "could" be sold - that's the key word. There's nothing saying those shares WILL be sold, but they do represent $101 billion dollars worth of SpaceX stock that insiders (i.e. employees, past employees, contractors and any investors lucky enough to have invested in SpaceX before it went public. Prior to the lockup period ending there were only around 639 million shares available in the market, so this lockup will more than double the available shares to trade if insiders decide to sell. And by December 2026 there will be 5.34 billion shares available to sell and trade (again IF insiders sell).

My guess is there will be SOME insiders like current and past employees who will decide to sell. We're talking about generational wealth for some early employees. I've met an early Angel investor in SpaceX, and trust me when I say she and her husband (who is part of the PayPal Mafia) don't need the money, so I'm guessing other Angel investors will continue to hold their SpaceX shares and enjoy the ride. I know that's what I'm doing.

Shout out to Mike Ye on LinkedIn for the great post and image that inspired me to write about this today.

It might be bad news for the next few years for companies hoping to use SpaceX to launch their payloads into space. SpaceX is reserving most of their future Falcon 9 rocket launches to launch their own Starlink satellites, because they’re making a lot more money from expanded Starlink connectivity than they could charging customers to launch their payloads. It just makes good business sense. And before you get excited hoping that customers will be able to launch their payloads on SpaceX’s new upcoming Starship, no such luck. Starship will only increase the number of Starlink satellites that SpaceX will be launching. So unless your name is NASA or the NSA, you’re probably better off buying a ride from Rocket Lab or Blue Origin for the next few years.

It looks like SpaceX might be about to acquire 130,000 acres of waterfront swamp land in Louisiana that they could be planning to use to develop a new launch complex for its Starship rockets on the Gulf Of Mexico. SpaceX is getting the land as a part of a legal settlement involving ExxonMobil, with SpaceX assuming responsibility for the environmental restoration across the polluted wetlands on the 18-mile long stretch of land. Launching from Louisiana has a lot of benefits, including proximity to a natural gas pipeline nearby, and SpaceX could ship rockets and satellites via barge from their Boca Chica Starbase facility.

On Wednesday August 5, 2026 a spent SpaceX rocket crashed into moon at roughly 5,405 MPH. The SpaceX rocket is left over from the January 2025 Blue Ghost Mission 1 commercial lunar landing mission that was conducted by Firefly Aerospace.

Contrary to the viral videos of a rocket crashing into the moon and creating a giant plume of dust, those aren’t real. You see, the moon was facing away from the Earth at the time the rocket was anticipated to crash into the Moon. In the next few days astronomers should be able to observe the results of the recent crash, but sadly we’re only left with those fake viral videos to doomscroll.

The symbiotic relationship between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla continues. So far in 2026 SpaceX has bought $329 million dollars worth of Tesla Megapacks. At a retail price of $1.4 million dollars for a Megapack 2 XL, which could mean Tesla bought as many as 235 Megapacks.

SpaceX is mostly using Tesla’s Megapacks to power its SpaceXAI data centers, like the Colossus 1 data center in Memphis, Tennessee and its sister Colossus 2 data center that’s under construction next door.

It looks like SpaceX is building their own mobile phone network, but instead of putting up antennas on land they’ll be broadcasting their signal from space via Starlink Mobile to compete with the likes of AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

I’m not gonna lie, I might be the right client for this kind of SpaceX service with how much I travel, and how there’s almost no cell phone signal where I live. I’m ready for SpaceX’s next billion dollar service!

Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX will be using Nvidia AI chips exclusively to build out all of the company’s AI data centers including their Colossus 1 & 2 data centers in Memphis, Tennessee. SpaceX previously used chips from multiple companies, including AMD and Intel, but now they’re going all in on the Vera Rubin architecture, and they’re changing their relationship status to “going steady” with Nvidia.

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.