Top News

1. Isaacman details Artemis III’s three-launch sequence

1. Starship Flight 14 places 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites in orbit
   The September 28 flight marked the first time Starship reached orbit and released a commercial payload. One Raptor Vacuum engine shut down early during ascent, yet the upper stage completed its insertion burn and deployed every satellite. All 26 spacecraft later reported contact with the ground network. The upper stage was deliberately shortened to a three-hour mission and splashed down in the northern Pacific as a precaution. The flight was not clean. Light Reading reports that Flight 14 launched on September 28, 2026 and placed 26 Starlink V3 satellites into orbit. Space.com framed it as the first time the megarocket deployed satellites in orbit at all. Earlier Starship flights were test missions, so this one marks the shift from demonstration to a payload with commercial value. The engine problem also shortened the mission. Reports say the plan called for roughly 10 hours, but SpaceX cut it to about three hours, and the upper stage splashed down in the northern Pacific Ocean as a precaution. A flight that loses an engine and still delivers every satellite tells you two things. The timing matters because SpaceX is not new to high launch cadence. Its Falcon 9 rocket already flies Starlink batches on a near-routine basis. Starship is the vehicle meant to replace that workhorse for the heaviest jobs, and Flight 14 was the first time it carried a payload that actually does something for the business. The flight was not clean according to reports. One of the six second stage engines cut off early and although SpaceX proceeded with the orbital insertion burn, they decided to bring Starship back to Earth without completing all six orbits that were planned. Booster lost one of its 33 engines shortly after liftoff, but that didn’t affect its performance. SpaceX did not attempt a catch back at the launch tower. What was brand new this time was sending Starship into orbit. Source: tech-insider.org Source: shattered.io
2. xAI reports 110,000 GB200 and 220,000 GB300 GPUs deployed
   Elon Musk stated on X that the Macrohard cluster now totals 330,000 Blackwell-series GPUs. The deployment supports training and inference workloads for Grok models inside the larger SpaceX compute stack. Musk confirmed the numbers in an October 31 post. The scale directly supports expanded Grok training runs and inference capacity tied to SpaceX’s terrestrial and planned orbital compute infrastructure. The cluster combines 110,000 GB200 units with 220,000 GB300 units. This hardware addition accelerates the timeline for larger model training sessions. The announcement came one day after multiple reports on xAI’s ongoing data-center permitting issues. The GPU count reflects continued investment in the compute ecosystem that now includes both terrestrial clusters and future orbital elements. Source: x.com

Also Today

Monthly Questions and Discussion Thread: r/SpaceXLounge — The subreddit opened its November thread for open questions on Starship testing, Starlink operations, and Falcon reuse records. Source: reddit.com

Mars Startups: r/SpaceXLounge — Users discussed timelines for greenhouses and life-support hardware that could ride Starship to sustain early crews after 2030. Source: reddit.com

The Counterpoint

A federal judge ruled that xAI’s gas turbines powering Colossus 2 cannot be treated as mobile sources under Mississippi’s Clean Air Act implementation plan, allowing the NAACP lawsuit to proceed on permit and standing grounds. The decision rejected both the company’s motion and a parallel Justice Department filing. Resolution now depends on whether the turbines receive the required preconstruction and operating permits or whether the case advances to findings on actual emissions. The facility is located in Southaven, Mississippi, while Colossus 2 is located in Memphis, Tennessee. According to the complaint, MZX Tech LLC is a subsidiary of xAI and owns and operates the facility that supplies electricity to the data center. The central issue was whether gas turbines could be considered mobile sources of pollution and therefore exempt from permitting requirements. xAI argued that turbines fell within the exemption, while the NAACP challenged that interpretation in its lawsuit. The judge ruled that the turbines do not fall into the category of mobile sources under the federal regulations incorporated into Mississippi’s implementation plan. Under this interpretation, the facility is not exempt from the relevant permitting requirements of the Clean Air Act. The NAACP alleges that xAI and MZX Tech installed and operate gas turbines without the required permits to build and operate them. The lawsuit also alleges that residents in the area have changed their daily habits because they are concerned about potential exposure to pollutants. These are allegations made by the plaintiffs, not findings confirmed by the court. The decision also examined whether the NAACP has standing to sue under the Clean Air Act. The judge accepted that organizations can sue on their own behalf when seeking to protect the interests of their members. The judgment concerns the ability to sue, not the ultimate liability of the companies. xAI also argued that citizen lawsuits to enforce environmental laws violate the Constitution and limit executive power. The judge rejected the argument, noting that the plaintiffs are suing in their own name and seeking redress for harms they claim they and their members have suffered. The court also considered a letter from the Mississippi Environmental Protection Agency, which had taken a different view on whether the units could be considered mobile. Source: newsbytesapp.com

Engineering Deep Dive

Reusable first stages cut the marginal cost of each launch by recovering the largest single hardware element. Falcon 9 boosters have now flown as many as 37 missions because the vehicle was designed from the start with landing legs, grid fins, and throttleable engines that survive re-entry heating and landing loads. The same principle scales to Starship: the Super Heavy booster returns the 33 Raptors and the massive propellant tanks that would otherwise be expended on every flight. In-space 3D printing further reduces the logistics penalty by allowing replacement parts to be manufactured on orbit instead of launched from Earth. NASA’s first demonstration on the ISS in 2014 produced a functional printer component, proving that additive manufacturing works in microgravity without gravity-fed feed systems. When these two capabilities combine—rapid booster reuse plus on-demand spares—the effective cost per kilogram delivered to orbit drops because the same capital hardware flies repeatedly and the supply chain for consumables shrinks. The remaining constraint is how quickly the fleet can be inspected, refurbished, and turned around between flights. The manufacture of first-stage booster constitutes about 60 percent of the launch price of a single expended Falcon 9. After multiple attempts, some as early as 2010, at controlling the re-entry of the first stage after its separation from the second stage, the first successful controlled landing of a first stage occurred on December 22, 2015. Since then, Falcon 9 first-stage boosters have been landed and recovered 673 times out of 686 attempts. In total 56 recovered boosters have been refurbished and subsequently flown at least a second time, with a record of 37 launches and landings carried out by a single booster. SuperDraco is a hypergolic propellant rocket engine designed and built by SpaceX. It is part of the SpaceX Draco family of rocket engines. A redundant array of eight SuperDraco engines provides fault-tolerant propulsion for use as a launch escape system for the SpaceX Dragon 2. SuperDraco rocket engines utilize a storable hypergolic propellant which allows the engines to be fired many months after fueling and launch. History was made on November 24 at 9:28pm GMT, when the first 3D printer built to operate in space successfully manufactured its first part on the International Space Station. This is the first time that hardware has been additively manufactured in space, as opposed to launching it from Earth. The first part made in space is a functional part of the printer itself – a faceplate for its own extruder printhead. The presence of a 3D printer onboard the ISS will allow hardware designs to be tested and iterated on orbit. The flight did not go exactly as planned, but SpaceX’s Starship Integrated Flight Test-14 did make it into orbit for the first time today and deployed 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites. Liftoff from Starbase, TX was at 7:48:59 am Central Time. Starship is a two-stage vehicle and although it’s the second stage that’s named Starship, the word is often used to refer to the entire vehicle. The first stage is Super Heavy or Booster. Several previous test flights traveled through space on the way to the Indian Ocean, but those were suborbital missions. Starship, or Ship, lost one of its three RVAC engines during ascent as can be seen in the telemetry. Source: en.wikipedia.org Source: spacenews.com Source: spacepolicyonline.com

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