As a Louisiana native (I was born and raised in and around Baton Rouge), I’m excited to share this post. Building off of what we have learned about Starship here in Starbase, Texas and about cadence at both the Cape and Vandenberg, this will be the first launch site ever purpose built to truly achieve the rate required for a spacefaring civilization.

S41 on its victorious return to the factory following a successful static fire campaign. B21 is on deck this week. I’m very excited about flight 14 and moving Starship into some exciting operational missions.

I went a bit quiet there as we we had a flurry of activity over the past week and weekend but the outcome was worth the effort. Megabay killed it last weekend, thank you folks for being awesome. Great flight 13 for both Booster 20 and Starship 40, which finished its mission floating intact in the Indian Ocean (a first as we’ve previously lost the nose on slapdown after water landings). Really critical data collected this mission on a demonstration deorbit burn for Raptor, and a first flight for the next generation Starlink satellites. It feels like we are ready to kick into gear on delivering payload to orbit, which I am very excited for. 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.

For folks following along, today was the first time we lit engines on a full stack Starship then aborted and detanked. While similar to a wet dress rehearsal there is a lot going on and any first time operation comes with additional risk. Our operators and operations teams plan for this and it’s a testament to their hard work and preparation that enables an efficient and safe operation on the first try. For all the folks who stayed up late reviewing data to set aborts, running endless simulations or needling on the details of procedures, it paid off today.

Eternally grateful for the team and leaders at @SpaceX that I’m privileged to work with every day. From Dragon, to landing Falcon, to developing Starship to take us to the Moon and Mars. Proud of what we have accomplished but even more excited about what comes next. SpaceX is a special place.

Elon Musk and SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell rang the opening bell on Friday, with Musk in Texas and Shotwell at the Nasdaq in New York City, ahead of SpaceX's historic market debut. More details:

It’s a little bit crazy to think about the fact that this is the same company I started working for 18 years ago with a group of less than 500 people who were just learning how to design and operate launchers, but here we are. Still learning how to design and operate (much larger and more capable) launchers. Plus some other things…