The DoD pours another eleven billion into the launch pool the same week SpaceX slips below its own IPO price. Two facts, one day — and they're pulling in opposite directions. This is SpaceX IPO Watch. Today: a Starship abort that never gave the market its clean flight, a $17 billion Space Force ceiling now shared seven ways, and a stock that broke below the floor everyone thought was there. From Jillian Hamilton at ClearanceJobs:
have been awarded modifications to previously awarded contracts for National Security Space Launch Phase Three Lane One that will cumulatively increase the ceiling by $11,400,000,000. These modifications bring the total cumulative face value of the contract to $17,000,000,000 from $5,600,000,000. The location and period of performance will be determined at the task order level.
Okay, the number that jumps off this filing — the NSSL Phase Three Lane One ceiling just went from $5.6 billion to $17 billion. That's an $11.4 billion expansion landing the same week Starship scrubbed. The DoD isn't waiting on a clean Flight 13 before it deepens this relationship. The moat shows up in contract paper, not a slide deck. Read the vendor list, though. SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, Stoke, Rocket Lab, Impulse, Relativity — seven names now hold Lane One paper. The pool tripled, and the guest list got a lot longer. So yes, more government money. But the idea that SpaceX vacuums up all of it? That's harder to hold when the contracting activity just credentialed six other bidders on the same manifest. Payloadspace's Douglas Gorman has been tracking this. Eleven-point-four billion dollars added to the NSSL ceiling, seventeen billion total. The DoD is leaning further into SpaceX's launch stack the same week Starship coughed on the pad. Right, but read the vendor list in that ClearanceJobs piece we just hit — this money's spread across seven names now. Blue Origin, Stoke, plus four others holding paper on the same manifest. Seven names, sure. Exactly one of them is flying reusable heavy-lift to orbit with national-security payloads on it. To me, the headcount says the government's building redundancy around a core SpaceX already owns. Or the government just told you it doesn't want to be single-sourced anymore. The SDA awards went to L3Harris and Sierra Space, not SpaceX. Same trend, bigger dollar sign — more government money, more distributed. I'll take that trade all day. Falcon 9 is landing boosters and delivering DoD payloads at cadence while Starship has a bad Thursday. The portfolio's working — the whole vertical-integration argument is playing out live. It's playing out at a valuation where a $63 Morningstar DCF is staring down a $210 bull target, and nothing this week narrowed that gap. Eleven billion in ceiling isn't eleven billion in awards, Eric. From Defense Daily:
U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command (SSC) has increased the ceiling of Phase 3, Lane 1 National Security Space Launch (NSSL) contracts by $11.4 billion to $17 billion and said on Friday that the additional funding would go to future task orders for rockets by United Launch Alliance (ULA), SpaceX , Stoke Space Technologies, Rocket Lab USA , Impulse Space and Relativity Space's Relativity Federal subsidiary.
Eleven point four billion added, ceiling now sits at seventeen. The DoD is deepening its bet on the launch stack the same week the hardware side had a rough go. Deepening the bet across ULA, SpaceX, Stoke, Rocket Lab, Impulse, and Relativity Federal. Seven names on the manifest, Eric. That pot got bigger and more crowded at the same time. Sure — but line the seven up and ask which one is flying national-security payloads on a reusable heavy-lift vehicle at cadence right now. It's a very short list, and it's a list of one. For today, yes. But remember the SDA awards a few days back went to L3Harris and Sierra Space, not SpaceX. That looks like the same pattern escalating — more government money, more distributed. The bull models that assume SpaceX captures all the DoD upside just got harder to defend. The redundancy is the point, Cassidy. You don't credential six backups to a vendor you're planning to walk away from — you credential them because you can't afford your core to blink. I read that as validation more than dilution. Or it's the Pentagon learning not to single-source a company whose founder's calendar is a headline risk. Either way, ULA's Boeing-Lockheed joint venture is right there on the same paper. SpaceX is eligible for that seventeen billion; it hasn't been handed the check. Here's what Will Robinson-Smith at Spaceflight Now is reporting. Okay, honest bad news first — Flight 13 aborted post-ignition on the 17th. It wasn't a program failure or a RUD; they caught an anomaly after light-up and stood down. That's the abort system doing its job. Right, and here's the modeling problem, Eric. UBS pinned a $210 target on the idea that a clean Starship flight would be the re-rating catalyst. The clean flight didn't happen. So what's holding up $210 now? A scrubbed attempt doesn't touch the reusability cost curve. Falcon 9 landed a booster on the drone ship this same week, and it's still flying DoD payloads at cadence while Starship takes a beat. Sure, but the market was pricing the catalyst, not the portfolio. And with that $63 Morningstar DCF still sitting there unrebutted against a $210 bull case, nothing this week narrowed that gap. Nothing. And yet the DoD lifted the NSSL ceiling to seventeen billion the same day the rocket was still smoking. Sentiment doesn't write those contracts, Cassidy. The government is deepening its bet on the launch stack. Here's AOL:
That happened fast. Space Exploration Technologies(NASDAQ: SPCX) has stumbled nearly 45% from highs set in the days after its massive initial public offering (IPO) earlier this year. The space economy giant helmed by Elon Musk has steadily faced selling pressure in recent weeks, and has actually now round-tripped its IPO price of $135.
Here it is in a headline, not a bear blog: SPCX at $124.35, below the $135 IPO price, down nearly 45% from the post-IPO highs. Everyone who bought at the offering, or later, is underwater. And the writer's point is pretty simple: cheap isn't the argument here. Even on the most optimistic growth assumptions, the multiple is still extreme. That's the same gap I've been chewing on — a $63 Morningstar DCF versus a bull range north of $200, and nothing this week narrowed it. Okay, but read what the same piece admits — the business is growing quickly. The price fell; the subscriber curve and the launch cadence didn't. And I'll say the honest part out loud — the Flight 13 abort handed the bears a fresh prop this week. Post-abort sell pressure on a reusable program is a different animal from a program blowing up. One scrubbed ignition doesn't touch the cost curve. Sure, but the clean Starship flight was supposed to be the re-rating catalyst. It aborted. So the catalyst the market was waiting on didn't arrive, and the tape did this anyway. If SpaceX IPO Watch helps you stay ahead of the story, consider subscribing wherever you’re listening. And if you have a moment, leave a review — it helps other people find the show.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one caught your attention, you can follow it there and read further.
That’s SpaceX IPO Watch for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.