SpaceX Aims for First-Ever Double Catch as Texas AG Warns on Tesla Merger

SpaceX is chasing a double first tonight. Sometime after 5:45 p.m. ET, the company will launch Starship from Starbase, Texas, then attempt to catch both stages — the Super Heavy booster and the Starship upper stage — with the arms of the launch tower. It has caught older versions of the booster before, but never the newest iteration, and never Starship itself in any form.

The flight plan is tight. The booster comes back for its catch about 6.5 minutes after liftoff, while Starship pushes on toward orbit, circles Earth 14 times over more than 22 hours and deploys 26 of SpaceX's newest Starlink V3 satellites. Starship's own catch attempt is set for roughly 4:15 p.m. ET Saturday. On October's earnings call, Musk put the odds of success at 'more likely than not.'

The launch caps a busy week of spending news. SpaceX said Wednesday it plans to spend more than $74 billion on two AI supercomputing campuses in Texas and Arizona. The smaller site, attached to Starbase, carries more than $24 billion in initial construction phases, and a hearing notice shows SpaceX proposing its own natural gas power station on about 444 acres so it won't draw from the public grid.

The Arizona half is bigger: $50 billion for nine buildings across 747 acres in Cochise County, with SpaceX saying it could reach 6 gigawatts of compute. The company says it will work with local electric co-ops to manage costs and claims ratepayers could see lower bills — but a petition with 2,400 signatures is asking the county to deny the permit.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported this morning that merger talks with Tesla are moving along, with a formal agreement possible in December or early 2027. Any deal would need regulators, and Texas Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson isn't rolling out a welcome mat. He has vowed to investigate Musk's business dealings in Texas and told Bloomberg that 'any merger of companies of that consequence warrants tremendous scrutiny.'