Musk Joins Pentagon Brain Trust as SpaceX Racks Up Government Wins and Commercial Deals

Defense Secretary Hegseth names Musk to a Pentagon study group as SpaceX adds a $946 million NASA contract and a classified Space Force launch.

Elon Musk has been handed a seat at the table where the U.S. military maps out how it intends to fight future wars. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named the SpaceX chief to lead "Project Meridian" alongside Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Pentagon study group tasked with examining operational concepts for coming conflicts.

The appointment says plenty about how far the rocket maker has traveled from its upstart roots. SpaceX is now woven into the fabric of America's security apparatus — a position that gives its lofty valuation a steadier footing than the headline price might suggest.

Government Contracts as Ballast

On Wednesday the stock closed at EUR 133.32, a market capitalization of EUR 1,688.20 billion that bakes in enormous expectations. What underpins those expectations, however, is a stream of federal business that keeps flowing.

A Falcon 9 carried the classified USSF-385 mission for the U.S. Space Force into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base, with the booster completing its tenth flight and landing on a droneship as planned. Details of the payload stayed under wraps. Days earlier, on September 18, NASA expanded its existing CCtCap agreement with SpaceX by USD 946 million, adding three crewed missions to the International Space Station — Crew-15 through Crew-17. That brings the contract's total value to USD 5.92 billion, running through 2030.

While legacy defense contractors wrestle with delays, SpaceX keeps delivering cadence and infrastructure. Washington, in short, can no longer afford to plan around Musk.

Commercial Momentum, With Static

The civil side of the business is pushing ahead in parallel. On September 17, the Federal Communications Commission granted subsidiary Space Exploration Holdings worldwide Section 214 authority for international telecommunications services supporting Starlink Mobile. The step does not yet cover radio frequencies or operating licenses in other countries, but it stakes out the strategic corridor.

Not everyone is cheering. AT&T chief John Stankey has called SpaceX's mobile strategy — competing directly with carriers through Starlink ground stations — economically and technically unviable, pointing to financial, technical and regulatory obstacles.

Demand in the commercial sector, though, looks real: a partnership struck September 23 with airline Vietjet will bring high-speed internet to an initial 120 aircraft. And Spanish satellite operator Sateliot has booked launch services for its five-satellite Draconis mission, set to lift off October 1 from California aboard one of SpaceX's rockets, expanding its Internet-of-Things network. Financial terms of that agreement were not disclosed.

Starship Reaches Orbit, Then Stumbles

Technical progress continues on the heavy-lift front. The 14th Starship test flight reached Earth orbit for the first time on September 28, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites. An engine problem during ascent forced the company to end the mission early after roughly three hours; the vehicle tipped over and broke apart during splashdown north of Hawaii.

On the insider front, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell filed on September 22 to sell 342,170 shares. Such liquidity moves are routine for executives at this scale and do little to cloud the operating picture.

Valuation Rests on Strategic Lock-In

The shares are trading 11 percent above their 50-day average of EUR 119.82, and in today's session the stock added 1.5 percent to reach EUR 133.74. Analyst John Blackledge of TD Cowen flagged the leasing of computing capacity for artificial intelligence as a potential revenue driver.

Spaceflight remains capital-intensive and risky. But as long as Washington treats SpaceX as an indispensable pillar of Western space infrastructure — and as long as commercial customers keep booking payload slots — the company's strategic monopoly with the U.S. military and NASA offers a meaningful cushion against the downside.