Abort mission
Going interplanetary with SpaceX
Good morning, cosmic explorers. This is your Stock Market Rundown for November 21st, 2023. Thank you, once again, for joining me. Let’s dig in:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: ELON’S GALACTIC ADVENTURES 🚀
As an executive, Elon Musk wears many hats. He has to juggle his troll-ridden social media platform, Twitter; his cash-incinerating electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla; and his subterranean tunneling enterprise, The Boring Company.
But Elon’s passion project is SpaceX. He founded the aerospace venture in 2002 to be the vehicle (literally) for his biggest dream: the colonization of Mars by humans.
Elon recently made one giant leap for mankind when SpaceX launched its Starship spacecraft. At 40 stories tall with 33 engines, it’s the biggest rocket ever built. And with space for a hundred passengers, Starship is the interstellar equivalent of an inter-city Greyhound bus.
Despite all that legroom, the test flight was unmanned. Lucky thing, too, given that it didn’t go exactly according to plan. The idea was to fly a quick lap around the planet before returning to earth.
The megarocket did fly for more than 8 minutes, reaching speeds of up to 15,000 miles per hour. But it then lost contact, and the ship self-destructed over the Gulf of Mexico.
The media slammed the test as a failure, but let’s give Elon credit. This is ambitious, daring engineering work. And every failed rocket test brings us one step closer to me retiring in a condo on Mars, enjoying stunning views of the Gusev Crater.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
The vampire squid’s tentacles aren’t wrapping around as many big payoffs these days: a senior banker at Goldman Sachs says dealmaking will be “less robust” in the medium term due to macroeconomic woes.
Better than a new personal best on the bench press: Planet Fitness, the home of purple treadmills and free pizza slice Mondays, beat estimates on double-digit revenue growth as the company raised fees in some markets.
Apple is adding features to the Apple Watch that will detect sleep apnea and monitor blood pressure. So it’ll warn you when you’re losing sleep and getting hypertension due to inflated cellphone bills from using too much data.
The Nintendo Switch console is still super-popular, with sales of 6.8 million units in the past six months. Nintendo’s iconic Super Mario franchise was boosted this year by The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which became the highest-grossing film ever based on a video game. I’m guessing it was also the highest-grossing film ever where the main characters are a couple of plumbers.
That’s it for today, my friends; see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Yours in capitalism, The Axe