General Motors (GM) has shut down a manufacturing plant in Kansas and laid off the site’s roughly 2,000 workers after the automaker stated plans to do so last week. The news comes as the latest amidst strikes from the United Auto Workers (UAW) union targeting Ford, GM and Stellantis.
Following the UAW strikes at a GM assembly plant in Wentzville, Missouri last Friday, the automaker said on Wednesday that it doesn’t have work available for its Fairfax, Kansas workers, according to NBC News. GM has also said it won’t be able to offer unemployment benefits to the workers “due to the specific circumstances of this situation.”
“The fundamental reality is that the UAW’s demands can be described in one word — untenable,” wrote GM President Mark Reuss in an op-ed for Detroit Free Press on Wednesday. “As the past has clearly shown, nobody wins in a strike. We have delivered a record offer. That is a fact.”
Roughly 12,700 workers from GM, Ford and Stellantis walked off the job after previous union contracts expired last Thursday. The UAW strikes have targeted key manufacturing plants, asking workers to leave the premises without any notice to affect the automakers’ larger supply chains.
Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge owner Stellantis announced plans to lay off 68 workers at an Ohio facility, warning of another 300 layoffs in Indiana if the situation does not improve.
Additional layoffs are happening at a Stellantis machining plant in Perrysburg, Ohio, outside of Toledo, due to “storage constraints.” The company predicts a similar situation at a transmission and casting plant in Kokomo, Indiana.
Ford also laid off around 600 employees at a plant in Wayne, Michigan.
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Tesla’s Elon Musk invites UAW to hold a union vote “at their convenience”
UAW President Shawn Fain has warned that the union will broaden strikes on Friday if the automakers don’t make “serious progress” on creating a new contract. Roughly 150,000 workers total are represented by the UAW.
Currently, the UAW is asking for pay increases of between 36 and 40 percent over a four-year period, a 32-hour work week, significant changes to the time it takes to earn top wages and more. The automakers have offered contracts featuring roughly 20 percent wage hikes over four years.
Strikes have so far hit GM’s full-size van and midsize truck plant in Wentzville, a Ford Bronco SUV and Ranger midsize truck plant in Wayne, Michigan, and a Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio, which produces the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator.
According to Reuters, the three automakers remained in a negotiation stand-off with the UAW on Wednesday, ahead of the union’s plans to escalate strikes to other facilities. Analysts think that the next wave of strikes could target production facilities building more profitable pickups, such as the Chevy Silverado from GM and the Dodge Ram from Stellantis.
Ford reached a deal to prevent a mass walkout of Canadian workers on Tuesday after the union Unifor threatened a strike of its roughly 5,600 workers across three plants in the country.
The agreement has still yet to be ratified by Unifor, and Ford Canada said it wouldn’t disclose details about the deal. However, it reportedly included improved wages and pensions along with added support for transitioning to electric vehicles (EVs).
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While EV manufacturer Tesla isn’t unionized and is not directly involved with the strikes, transitioning to EVs has been a main concern for the unions, as EV production requires fewer employees. As such, the UAW seeks to increase workers’ stability amidst the EV transition.
Tesla only builds EVs, so unlike the “Big 3,” the automaker won’t have to phase out gas car production. Some predict that the strikes could benefit the EV maker, while others argue that ripple effects from the strikes could turn out to be a negative across the auto industry.
You can watch UAW President Shawn Fain’s update below, posted on Tuesday, in which he warns of the upcoming Friday deadline.
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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
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This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
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Elon Musk has updated his timeline for when humans will walk on Mars and for when ships will simply get there.
The objective of getting to Mars has been one of Musk’s biggest goals since becoming a serial entrepreneur and realizing that time on Earth is limited. Musk has said several times he hopes to die on Mars, and not by impact.
Musk now believes that people will be on Mars in “roughly 5 to 7 years.” He said that a Mars lander will get there “a few years sooner.”
People on Mars in roughly 5 to 7 years.
Mars lander a few years sooner.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
The response from Musk comes after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that SpaceX’s biggest priority is the Moon and not Mars. Because of this, Isaacman conceded that he believes nuclear power and propulsion investments will provide “potentially the pathway with the fewest miracles required to put four people on Mars in the next 10 to 15 years.”
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Of course, this is what NASA can do through taxpayer funding and nuclear investments, he added.
Musk’s grand ambitions are much more optimistic than most, and it is certainly a double-edged sword. This is not the first time timelines for Mars have been somewhat lofty, especially to those normal thinkers like you and me, not super geniuses like Musk.
In fact, the SpaceX and Tesla frontman has said on at least a dozen occasions that we could be on Mars in the coming years. Musk said 2020 would be the big year as early as 2009. In 2020, he was “highly confident” of a landing in 2026, and had even said 2024 in a best-case scenario.
The point is, the range has varied, and it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll get there. This latest adjustment to the timeline is typical of Musk, and while the Moon has seemingly taken priority over Mars, it is still worth mentioning that the ultimate goal is to make life multiplanetary, and it starts potentially with the Red Planet.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
