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SpaceX’s Mr Steven spotted in high-speed test at sea with upgraded net

Published

7 years ago

July 17, 2018

Eric Ralph

SpaceX’s newly-outfitted recovery vessel Mr Steven was recently captured conducting aggressive maneuvers off the coast of Port of Los Angeles, just days after the vessel’s massive new arms and net were installed for the first time. The intense pace of upgrades and acceptance testing confirm beyond any reasonable doubt that SpaceX does not intend to waste its next Falcon 9 fairing recovery attempt, set to accompany the July 25th launch of Iridium-7.

The iconic fairing recovery vessel has – for the past three or four weeks – been undergoing major upgrades to its arms or claws, as well as a massive, new net spanning nearly 0.9 acres (3700 m²). With what appears to be a genuine fourfold increase in usable area for fairing recoveries, SpaceX likely has a very strong chance of actually pulling off its first successful catches and reuses of Falcon 9 payload farings, valued at roughly 5% of the rocket’s cost ($3 million per a $60 million base price) per half. Manufacturing cost and price to the customer are difficult to compare, but it at least offers a hint of the full cost of each ~800 kg segment of carbon fiber and aluminum honeycomb.

Mr Steven seen just after a day spent conducting sea-trials a few miles offshore, July 14. (Pauline Acalin)

Based on photos and video captured between July 12 and 15, Mr Steven’s crew and recovery technicians appeared to waste no time at all leaping from arm and net installation to sea-trials of the new hardware at least as extreme as anything previously observed from the SpaceX-leased vessel. Less than half an hour after leaving the harbor for the first time since his massive new arms arrived, Marinetraffic tracking data showed that Mr Steven was already performing aggressive turns and sprints at speeds up to 20 knots (~25 mph), fairly impressive given the vessel’s 200 foot (62 meter) length and gross weight of nearly 200,000 pounds (82,000 kg).

While this may seem impressive, Mr Steven is a class of ship known as a Fast Supply Vessel (FSV) designed to routinely transport a full 400 metric tons of cargo on its deck at cruising speeds of 23 knots (27 mph), which means that the only thing Mr Steven’s wildly expansive arms likely challenge is the vessel’s center of gravity (balance), hence the follow-up tests with hard turns at high speed.

Also of interest, an extraordinary video of some of that testing – unofficially captured, somehow, by drone – showed the ship aggressively maneuvering in reverse, an ability that could come in useful during recovery attempts if the expanded net’s coincidental protection of Mr Steven’s cockpit means that it can become a less fixed element, actively seeking out falling fairings to help close the gap on each parasailing half’s 50 meter error margin.

: Mr Steven makes some serious waves, using his pod thrusters to strafe backwards at 5-10 knots. (anonymous)

: It’s subtle, but a small plus sign appears to ‘mark the spot’ on Mr Steven’s new net, stretching roughly 60×60 meters. (anonymous)

: Mr Steven shows off the fancy new rigging of that upgraded net. (Pauline Acalin)

Another opportunity fast approaches

Previously scheduled for July 20, Iridium’s NEXT 7 multi-satellite launch was pushed back a handful of days to July 25 to give SpaceX engineers and technicians additional time to prepare what is the company’s third Block 5 Falcon 9 to roll off its Hawthorne, CA assembly line. While suboptimal for the customer and for SpaceX’s manifest, that slight delay very likely padded slim schedule margins for Mr Steven’s major arm upgrades, meaning that the vessel will now be able to participate in the imminent launch’s recovery operations. After the first flightworthy vehicle’s debut in May 2018, SpaceX’s rocket production has ramped up in quite an extreme fashion, jumping from four first stages produced in six months to another three or four boosters completed and tested in Texas in just two months.

While the transportation of Falcon fairings and upper stages is far harder to keep track of, production of those critical components of the rocket have also reached throughput levels that are new territory for SpaceX, including an impressive statistic of an average of one full Merlin 1D rocket engine manufactured daily according to an individual with experience on the factory floor.

The Block 5 iteration of the workhorse SpaceX vehicle is in many ways a wholly new rocket, featuring an array of upgrades that include new heat shielding at the rocket’s base, interstage, and legs; retractable landing legs, upgraded Merlin 1D engines, and a clean-sweep refresh of the vehicle’s avionics, to name just a handful of the major changes included.

SpaceX technicians wrench on a trio of varied Merlin 1Ds in McGregor, Texas, where every single engine is test-fired before being attached to a Falcon 9. (SpaceX)

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Related Topics:Fairing Recovery Featured Mr Steven SpaceX

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Eric Ralph

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla sends clear message to Waymo with latest Austin Robotaxi move

It is the first expansion Tesla has made in Austin since the one on August 26. The company still operates in the Bay Area of California as well, referring to that program specifically as a “ride-hailing service.”

Published

3 hours ago

October 28, 2025

Joey Klender

Credit: Tesla

Tesla has sent a clear message to Waymo with its latest move to its Robotaxi program in Austin, Texas.

Tesla and Waymo are the two true leaders in autonomous ride-hailing to an extent. Tesla has what many believe is a lot of potential due to its prowess with the Supervised Full Self-Driving suite. It is also operating a driverless Robotaxi service in Austin with a “Safety Monitor” that sits in the passenger’s seat.

Tesla explains why Robotaxis now have safety monitors in the driver’s seat

The two companies have been competing heavily in the market since they both launched driverless ride-hailing services in Austin this year: Waymo’s in March and Tesla’s in June.

One of the main drivers in the competition between the two is service area size, or the geofence in which the cars will operate without a driver. In August, the two were tied with a service area of about 90 square miles (233.099 sq. km).

Tesla then expanded to about 170 square miles (440.298 sq. km) on August 26, dwarfing Waymo’s service area and expanding to freeways. Tesla’s freeway operation of the Robotaxi suite requires the Safety Monitor to be in the driver’s seat for safety reasons.

On Tuesday evening, Tesla made another move that sent a clear message to Waymo, as it expanded once again, this time to 243 square miles (629.367 sq. km).

This is according to Robotracker:

Here’s a comparison of Tesla’s geofence in Austin vs. Waymo’s
Tesla’s now spans 243 square miles, almost three times the size of Waymo’s at 89 square miles https://t.co/OCAHQDQhzb pic.twitter.com/wq5bHQXCp4
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 29, 2025
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Yesterday, it expanded that service to the San Jose Mineta International Airport, something it has been working on for several months.

Waymo has its own set of distinct advantages over Tesla as well, as it operates in more cities and states than the EV maker. Waymo currently has its autonomous vehicle services in Phoenix, Arizona, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Atlanta, Georgia.

Tesla plans to have half of the U.S. population with access to the Robotaxi platform by the end of the year.

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Tesla exec reveals shock development with Cybercab

“If we have to have a steering wheel, it can have a steering wheel and pedals.”

Published

13 hours ago

October 28, 2025

Joey Klender

(Credit: Teslarati)

Tesla is planning to launch the Cybercab in the second quarter of next year, and it is designed to be fully autonomous, so much so that the company is planning to build it without a steering wheel or pedals.

However, a Tesla executive said today that the company could ditch that idea altogether in what would be a major shift from the plans the company, and especially its CEO Elon Musk, have announced for the Cybercab.

Earlier today, Robyn Denholm, the company’s Chair for the Board of Directors, revealed that Tesla would potentially switch up its plans for the Cybercab based on potential regulatory requirements.

Credit: Tesla Europe & Middle East | X

Currently, even autonomous vehicles that operate for companies like Tesla and Waymo are required to have steering wheels and pedals. From a regulatory perspective, this could halt the plans Tesla has for Cybercab.

Denholm said in an interview with Bloomberg:

“If we have to have a steering wheel, it can have a steering wheel and pedals.”

Interestingly, Musk and Tesla have not veered away from the idea that the vehicle will be without these operational must-haves.

Since the vehicle was revealed last October at the We, Robot event in Los Angeles, Tesla has maintained that the car would be built without a steering wheel or pedals, and would equip two seats, which is what is statistically most popular in ride-sharing, as the vast majority of rides have only one or two passengers.

Musk doubled down on the plans for Cybercab as recently as last week, when he said:

“That’s really a vehicle that’s optimized for full autonomy. It, in fact, does not have a steering wheel or pedals and is really an enduring optimization on minimizing cost per mile for fully considered cost per mile of operation. For our other vehicles, they still have a little bit of the horse carriage thing going on where, obviously, if you’ve got steering wheels and pedals and you’re designing a car that people might want to go very direct past acceleration and tight cornering, like high-performance cars, then you’re going to design a different car than one that is optimized for a comfortable ride and doesn’t expect to go past sort of 85 or 90 miles an hour.”

Cybercab is fully conceptualized as a vehicle that has zero need for pedals or a steering wheel because it is aimed toward being fully reliant on a Level 5 autonomous platform.

Tesla is ramping its hiring for Cybercab vehicle manufacturing roles

Regulators could get in the way of this, however, and although the car could drive itself and be a great solution for ride-hailing, it might need to have these controls to hit the road in the future.

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SpaceX opens up free Starlink service for those impacted by Hurricane Melissa

Published

15 hours ago

October 28, 2025

Joey Klender

(Credit: Starlink | X)

SpaceX is opening up its internet service, Starlink, to those impacted by Hurricane Melissa, as it made landfall in Jamaica and the Bahamas as a Category 5 storm.

Hurricane Melissa is expected to reach wind speeds of over 165 MPH over the next few days as it extends out into the Atlantic Ocean by Thursday and Friday.

Satellite imagery shows Hurricane #Melissa‘s growth from its formation on October 21 to a Category 5 hurricane through October 27, 2025. #HurricaneMelissa pic.twitter.com/goR3Hbgb9c
— The Weather Network (@weathernetwork) October 27, 2025

Citizens in Jamaica and the Bahamas have been preparing for the storm for the past week, getting necessary goods together and preparing for the massive storm to arrive. It finally did yesterday, and the first images and video of the storm are showing that it could destroy many parts of both countries.

Starlink is now being opened up for free until the end of November for those impacted by the storm in Jamaica and the Bahamas, SpaceX announced today:

For those impacted by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica and the Bahamas, Starlink service is now free through the end of November to help with response and recovery efforts → https://t.co/fUko3xSviJ
— Starlink (@Starlink) October 28, 2025

It is a move similar to the one the company made last year as Hurricane Helene made its way through the United States, destroying homes and property across the East Coast. SpaceX offered free service for those impacted by the destruction caused by the storm.

The free Starlink service was available until the end of 2024.

Elon Musk’s companies have also made similar moves to help out those who are impacted by natural disasters. Tesla has offered Free Supercharging in the past, most notably during the California wildfires.

Tesla and SpaceX’s LA fire relief efforts: Cybertrucks, free Starlink and more

One major advantage of Starlink is that it is available for use in situations like this one, where power might be required to operate things like a modem and router.

Internet access is a crucial part of survival in these situations, especially as it can be the last leg some stand on to get in touch with emergency services or loved ones.