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DeepSpace: China tests SpaceX-reminiscent grid fins after iSpace snags orbital milestone
Eric Ralph · August 1st, 2019
Welcome to the latest edition of DeepSpace! Each week, Teslarati space reporter Eric Ralph hand-crafts this newsletter to give you a breakdown of what’s happening in the space industry and what you need to know.
Although the accomplishments aren’t quite as flashy as a launch to the Moon, the last week has featured a number of interesting developments and significant milestones from both the state-run and quasi-commercial wings of Chinese spaceflight.
In the commercial realm, Chinese startup iSpace became the country’s first commercial entity to successfully reach orbit, achieving the feat with a three-stage solid rocket called Hyperbola 1.
One day later, state-owned Chinese company China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) completed its 50th successful Long March 2 rocket launch on a relatively routine government spy satellite mission. Unique was the fact that the rocket marked the first flight test of grid fins – extremely similar to those used on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 – on a Long March rocket.
The march to orbit
- In 2019 alone, three Chinese spaceflight startups have made their first orbital launch attempts and more tries are planned in the second half of the year. OneSpace and LandSpace both got close but ended up suffering partial failures that cut their attempts short before safely reaching orbit.
- Enter iSpace: one of dozens of startups in a burgeoning Chinese commercial spaceflight industry, the company’s three-stage solid rocket – named Hyperbola 1 – became the first Chinese startup-launched rocket to successfully reach orbit on July 25th.
- Although a large amount of the hardware may well have been procured (or licensed) wholesale from CASC, the success still signifies the start of a new alternative to government launches for companies (and perhaps government agencies) seeking to launch smaller satellites.
- Hyperbola 1 stands about 21m (68 ft) tall, is 1.4m (4.6 ft) in diameter at its widest point, and weighs about 31 tons (68,000 lb) when fully fueled. Three solid rocket stages are followed by an extremely small fourth stage meant to circularize the payload(s) in low Earth orbit (LEO).
- The rocket is capable of launching as much as 260 kg (570 lb) to a 500 km (310 mi) sun-synchronous orbit (SSO).
- For iSpace, Hyperbola 1 is more of a stopgap measure as the company works to develop Hyperbola 2, a significantly larger launch vehicle meant to feature a reusable booster and internally-developed liquid rocket engines.
- Ultimately, Hyperbola 1 reaching orbit is an exciting milestone, but it will be far more significant when a Chinese startup reaches orbit with a launch vehicle it has truly designed and built itself. A number of companies aim to do just that next year (2020).
The sincerest form of flattery…
- A day later (July 26th) and approximately 1000 miles (1600 km) to the southeast, state-run corporation CASC was preparing for a routine launch of its Long March 2C rocket, carrying a trio of relatively small spacecraft for a government spy satellite constellation.
- Technically known as YW-30 Group-5, the launch was a routine success that just so happened to be the Long March 2 family’s 50th successful launch in more than 35 years. The family has only suffered one in-flight failure.
- Long March 2C is a two-stage rocket that stands 42m (138 ft) tall (shorter than Falcon 9’s first stage), 3.35m (11 ft) wide, and weighs ~233 tons (514,000 lb) fully fueled. The 2C variant is capable of launching ~3850 kg (8500 lb) into LEO and more than 1250 kg (2750 lb) into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO).
- Although the rocket’s 50th launch success milestone is worth recognizing, this particular launch wound up drawing a significantly greater amount of attention for an entirely different reason: attached to the outside of the Long March 2C’s booster interstage was a quartet of immediately familiar grid fins.
- SpaceX has grown famous in the last five or so years for its spectacularly successful Falcon 9 recovery and reusability, aided in no small part by grid fins used by the booster to retain aerodynamic control authority during its hypersonic jaunts through the atmosphere.
- The appearance of grid fins on a Chinese rocket – looking undeniably similar to SpaceX’s first-generation aluminum fins – raised some (moderately xenophobic) ire in the space community, with people falling back on the stereotype of the perceived willingness of Chinese people to flagrantly ‘copy’ ideas.
- Both the stereotype and the grid fin-stoked ire are arguably undeserved. SpaceX did not invent grid fins, nor did it invent the concept of using grid fins to guide suborbital projectiles.
- In fact, CEO Elon Musk would almost certainly be happy to see someone – anyone! – blatantly copy SpaceX’s approach to reusability. A blatant copy, while not exactly worthy of pride, is still a major improvement over companies sticking their heads in the sand and tacitly choosing insolvency and commercial irrelevance rather than admit that they were wrong and SpaceX was right.
-
- (Pauline Acalin – Teslarati)
- According to CASC, this mission’s grid fins were included to flight-test their ability to more carefully guide the booster’s return to Earth. China infamously takes a… lax… approach to range safety, allowing spent boosters and fairings to haphazardly crash into inhabited areas, often containing remnants of their sometimes toxic propellant.
- Indeed, this particular booster did appear to crash in an uninhabited valley, be it thanks to those experimental grid fins or pure chance
- However, aside from not crashing large objects in populated areas, CASC and China have plans to develop a Long March 6 rocket with a reusable booster that will use the same recovery methods as Falcon 9. That rocket could fly as early as 2021 and July 26th’s grid fin test is an obvious sign that work is ongoing.
- If China manages to develop and launch a partially reusable rocket by 2021, they will be miles (and years) ahead of its space agency peers (NASA, ESA, CNES) and companies like ULA and Arianespace.
Thanks for being a Teslarati Reader! Stay tuned for next week’s issue of DeepSpace.
– Eric
Elon Musk
Tesla announces crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone
The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.
Tesla has announced a crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone, as it has officially confirmed drivers have surpassed over 8 billion miles traveled using the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite for semi-autonomous travel.
The FSD (Supervised) suite is one of the most robust on the market, and is among the safest from a data perspective available to the public.
On Wednesday, Tesla confirmed in a post on X that it has officially surpassed the 8 billion-mile mark, just a few months after reaching 7 billion cumulative miles, which was announced on December 27, 2025.
Tesla owners have now driven >8 billion miles on FSD Supervisedhttps://t.co/0d66ihRQTa pic.twitter.com/TXz9DqOQ8q
— Tesla (@Tesla) February 18, 2026
The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.
The milestone itself is significant, especially considering Tesla has continued to gain valuable data from every mile traveled. However, the pace at which it is gathering these miles is getting faster.
Secondly, in January, Musk said the company would need “roughly 10 billion miles of training data” to achieve safe and unsupervised self-driving. “Reality has a super long tail of complexity,” Musk said.
Training data primarily means the fleet’s accumulated real-world miles that Tesla uses to train and improve its end-to-end AI models. This data captures the “long tail” — extremely rare, complex, or unpredictable situations that simulations alone cannot fully replicate at scale.
This is not the same as the total miles driven on Full Self-Driving, which is the 8 billion miles milestone that is being celebrated here.
The FSD-supervised miles contribute heavily to the training data, but the 10 billion figure is an estimate of the cumulative real-world exposure needed overall to push the system to human-level reliability.
News
Tesla Cybercab production begins: The end of car ownership as we know it?
While this could unlock unprecedented mobility abundance — cheaper rides, reduced congestion, freed-up urban space, and massive environmental gains — it risks massive job displacement in ride-hailing, taxi services, and related sectors, forcing society to confront whether the benefits of AI-driven autonomy will outweigh the human costs.
The first Tesla Cybercab rolled off of production lines at Gigafactory Texas yesterday, and it is more than just a simple manufacturing milestone for the company — it’s the opening salvo in a profound economic transformation.
Priced at under $30,000 with volume production slated for April, the steering-wheel-free, pedal-less Robotaxi-geared vehicle promises to make personal car ownership optional for many, slashing transportation costs to as little as $0.20 per mile through shared fleets and high utilization.
Credit: wudapig/Reddit< /a>
While this could unlock unprecedented mobility abundance — cheaper rides, reduced congestion, freed-up urban space, and massive environmental gains — it risks massive job displacement in ride-hailing, taxi services, and related sectors, forcing society to confront whether the benefits of AI-driven autonomy will outweigh the human costs.
Let’s examine the positives and negatives of what the Cybercab could mean for passenger transportation and vehicle ownership as we know it.
The Promise – A Radical Shift in Transportation Economics
Tesla has geared every portion of the Cybercab to be cheaper and more efficient. Even its design — a compact, two-seater, optimized for fleets and ride-sharing, the development of inductive charging, around 300 miles of range on a small battery, half the parts of the Model 3, and revolutionary “unboxed” manufacturing — is all geared toward rapid production.
Operating at a fraction of what today’s rideshare prices are, the Cybercab enables on-demand autonomy for a variety of people in a variety of situations.
Tesla ups Robotaxi fare price to another comical figure with service area expansion
It could also be the way people escape expensive and risky car ownership. Buying a vehicle requires expensive monthly commitments, including insurance and a payment if financed. It also immediately depreciates.
However, Cybercab could unlock potential profitability for owning a car by adding it to the Robotaxi network, enabling passive income. Cities could have parking lots repurposed into parks or housing, and emissions would drop as shared electric vehicles would outnumber gas cars (in time).
The first step of Tesla’s massive production efforts for the Cybercab could lead to millions of units annually, turning transportation into a utility like electricity — always available, cheap, and safe.
The Dark Side – Job Losses and Industry Upheaval
With Robotaxi and Cybercab, they present the same negatives as broadening AI — there’s a direct threat to the economy.
Uber, Lyft, and traditional taxis will rely on human drivers. Robotaxi will eliminate that labor cost, potentially displacing millions of jobs globally. In the U.S. alone, ride-hailing accounts for billions of miles of travel each year.
There are also potential ripple effects, as suppliers, mechanics, insurance adjusters, and even public transit could see reduced demand as shared autonomy grows. Past automation waves show job creation lags behind destruction, especially for lower-skilled workers.
Gig workers, like those who are seeking flexible income, face the brunt of this. Displaced drivers may struggle to retrain amid broader AI job shifts, as 2025 estimates bring between 50,000 and 300,000 layoffs tied to artificial intelligence.
It could also bring major changes to the overall competitive landscape. While Waymo and Uber have partnered, Tesla’s scale and lower costs could trigger a price war, squeezing incumbents and accelerating consolidation.
Balancing Act – Who Wins and Who Loses
There are two sides to this story, as there are with every other one.
The winners are consumers, Tesla investors, cities, and the environment. Consumers will see lower costs and safer mobility, while potentially alleviating themselves of awkward small talk in ride-sharing applications, a bigger complaint than one might think.
Elon Musk confirms Tesla Cybercab pricing and consumer release date
Tesla investors will be obvious winners, as the launch of self-driving rideshare programs on the company’s behalf will likely swell the company’s valuation and increase its share price.
Cities will have less traffic and parking needs, giving more room for housing or retail needs. Meanwhile, the environment will benefit from fewer tailpipes and more efficient fleets.
A Call for Thoughtful Transition
The Cybercab’s production debut forces us to weigh innovation against equity.
If Tesla delivers on its timeline and autonomy proves reliable, it could herald an era of abundant, affordable mobility that redefines urban life. But without proactive policies — retraining, safety nets, phased deployment — this revolution risks widening inequality and leaving millions behind.
Elon on the MKBHD bet, stating “Yes” to the question of whether Tesla would sell a Cybercab for $30k or less to a customer before 2027 https://t.co/sfTwSDXLUN
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 17, 2026
The real question isn’t whether the Cybercab will disrupt — it’s already starting — it’s whether society is prepared for the economic earthquake it unleashes.
News
Tesla Model 3 wins Edmunds’ Best EV of 2026 award
The publication rated the Model 3 at an 8.1 out of 10, and with its most recent upgrades and changes, Edmunds says, “This is the best Model 3 yet.”
The Tesla Model 3 has won Edmunds‘ Top Rated Electric Car of 2026 award, beating out several other highly-rated and exceptional EV offerings from various manufacturers.
This is the second consecutive year the Model 3 beat out other cars like the Model Y, Audi A6 Sportback E-tron, and the BMW i5.
The car, which is Tesla’s second-best-selling vehicle behind the popular Model Y crossover, has been in the company’s lineup for nearly a decade. It offers essentially everything consumers could want from an EV, including range, a quality interior, performance, and Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite, which is one of the best in the world.
The Tesla Model 3 has won Edmunds Top EV of 2026:
“The Tesla Model 3 might be the best value electric car you can buy, combining an Edmunds Rating of 8.1 out of 10, a starting price of $43,880, and an Edmunds-tested range of 338 miles. This is the best Model 3 yet. It is… pic.twitter.com/ARFh24nnDX
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 18, 2026
The publication rated the Model 3 at an 8.1 out of 10, and with its most recent upgrades and changes, Edmunds says, “This is the best Model 3 yet.”
In its Top Rated EVs piece on its website, it said about the Model 3:
“The Tesla Model 3 might be the best value electric car you can buy, combining an Edmunds Rating of 8.1 out of 10, a starting price of $43,880, and an Edmunds-tested range of 338 miles. This is the best Model 3 yet. It is impressively well-rounded thanks to improved build quality, ride comfort, and a compelling combination of efficiency, performance, and value.”
Additionally, Jonathan Elfalan, Edmunds’ Director of Vehicle Testing, said:
“The Model 3 offers just about the perfect combination of everything — speed, range, comfort, space, tech, accessibility, and convenience. It’s a no-brainer if you want a sensible EV.”
The Model 3 is the perfect balance of performance and practicality. With the numerous advantages that an EV offers, the Model 3 also comes in at an affordable $36,990 for its Rear-Wheel Drive trim level.
Tesla announces crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone
Tesla Cybercab production begins: The end of car ownership as we know it?
