News
Elon Musk says SpaceX is still building a third drone ship – but is it for Falcon or Starship?
Unprovoked on October 9th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted “A Shortfall of Gravitas” – the name of a third drone ship settled on a year and a half ago – and reaffirmed that plans were still afoot to build a third rocket recovery vessel.
This is the first update on SpaceX’s newest drone ship in more than a year and comes just a few months after drone ship Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) – formerly stationed in California – was sent East through the Panama Canal. News that A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG) is still in the works raises the questions: what’s the holdup and what role(s) will the new drone ship play in SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet?
Back in July 2018 and just shy of half a year after ASOG’s development was revealed, CEO Elon Musk indicated that the drone ship could be completed and ready for recovery operations as early as “next summer”, or Q3 2019. Now two weeks into Q4 2019, this can be interpreted in several ways, with the most likely explanation being that SpaceX’s naval contractor of choice is running behind schedule while building the new drone ship.
That’s the simplest explanation and operates under the assumption that Musk’s February 2018 comments remain true, meaning that ASOG is first and foremost (if not entirely) meant to support dual side booster landings for future Falcon Heavy launches and an increased Falcon 9 flight rate. However, recent developments give reason to believe that this may no longer be the guiding motivation behind SpaceX’s construction of a new drone ship.

Most notably, over the last several months of 2019, it has become increasingly clear that SpaceX plans (or hopes) to shut down its West Coast Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) launch facilities for anywhere from 9 to 18 months. In just the last few days, word broke that Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) believes that it will be able to open an East Coast polar launch corridor (essentially the same thing VAFB offers) just months from now, and SpaceX hopes to be its first user as soon as February 2020.
Possibly along those lines, SpaceX took the step of sending West Coast drone ship JRTI on a several-week journey across the Panama Canal. The drone ship has since stopped in Louisiana for what is assumed to be maintenance and it remains unclear if JRTI will head to Port of Brownsville (Texas) to support Starship test flights or to Port Canaveral to fill the role ASOG was initially meant to.
As such, it’s no longer clear if SpaceX actually has a need for ASOG, at least as it was described last year. If SpaceX is moving JRTI east for the indefinite future, OCISLY and JRTI could easily support the Falcon 9 launch rates needed for Starlink and dual Falcon Heavy side booster recoveries, although Falcon Heavy is not scheduled to fly again until late-2020.
This leaves one obvious option left to explain ASOG’s continued existence and delayed debut: SpaceX may have paused work for a variety of reasons and changed ASOG’s design to account for a new role in the recovery fleet. That new role would likely center around the extremely rapid progress SpaceX is making with Starship as it pursues a series of ambitious flight tests that could begin before the end of 2019.

Of note, an August 2019 Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) of East Coast Starship launches revealed that SpaceX’s initially plans to land all Super Heavy boosters on a drone ship stationed a few miles off the Florida coast. Starship may also require drone ship landings in the early stages, at least until SpaceX is able to complete the environmental review and licensing process needed before it can begin to land Starship/Super Heavy at Pad 39A and Landing Zones 1 and 2.
For now, we’ll have to wait and see where drone ship JRTI heads after its Louisiana interlude and hopefully find out soon whether ASOG is a drone ship copy or something else entirely.
Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
News
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.
Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.
One month after launch, we’ve scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days https://t.co/EagJy2JAsm
— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 10, 2026
Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.
RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.
Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk roasts India’s billionaire Mukesh Ambani as Starlink fight heats up
Elon Musk sarcastically calls Mukesh Ambani ‘Prime Minister’ as the Starlink India standoff escalates again.
Elon Musk escalated his public fight over Starlink’s launch in India on Friday, addressing Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani as “Prime Minister Ambani” in a sarcastic post on X. “Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India,” Musk wrote, before accusing Ambani of “monopolistic exploitation” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete.” In follow up posts, he said Starlink has proven essential during natural disasters and would help parts of India with no internet access.
The post came two days into a fight that Musk sparked up on Wednesday, when he said Starlink was “being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people.” He called it “a crime against the people of India” and left the names out, adding only, “You can guess who they are.” Jio and Airtel together hold more than 80% of India’s telecom market. On Thursday, Musk asked whether Ambani is “the real boss of India” and said Starlink has spent five years complying with “every single law and requirement” of the Indian government.
Dear Prime Minister Ambani,
Please accept my humble apologies for not realizing that you are the real boss of India.
Naturally, you would prefer to maintain your monopolistic exploitation of the great people of India, but would you nonetheless consider allowing Starlink to compete?
There are many areas of India, as there are in all countries, with no Internet access, which denies children the opportunity for education and for small businesses the opportunity to sell their goods to a global market. Starlink would change their lives for the better.
Thank you 🙏
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 9, 2026
India’s government has pushed back each time. The Ministry of Communications called the suggestion that its framework is unfair or discriminatory “baseless and misconceived.” Communications Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said Friday that three companies hold satcom licenses: Starlink, Jio Satellite Communications, and Bharti backed Eutelsat OneWeb. Amazon’s Kuiper, now Amazon Leo, is still going through the process. None can launch until regulators finalize satellite spectrum pricing and the Home Ministry signs off on each company’s security compliance. Scindia said the telecom regulator and the Department of Telecommunications are close to a decision on pricing, The Hindu reported. Bharti chairman Sunil Mittal also said OneWeb is still waiting on approvals.
Starlink received its operator license in 2025 after a three year wait, and the space regulator IN-SPACe granted what industry executives called the last approval needed in July. The holdup since then centers on security, particularly concern that foreign operators could bypass Indian gateways.
Musk and Ambani have been on opposite sides of this before. In late 2024, Ambani argued for auctioning satellite spectrum, which Musk criticized as out of step with the rest of the world, and India chose administrative allocation instead. By March 2025, the two sides had signed a deal to sell Starlink devices in Reliance stores, and Starlink secured its telecom license that June. That partner is now also a competitor. Jio is reportedly weighing a constellation of 1,600 to 1,650 satellites costing an estimated $10 billion to $15 billion, while Akash Ambani has told shareholders Jio plans to lease capacity from global providers to move quickly.