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Elon Musk reveals SpaceX Starship production well underway inside new Texas factory
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has offered a new glimpse inside the company’s rapidly-expanding South Texas Starship factory, revealing the beginnings of the next-generation rocket’s first true assembly line — and a wealth of spacecraft hardware.
Situated two or so miles from the Gulf of Mexico (and Mexico itself) in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX has been seriously planning a presence in South Texas for more than five years. Originally meant to host the United States’ first private orbital launch complex for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, only a small amount of work – known as soil surcharging – was done in the four years that followed SpaceX’s 2014 announcement. In late 2018, however, work began in earnest to build basic launch and manufacturing facilities.
Less than six months later, the first true Starship prototype – known as Starhopper and built from scratch out in the South Texas elements – ignited its Raptor engine for a brief static fire test, bringing the first to facilities and rocket to life less than half a year after they were little more than a pile of dirt and steel sheets. Now, barely nine months after Starhopper’s first static fire test, SpaceX is working around the clock to erect a full-scale rocket factory and build what could become the first orbital-class Starships. On February 9th, Elon Musk offered the best glimpse yet of the incredible progress SpaceX has made in a matter of weeks.
Barely a month ago, the rocket hardware pictured above did not exist, while the giant Tesla-inspired tent containing those Starship parts was a half-finished skeleton. Now, Elon Musk says that SpaceX has effectively completed three of the hardest parts of its first upgraded Starship prototype (SN01), while an additional two (of three) of those parts – known as propellant tank domes – are already in work for a second Starship (SN02).
Outside of the ‘sprung structure’ (i.e. tent) shown in Musk’s February 9th photo, SpaceX contractors appear to be just days away from completing the shell of a second identical tent, ultimately doubling the space available for enclosed manufacturing operations. At the same time as both Starship hardware and production facilities are rapidly coming together, SpaceX is also erecting what is presumed to be a Vehicle Assembly Building – a potentially massive structure that will protect vertical Starships and Super Heavy boosters from the elements while workers assemble them into finished rockets.
Inside the finished tent, SpaceX appears to have set up the first true Starship assembly line (of sorts), expanding from working on a single kind of prototype at a time to concurrent (serial) production of major components. Visible are three Starship bulkheads (tank domes) – two completed instances of which have already been transported outside and integrated with finished ring segments, forming two halves of Starship SN01’s complete liquid methane (LCH4) tank.
Near the back of the tent, work is also ongoing on several Starship SN01 tank rings. In the center, technicians are outfitting Starship SN01’s engine and ‘skirt’ section, where the bottommost tank dome will attach to three (up to six) Raptor engines. To the left, a stack of two rings appears to be stored off to the side, while – only slightly visible in Musk’s photo – another pair of rings is being welded together with the help of a rotating table.
Far from its full capacity and working out of a much smaller tent, SpaceX’s dedicated ringforming station – tasked with turning coils of steel into finished Starship rings – has finished no less than 34 steel rings since the January 1st. SpaceX is still clearly learning and at least third of those rings wound up being scrapped due to defects, but the material cost of all of those rings (~55 tons of steel) is probably less than $150,000. Additionally, those 34 completed segments would reach more than 60 meters (200 ft) tall if stacked, enough to build almost two Starship tank and engine sections – domes excluded.
In simple terms, SpaceX has pivoted away from the more boutique style of prototype fabrication used for Starhopper and Starship Mk1 and is now building Starship SNxx hardware extremely quickly. At the same time, the enclosed manufacturing space available to SpaceX is probably going to double before this week is out. Ultimately, SpaceX’s March 2020 Starship SN01 flight debut target is quickly becoming less and less crazy by the day.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.
The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.
The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.
Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!
Urgently hiring exceptional and enthusiastic Drivers and Ops Managers.
Apply here!
Driverhttps://t.co/ZUPXBYTONb
Senior Loop Ops Managerhttps://t.co/mV6V22V8jH pic.twitter.com/IZ9FqIw8WY
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2026
Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.
Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.
Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.
Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.
Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.
Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”
The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.
Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.
Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.
Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.
Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence
