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Musk shares timelapse of SpaceX Falcon Heavy being raised for launch prep

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Elon Musk reiterated SpaceX’s commitment to completing the inaugural launch of Falcon Heavy before the end of January 2018 in a series of Instagram and Twitter posts. Delays with the companies commercial launch of the secretive Zuma payload will likely push Heavy back a similar number of days, but SpaceX still has a solid four weeks until February to prepare the vehicle and complete its more pressing commercial queue of launches.

Up next for Falcon Heavy will be the massive rocket’s first-ever integrated static fire, which will see all 27 of its Merlin 1D engines ignite for a brief several seconds in order to test a number of procedures and validate models of the rocket’s design and operations. Most importantly, in order to counteract the immense and potentially destructive torque produced by the simultaneous startup of 27 rocket engines, the first static fire will test a staggered ignition of all first stage engines, so as to spread out the force exerted upon the vehicle’s octawebs and booster connections. Musk’ Jan. 4 Instagram post points towards a static fire “next week,” sometime between January 8-15. The launch of Zuma is clearly the company’s main priority, at the moment.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BdjBHqdAIzs/?taken-by=elonmusk

Preceding this static fire, SpaceX will necessarily conduct a wet dress rehearsal (WDR) in which Falcon Heavy’s three first stages and single second stage will be fully loaded with supercooled high-grade kerosene (known as RP-1) and liquid oxygen. If this procedure fails to produce any unwanted surprises or insurmountable bugs, it’s probable that the WDR flow will transfer smoothly into static fire procedures. If bugs are found, the vehicle may instead be detanked of its propellant load and rolled back to LC-39A’s integration facilities in order to analyze those issues and ensure vehicle safety and readiness. Similar analysis will undoubtedly occur after the first static fire to verify that Falcon Heavy is still flight-worthy and its Tesla Roadster payload is in good condition.

After several barrages of thorough tests, the launch pad and vehicle will be ready for Falcon Heavy’s inaugural launch, no earlier than late January 2018. In the meantime, antsy fans can bask in the beauty of a timelapse Elon Musk recently posted, showing Falcon Heavy being lifted into a vertical orientation during its first pad-fit checks several days ago.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is still tracking towards the imminent launch of Zuma, a secretive satellite payload that will see Falcon 9 return to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral. The mission has been delayed 48 hours from its original NET, and is now tentatively aiming to launch no earlier than (NET) January 6, but as of just a few minutes ago, SpaceX officially confirmed that additional propellant loading tests had been conducted with Zuma’s Falcon 9 booster earlier today, pushing the launch to NET January 7th, 8pm EST.

Follow along live as our launch photographer Tom Cross braves the Florida cold and launch delays in pursuit of glorious rocket pics over the next several days.

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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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The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”

The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.

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The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”

The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.

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Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.

Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.

The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.

The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.

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Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”

SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.

It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.

Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.

Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:

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There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.

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Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened

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(Credit: The Boring Company)

Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.

The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.

The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel

The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.

Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.

Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.

A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.

The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.

Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.

Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.

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There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.

The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.

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