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Rocket Lab to build reusable Neutron rocket factory and launch pad in Virginia
Rocket Lab has selected Virginian island to host the first launch site, factory, and landing pad for its next-generation Neutron rocket.
In a move reminiscent of SpaceX’s Starbase Starship factory and launch sites, Rocket Lab plans to build and launch its Neutron rocket in more or less adjacent facilities within NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility and Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Rocket Lab estimates that this new facility will bring over 250 jobs to the area, including engineers, technicians, and support staff that will be working at the complex.
The 250,000-square-foot facility will support Neutron production, assembly, and integration within spitting distance of its first orbital launch site. The site will be Rocket Lab’s third main rocket development and production facility, joining a small factory and headquarters in Huntington Beach, California, and a more substantial Auckland, New Zealand factory. Rocket Lab’s Auckland factory is dedicated to manufacturing the company’s smaller Electron rocket, which (for now) is exclusively launched out of pads located on the north island’s Māhia Peninsula. Neutron’s Virginia manufacturing complex will be in close proximity to Rocket Lab’s lone American Electron launch pad (LC-2), which is also located at Wallops.
However, Electron is merely Rocket Lab’s first step into orbital rocketry Neutron, Rocket Lab’s next rocket, will be capable of launching at least 8 tons (~17,600 lb) into low Earth orbit (LEO). Borrowing heavily from experience with Electron, Neutron will be the first medium-lift rocket made primarily of carbon fiber composites.
Unlike Electron, though, Neutron is being designed from the ground up for partial reusability. Powered by its reusable Archimedes engines, Rocket Lab believes the Neutron launch vehicle will be ideal for satellite constellation launches but also be sized right to support a range of other missions, including deep space exploration and, potentially, human spaceflight. In practice, even though Neutron’s design is substantially different, the rocket is effectively a half-scale Falcon 9 with some noteworthy modifications. Both are two-stage rockets with expendable upper stages and reusable boosters and fairings. With fairing and booster recovery, Falcon 9 is able to launch about 16 tons (~35,000 lb) to LEO – twice Neutron’s 8 tons.
Neutron stands at approximately 131 feet tall (39.9 meters) and between 5 and 7 meters (16-23 ft) wide – more than twice the height and 4-6 times the width of Electron. Because of its size and performance, Rocket Lab expects Neutron to be a strong competitor with other large launch providers, including SpaceX. As far as cost per launch, Beck has declined to provide an estimate beyond stating that “ it would be a pointless exercise [if Rocket Lab] didn’t think that it would be very cost-competitive with anything that’s currently in the market or being proposed.” Currently, the company’s Electron rocket is sold for about $7-8 million per launch. SpaceX, their largest prospective competitor, has sold Falcon 9s for as little as $50 million, while executives have indicated that the rocket costs the company just $28 million for a launch with a reused booster and fairing.
Rocket Lab has received strong support from the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership is working alongside Accomack County, the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority (Virginia Space), and the General Assembly’s Major Employment and Investment (MEI) Project Approval Commission to help expedite the process. That support is one of the primary reasons Rocket Lab selected Virginia of all places to build its first Neutron hub. According to Rocket Lab, as part of the Commonwealth’s proposal, “$30 million has been set aside for infrastructure and operational systems improvements to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport where the Neutron launch site will be located, along with $15 million from the MEI Project Approval Commission in site improvements and building construction in support of Neutron.”
Shaun D’Mello, the company’s Vice President stated, “We’ve enjoyed a solid partnership with Virginia for years that will no doubt be strengthened with Neutron. We have a shared mission to develop Rocket Lab’s presence at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport into a strategic national asset that provides responsive, reliable, reusable space launch through Neutron and Electron, and breaking ground on the site soon is a significant and impelling step toward that future.”
A public target has not been set for the completion of the factory and launch site but Rocket Lab states that they “expect to begin construction promptly.” Neutron, scheduled to launch as earlier as 2024, has already generated some degree of demand, and the United States Space Force recently decided to invest $24 million in its development.
Rocket Lab revealed the news of Neutron’s first factory and launch site comes on the same day as the first orbital launch from Launch Complex 1’s new Pad B. To learn more about Pad B and Rocket Lab’s existing Electron launch facilities, click here.
News
NHTSA just escalated its Tesla Cybercab investigation in a big way
NHTSA escalated its Cybercab audit into a sworn Special Order with a September 30 deadline.
Federal regulators have moved from asking Tesla questions about its Cybercab to demanding sworn answers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a Special Order that requires a Tesla officer to sign an affidavit attesting to the completeness of the company’s responses, with a deadline of September 30.
The order builds on Audit Query AQ26002, which NHTSA opened on September 3, the same day Tesla began commercial Cybercab service in Austin. Teslarati covered that initial inquiry when it surfaced, noting the agency wanted to understand how Tesla certified a vehicle with no permanently attached steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors as compliant with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. A Special Order is a different tool and converts a fact finding review into a legally enforceable demand, the same mechanism NHTSA used against Tesla in 2023 during its Autopilot investigation.
Several of the 21 requests target a specific gap in Cybercab’s design. One asks whether Tesla used temporarily attached human controls at any point to help certify the vehicle, and if so, which standards depended on that equipment being present. Another quotes an existing rule directly: “The service brakes shall be activated by means of a foot control.” Cybercab has no foot pedal. NHTSA wants a detailed explanation of how the vehicle satisfies that requirement, and how it complies without the kind of exemption granted to Zoox in July under Part 555, the regulatory pathway built for steering wheel free vehicles.
The order does not claim Cybercab is unsafe or that Tesla broke a rule. It requires Tesla to explain, under oath, the reasoning behind decisions the company already made when it self-certified the vehicle. That distinction matters, but so does the exposure. Motor1’s reporting, summarized here, put potential civil penalty exposure as high as $139 million if NHTSA later finds the certification was flawed, on top of whatever criminal risk comes with a false sworn statement.
Tesla has not said publicly how it plans to respond. Cybercab is still carrying passengers in Austin through the Robotaxi app while the September 30 deadline approaches, and the company has continued expanding the vehicle’s footprint even as the regulatory question remains open. The Special Order does not pause any of that and just sets a date by which Tesla has to put its certification logic on the record, with a company officer’s name attached to it.
In a new interview on Wednesday, Tesla uber bull Ron Baron said that anyone looking to buy the company’s stock should do so as soon as they can.
Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital and one of Tesla’s most persistent institutional bulls, used a CNBC Squawk Box appearance on Wednesday to deliver a familiar message with fresh urgency: In his opinion, Tesla stock is a buy:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.”
The Baron Capital frontman’s case is built around Full Self-Driving. Tesla reported 1.48 million active FSD subscriptions in the second quarter, up 56 percent year over year, and company officials have said roughly 55 percent of new North American deliveries left with a subscription enabled.
Baron framed that attach rate as proof the product is moving from enthusiast extra to default expectation, and as a reason software, not just vehicle volume, should drive the next phase of value.
His conviction on Tesla shares is not theoretical, as Baron Capital made its first Tesla investment in 2014, after years of meetings that began around the 2010 IPO roadshow. The firm later built a large SpaceX position starting in 2017.
Ron Baron today in new interview on Tesla:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.” pic.twitter.com/Rv5PB0bVZ2
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 16, 2026
Baron said those Musk-led bets have generated about $30 billion of the $71 billion in profits Baron Capital has produced for clients. He put the firm’s current exposure at roughly $25 billion in SpaceX and $5 billion in Tesla. Personally, he described SpaceX as his largest holding, at about $5 billion, with about $1.5 billion in Tesla and additional Tesla exposure through the firm’s funds.
That concentration is also a statement of loyalty. Asked about talk of a SpaceX-Tesla combination, Baron said he had already walked Elon Musk through arguments for and against a deal, then declined to repeat them on air. His public position was simpler: “Whatever you decide is better is what I’m going to support,” he said to Musk.
Baron also said that he picked up the farewell edition of the Model S after Tesla decided to sunset the vehicle earlier this year, calling it his favorite car he’s ever driven.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
SpaceX targets September 22 for Starship Flight 14, its first attempt to reach real orbit.
SpaceX has set September 22 as the target date for Starship’s 14th test flight, and this one carries a different goal than any of the 13 that came before it. Every previous Starship mission has intentionally flown a suborbital arc, reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launched. Flight 14 is designed to send the craft into a genuine orbit around Earth for the first time.
The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central time at Starbase in South Texas and runs for 75 minutes, pending regulatory approval, according to SpaceX’s mission description published Tuesday. If the flight goes as planned, Starship will circle the planet roughly six times at an altitude near 275 kilometers over about ten hours before a deorbit burn sends it toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a departure from the Indian Ocean recoveries used on the last several flights.
The mission also marks the first attempt to put a working batch of Starlink V3 satellites into actual service. Flight 13 carried 20 of the new satellites in July, but because that mission never left a suborbital trajectory, the payload reentered along with the ship instead of separating into orbit.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Each V3 satellite is rated for roughly one terabit per second of downlink capacity, so a successful deployment on Flight 14 would be SpaceX’s largest single jump in network bandwidth since Starlink began flying on Falcon 9.
Flight 13 still did the heavier lifting on the technical side. That July mission flew a deliberately more stressful reentry profile to test Starship’s heat shield, and the ship survived its softest splashdown yet, intact enough for drone inspections shortly after landing. Elon Musk said the flight delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some,” a result Teslarati covered in detail when he later said SpaceX had solved the vehicle’s biggest reusability challenge. Flight 14 is where SpaceX starts spending that confidence on an actual orbital insertion rather than another controlled fall back to Earth.
One thing Flight 14 will not attempt is a tower catch of the ship. Musk floated the idea right after Flight 13, but walked the timeline back in August, saying a catch attempt was more likely “in a few months.” The Super Heavy booster will still aim for its own recovery, targeting an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America, the same approach used on recent flights.
September 22 is SpaceX’s own target, not a locked date. Starship’s schedule has slipped before over hardware readiness and FAA sign off, and the company has said as much in its own mission notes. But the plan itself represents the clearest marker yet that Starship is moving from a suborbital test program into something meant to carry paying payloads and, eventually, people.
NHTSA just escalated its Tesla Cybercab investigation in a big way
Tesla uber bull Ron Baron says ‘the time to buy the stock is now’
