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Rocket Lab assembling first reusable Neutron rocket hardware
Rocket Lab appears to have made significant progress since revealing the state of hardware development for its next-generation Neutron rocket in a September 2022 investor update.
At the time, the company shared photos of early work on prototypes of smaller Neutron structural elements, as well as progress building the giant molds that will be used to ‘lay up’ the rocket’s carbon fiber composite tanks and airframe. Rocket Lab also showed off acquisitions of some of the supersized manufacturing equipment that will be used to build the giant rocket, as well as the beginnings of a dedicated Neutron factory in Virginia.
Four months later, photos shared by CEO Peter Beck show that Rocket Lab has progressed to full-scale carbon fiber hardware manufacturing. In December 2022, Beck shared a photo of a full-size Neutron tank dome in the middle of production. A month later, Beck shared a photo of work on both halves of a Neutron booster tank dome. Measuring around seven meters (23 ft) wide, the latter component is already on track to become one of the largest carbon fiber structures ever prepared for a rocket once the halves are joined. And once two more halves are built and assembled, Rocket Lab could soon be ready to start testing full-scale Neutron tank hardware – a crucial milestone for any new rocket.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
Announced in March 2021 and properly unveiled in December 2021, Neutron is a partially-reusable two-stage rocket designed to launch up to 15 tons to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) using liquid methane and oxygen propellant. Neutron measures 42.8 meters (140.4 ft) tall and up to seven meters (23 ft) wide. Its stout, ballistically-optimized design means that it’s simultaneously 40% shorter and up to 190% wider than SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
Design differences aside, Neutron is the first rocket that has been obviously designed as an answer to Falcon 9, which has become one of the most prolific, cost-effective, and routinely reusable rockets in the world over the last five or so years. Depending on how much Rocket Lab can sell Neutron for while still breaking even, Neutron has the potential to give Falcon 9 a serious run for its money – or at least force SpaceX to lower its prices. Like Falcon 9, Neutron will have a reusable booster, a reusable payload fairing, and an expendable upper stage. Its booster will also have nine (Archimedes) engines and the upper stage will be powered by one engine. At liftoff, Neutron will produce up to 674 tons (1.49M lbf) of thrust to Falcon 9’s 770 tons (1.7M lbf).
Unlike Falcon 9, Neutron’s similarly-sized reusable fairing is integral, meaning that it will stay permanently attached to the booster. But despite the added mass of the integral fairing and the rocket’s significantly shorter layout, Rocket Lab says that Neutron will be able to launch up to 13 tons (~28,700 lb) to LEO if the booster lands on a barge downrange. Using the same approach with a deployable fairing, Falcon 9 has launched up to 16.7 tons (~36,800 lb) to LEO. That 23% performance gap may seem significant, but the reality is that only SpaceX’s own Starlink and Dragon missions have ever needed Falcon 9 to launch more than 13 tons to orbit.
If Neutron can consistently launch ~25% less payload than Falcon 9 to all Earth and near-Earth orbits, virtually every commercial launch contract that’s currently a SpaceX shoo-in could be within reach of Rocket Lab within several years. The challenge, of course, is building Neutron and making sure the ambitious rocket and its clean-sheet Archimedes engine work as expected and can be reused as easily as Falcon 9.
The company is attempting to get there with its far smaller Electron vehicle, but Rocket Lab has never reused a rocket. And five and a half years after Electron’s debut, the company has never launched more than nine times in one year. SpaceX is about to reuse a Falcon booster for the 140th time and launched 61 times in 2022 – a lead that may prove almost impossible to close. There’s also the fact that the size gap between Rocket Lab’s rockets is so extreme that Neutron could likely launch a fully-fueled Electron into orbit.
But again, SpaceX serves as a demonstration that what Rocket Lab hopes to achieve is not impossible. SpaceX went directly from Falcon 1 (about twice as large as Electron) to Falcon 9 V1.0 (about 30% smaller than Neutron) after just two successful launches of the smaller rocket. Electron has successfully launched 29 times since May 2017 and Rocket Lab is already learning about reusability through the smaller rocket. The challenges facing Rocket Lab are huge, but Neutron still remains the most promising SpaceX competitor currently in development. Kicking off full-scale Neutron tank testing just 2-3 years after the rocket was revealed would only reiterate its strengths. Stay tuned to see how much Neutron progress Rocket Lab can make in 2023.
Tesla has launched its newest iteration of the Model 3 in China with a slew of new features, including the highly requested V2L (vehicle-to-load) feature and a new interior option.
The Model 3 now has a 16″ front touchscreen with improved resolution, a black headliner, V2L capabilities, Zen Grey interior in the Premium and Performance trims, as the White option has officially been discontinued, and 19″ Dark Nova Wheels, which are standard on the Model 3 Premium only.
🚨 Tesla has launched the Model 3 in China with a variety of new features and specs:
✅ 16” front touchscreen
âś… Black Headliner
âś… V2L Capability
âś… Zen Grey interior (Premium & Performance only)
✅ 19” Dark Nova wheels (Model 3 Premium only)
✅ Zen Grey Interior option… pic.twitter.com/ltTAEIYi2Z— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 1, 2026
The touchscreen in the U.S. version of the Model 3 is just 15.4″, so the newly upgraded screen is .6″ larger. Additionally, the Black Headliner, now standard on Model Y vehicles in the U.S., is coming to China.
Additionally, Tesla’s decision to end the white interior option has also made its way to the Asian market, as Zen Grey is the lighter color consumers can now go with. It is slightly different from the previously offered White option:
These options are available in China, Australia, and New Zealand as well, as Giga Shanghai serves those markets, bringing its mass-market vehicles to those countries in the South Pacific.
The Model 3 trims are now priced at:
- Rear-Wheel-Drive – 235,500 yuan (~$35,000)
- Long Range Rear-Wheel-Drive – 259,500 yuan ($38,700)
- Long Range All-Wheel-Drive – 285,500 yuan (~$42,600)
- Performance – 339,500 yuan (~$50,600)
These features have yet to make their way to the U.S., which might upset some buyers, but it is probably a good sign that Tesla will bring these changes to U.S. trims sometime next year. Potentially, these could come even sooner, as they could be used to stimulate demand for the year-end sales push.
Nevertheless, when things start at Giga Shanghai, they usually end up in the U.S. market. Tesla has also already started to install things like the Black Headliner and larger touchscreen in certain U.S.-built vehicles, so these things will be easy to implement across other vehicles in the lineup.
Elon Musk
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Hegseth named Elon Musk to help lead Project Meridian, a Pentagon study of future warfare.
Elon Musk has a new role in the Trump administration. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on war.gov Wednesday that Musk will help lead Project Meridian, a new Pentagon study meant to identify the weapons and technologies the U.S. military will need to fight wars decades from now.
Hegseth unveiled the project during his State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. Musk will direct the effort alongside Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, working under Pentagon Chief Technology Officer Emil Michael. All three men were in attendance, and Hegseth said their first meeting would take place directly after the speech inside a secure compartmented facility, according to The Hill.
Hegseth said the group “will be focused on discovering, developing, and fielding the weapons and systems that our children and our grandchildren will need in their lifetimes, without any creative limitations or restrictions, on any future battlefield, from under the Earth to beyond the Moon.” He added that Meridian is not meant to produce new strategy or policy documents.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
A memo released after the announcement gives Michael until January 28, 2027, to deliver findings, a window of 120 days. It names artificial intelligence, autonomy, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology as the fields expected to change how wars are fought. The results will come as a public report with a classified annex. The memo says the study will run through a partner organization it does not name, and it does not mention Musk directly. His role comes from Hegseth’s speech and a Pentagon press release.’
Musk had not commented publicly on the appointment as of Wednesday evening. This will be Musk’s first official advisory role in the administration since he left DOGE last year.
The mandate overlaps heavily with Musk’s companies. SpaceX is one of the Pentagon’s largest contractors, with 2026 defense awards topping $8 billion, much of it tied to launches and a suspected Starshield buildout out of Vandenberg. The Pentagon’s release says Meridian will examine domains “from subterranean depths to the cislunar frontier,” which maps onto The Boring Company’s tunneling and Starship’s lunar plans. Tesla’s work on autonomy and Optimus falls within the fields the memo lists.
Meridian was one of six initiatives Hegseth announced Wednesday. Another is a new Autonomous Warfare Command, which the department wants operating as a four-star combatant command by October 1, 2027.
The news lands a day before SpaceX is scheduled to fly a classified National Reconnaissance Office payload on Falcon Heavy, one of three launches the company has planned for Thursday.
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SpaceX set to launch astronauts and a classified Falcon Heavy mission on the same day
SpaceX plans three launches Thursday, including Crew-13 astronauts and Falcon Heavy’s first classified NRO mission.
SpaceX is lining up one of the busiest single days in its history, and the company offered a preview on Wednesday morning with a simple post on X: “Sunrise at pad 40.” The video and photos show Falcon 9 standing at Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, roughly a day before it is scheduled to carry four astronauts to the International Space Station.
That launch is only the first of three SpaceX missions planned for Thursday, October 1, across both coasts.
Sunrise at pad 40 pic.twitter.com/J7Qme4VvIX
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 30, 2026
Crew-13 is targeting liftoff at 11:10 a.m. ET, with a backup opportunity Friday at 10:47 a.m. ET. NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins will command the mission, with NASA’s Luke Delaney as pilot and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov serving as mission specialists. According to NASA, Dragon is set to dock with the forward port of the station’s Harmony module around 8 p.m. ET, less than nine hours after launch. Watkins is the only member of the crew who has flown before, and Kutryk will become the first Canadian to reach orbit through NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
The Falcon 9 booster is flying for the third time after supporting Crew-12 and a Starlink mission, and it will attempt a landing at Landing Zone 40 beside the pad. That site made its debut in February when the Crew-12 booster touched down there, as Teslarati reported at the time. Crew-13 will relieve the Crew-12 astronauts, who have been aboard the station since the middle of February.
On the West Coast, another Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in a window running from 2:18 to 3:16 p.m. ET, a flight NASASpaceflight lists as a Transporter rideshare mission.
The day is set to close at 11:53 p.m. ET, when Falcon Heavy launches from Launch Complex 39A with NROL-97, the first National Reconnaissance Office payload ever to fly on the rocket. SpaceX rolled the vehicle out to the pad Tuesday night. Its two side boosters, which previously flew GOES-U, ViaSat-3 F3 and NASA’s Roman Space Telescope, will return to Landing Zones 1 and 2, while a new center core will be expended in the Atlantic. The Roman launch took place on August 30, so NROL-97 will come barely a month later as Falcon Heavy’s third flight of 2026 and 14th overall.
NASA taps SpaceX to launch the telescope that could unlock new worlds
If all three Florida boosters land as planned, it would be the first time the Space Coast has seen landings at LZ-40, LZ-1 and LZ-2 on the same day, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which has warned residents in Brevard, Orange and Volusia counties that more than one sonic boom is possible.
The schedule arrives just three days after Starship reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 from Starbase, Texas, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites. If Thursday’s missions stay on time, SpaceX will have flown Starship, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy from four different pads in about four days.
Crew-13 is also the start of a longer run for Dragon. NASA recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification, keeping Dragon as the agency’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner remains grounded.
Tesla launches improved Model 3 in China with V2L, new interior option
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
