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SpaceX wants to land its BFR spaceships “like a skydiver” on Earth and Mars
Speaking at the company’s Hawthorne factory, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced a new strategy for efficiently recovering its next-gen BFR’s upper stage, describing a process where the spaceship would rely on a number of unintuitive techniques to reliably land on planets or moons with appreciable atmospheres (i.e. Mars, Earth, Titan). In essence, BFS would end up gliding towards the surface in free-fall, controlling its orientation much like an Earthly skydiver.
True physics sim: Very high angle of attack during landing. pic.twitter.com/J0HouiUfPg
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) September 18, 2018
Several times throughout the BFR update and private lunar tourism announcement, Musk emphasized just how unintuitive the new procedures would be, stating that “it’s not like anything that people are familiar with – it’s not like an airplane.” His comparison with skydivers is actually rather apt for conveying why this approach is so unusual for a large, flying vehicle like BFR’s spaceship (BFS). Just like skydivers, BFS will have five main control surfaces to control its orientation, pitch, and general dynamics when operating in an atmosphere – two forward fins (like a skydiver’s arms), two rear fins (legs), and a body.
Also like a skydiver, those forward and aft controls are not aerodynamic in the sense of an airplane’s wing or tail fins – in the case of the skydiver and spaceship, they do not generate lift – in pilot and aerospace parlance, a surface that generates no lift is “stalled”. This is likely the main reason that Musk was so intent on conveying his feeling that the spaceship’s new flight regime was unintuitive – in the world of aerospace engineering, particularly for aerodynamicists, intentionally designed stalled control surfaces is almost oxymoronic, akin to an automotive engineer designing a car with square wheels. For all but fighter pilots, stalled aerodynamic surfaces are traditionally avoided like the plague, and can be frequently blamed for aviation-related fatalities.
BFS Update: Thinks they can get to 1100 m3 volume. Actuated fins/flaps. Control surfaces. pic.twitter.com/XNw3Yg0Fcq
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) September 18, 2018
Even to a layperson, the spaceship landing animation shown might look more like a rock uncontrollably plummeting to the ground than an advanced spaceship meant to land humans on Earth, Mars, and beyond. In essence, the proposal Musk laid out on September 17th takes the high-speed reentry characteristics of NASA’s retired Space Shuttle (aerobraking, S-turns, nose-up reentry), adopts a skydiver’s intuitive and efficient aerodynamic control scheme in free-fall, and replaces said skydiver’s parachutes with a group of high-performance rocket engines, as if a skydiver somehow managed to strap rockets to their feet to gently land on the ground.
SpaceX should have little trouble with the latter task thanks to 15 successful vertical landings of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters (and many more to come), while the spaceship’s Shuttle-style orbital reentry profile may be new for SpaceX but has been tackled successfully in the past by other companies/agencies. Free-falling to a successful landing with permanently stalled control surfaces, however, will undoubtedly demand an extensive test campaign in Earth’s atmosphere before SpaceX even thinks of placing humans on the craft, something that Musk foreshadowed in a 2017 Reddit AMA focused on BFR.
“Will be starting with a full-scale Ship doing short hops of a few hundred kilometers altitude and lateral distance. Those are fairly easy on the vehicle as no heat shield is needed.” – Elon Musk, October 2017
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- BFS seen standing vertically on the pads of its tripod fins. (SpaceX)
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- BFR’s spaceship and booster (now Starship and Super Heavy) separate in a mid-2018 render of the vehicle. (SpaceX)
BFR’s design and the spaceship’s recovery profile may change further over the next 6-12 months, given that the team’s unintuitive freefall realization seems to be a fresh addition to the Mars rocket. Nevertheless, Musk and COO Gwynne Shotwell have publicly stated that they believe Grasshopper-style spaceship hop tests could commence as early as late 2019 or early 2020, with the first orbital BFR launches starting soon after in the 2020/2021 timeframe.
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
Tesla has expanded its branded ‘For Business’ Supercharger program that it launched last year, as yet another company is using the platform to attract EV owners to its business and utilize a unique advertising opportunity.
Francis Energy of Oklahoma is launching four Superchargers in Norman, where the University of Oklahoma is located. The Superchargers, which are fitted with branding for Francis Energy, will officially open tomorrow.
It will not be the final Supercharger location that Francis Energy plans to open, the company confirmed to EVWire.
Back in early September, Tesla launched the new “Supercharger for Business” program in an effort to give businesses the ability to offer EV charging at custom rates. It would give their businesses visibility and would also cater to employees or customers.
“Purchase and install Superchargers at your business,” Tesla wrote on a page on its website for the new program. “Superchargers are compatible with all electric vehicles, bringing EV drivers to your business by offering convenient, reliable charging.”
The first site opened in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, which is Northeast of Tampa, as a company called Suncoast launched the Superchargers for local EV owners.
Tesla launches its new branded Supercharger for Business with first active station
The program also does a great job at expanding infrastructure for EV owners, which is something that needs to be done to encourage more people to purchase Teslas and other electric cars.
Francis Energy operates at least 14 EV charging locations in Oklahoma, spanning from Durant to Oklahoma City and nearly everywhere in between. Filings from the company, listed by Supercharge.info, show the company’s plans to convert some of them to Tesla Superchargers, potentially utilizing the new Supercharger for Business program to advertise.
Moving forward, more companies will likely utilize Tesla’s Supercharger for Business program as it presents major advantages in a variety of ways, especially with advertising and creating a place for EV drivers to gain range in their cars.
Tesla Cybercab is perhaps the most highly-anticipated project that the company plans to roll out this year, and as it is undergoing its testing phase in pre-production currently, there are some things to work through with it.
Over the weekend, an image of the Cybercab being loaded onto a tow truck started circulating on the internet, and people began to speculate as to what the issue could be.
Hmmmmmm… https://t.co/L5hWcOXQkb pic.twitter.com/OJBDyHNTMj
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 11, 2026
The Cybercab can clearly be seen with a Police Officer and perhaps the tow truck driver by its side, being loaded onto, or even potentially unloaded from, the truck.
However, it seems unlikely it was being offloaded, as its operation would get it to this point for testing to begin with.
It appears, at first glance, that it needs assistance getting back to wherever it came from; likely Gigafactory Texas or potentially a Bay Area facility.
The Cybercab was also spotted in Buffalo, New York, last week, potentially undergoing cold-weather testing, but it doesn’t appear that’s where this incident took place.
It is important to remember that the Cybercab is currently undergoing some rigorous testing scenarios, which include range tests and routine public road operation. These things help Tesla assess any potential issue the vehicle could run into after it starts routine production and heads to customers, or for the Robotaxi platform operation.
This is not a one-off issue, either. Tesla had some instances with the Semi where it was seen broken down on the side of a highway three years ago. The all-electric Semi has gone on to be successful in its early pilot program, as companies like Frito-Lay and PepsiCo. have had very positive remarks.
The Cybercab’s future is bright, and it is important to note that no vehicle model has ever gone its full life without a breakdown. It happens, it’s a car.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that there has been no official word on what happened with this particular Cybercab unit, but it is crucial to remember that this is the pre-production testing phase, and these things are more constructive than anything.
Tesla analyst Andrew Percoco of Morgan Stanley teased the company’s dominance in its self-driving initiative, stating that its lead over competitors is “not even close.”
Percoco recently overtook coverage of Tesla stock from Adam Jonas, who had covered the company at Morgan Stanley for years. Percoco is handling Tesla now that Jonas is covering embodied AI stocks and no longer automotive.
His first move after grabbing coverage was to adjust the price target from $410 to $425, as well as the rating from ‘Overweight’ to ‘Equal Weight.’
Percoco’s new note regarding Tesla highlights the company’s extensive lead in self-driving and autonomy projects, something that it has plenty of competition in, but has established its prowess over the past few years.
He writes:
“It’s not even close. Tesla continues to lead in autonomous driving, even as Nvidia rolls out new technology aimed at helping other automakers build driverless systems.”
Percoco’s main point regarding Tesla’s advantage is the company’s ability to collect large amounts of training data through its massive fleet, as millions of cars are driving throughout the world and gathering millions of miles of vehicle behavior on the road.
This is the main point that Percoco makes regarding Tesla’s lead in the entire autonomy sector: data is King, and Tesla has the most of it.
One big story that has hit the news over the past week is that of NVIDIA and its own self-driving suite, called Alpamayo. NVIDIA launched this open-source AI program last week, but it differs from Tesla’s in a significant fashion, especially from a hardware perspective, as it plans to use a combination of LiDAR, Radar, and Vision (Cameras) to operate.
Percoco said that NVIDIA’s announcement does not impact Morgan Stanley’s long-term opinions on Tesla and its strength or prowess in self-driving.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commends Tesla’s Elon Musk for early belief
And, for what it’s worth, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even said some remarkable things about Tesla following the launch of Alpamayo:
“I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced autonomous vehicle stack in the world. I’m fairly certain they were already using end-to-end AI. Whether their AI did reasoning or not is somewhat secondary to that first part.”
Percoco reiterated both the $425 price target and the ‘Equal Weight’ rating on Tesla shares.
Tesla expands its branded ‘For Business’ Superchargers
Tesla Cybercab ‘breakdown’ image likely is not what it seems
