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SpaceX moving fast on Mars rocket development, BFR tent spied with more tooling
Photos taken by Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin have confirmed that SpaceX’s massive Mars rocket fabrication tooling has been hiding in plain sight at the company’s Port of San Pedro tent facility.
Spotted inside the temporary structure thanks to open flaps and a human desire for a breeze amidst the warm Los Angeles springtime, the main cylindrical component is truly vast – large enough that the eye almost glazes over it at first glance. Dwarfing the humans clambering about it, very rough estimates using knowledge of the tent’s reported area (20,000 square feet) and size comparisons with machinery blueprints suggest a diameter of around 8-10 meters (26-36 feet), loosely conforming to the expected 9m diameter of BFR, as of CEO Elon Musk’s IAC 2017 update. Recently, however, President Gwynne Shotwell showed off an updated Mars rocket video at TED2018 that led to Musk hinting that BFR may have grown slightly since then.
SpaceX’s massive BFR manufacturing tool peeked out from the company’s Port-side tent facility. (Pauline Acalin)
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- SpaceX’s BFR tent and mandrel, caught on April 14th. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Like, really big. (Pauline Acalin)
The massive cylindrical structure teased by Musk earlier this month is most likely a mandrel, a tool that can be spun on its horizontal axis to weave predetermined structures. In the case of the Mars rocket mandrel, it will likely be used to carefully wind dozens or hundreds of layers of carbon fiber (known as prepreg), interspersed with layers of laminate and various epoxies and resins. It’s also possible, however, that the massive tool is instead a multipurpose mold and autoclave, where the composite layers would be lain on the inside of the cylinder, allowed to set, and eventually sealed inside and heat/pressure treated.
Images of the machinery are fairly ambiguous: they show a structure that could have connection points one might find on an autoclave, as well as what appears to be a thick and well-insulated internal wall. However, the external skin appears to be a relatively thin sheet of metal, which would point more towards a traditional composite mandrel, where certain sheets could be removed or modified as needed to create desired shapes in the composite while it’s being formed, less risky than machining a completed segment.
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- Just a casual line of car-sized steel segments hanging around outside the BFR tent. (Pauline Acalin)
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- While unclear, these are likely sections of a layup or mold that will be used to form BFR’s more complex composite components. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Shown is the forward fuselage of the 787 on a mandrel for composite weaving and layup.(Boeing)
Perhaps even more interesting, a number of massive metal structures were spotted just outside of the tent. While it is unclear what exactly their purpose was, is, or will be, it’s more likely than not that they are components of a carbon composite mold or layup structure meant to deal with fabrication of certain Mars rocket and spaceship components with complex curves, versus the relatively simple cylinders that BFR and BFS are largely comprised of. Still, precedents exist in large aerospace composite manufacturing for the fabrication of structures with complex curves, most notably the nose and front sections of airliners like Boeing’s 787.
Finally, it’s worth noting just how shockingly busy the BFR tent was on both April 13th and 14th, as well as the 8th (the first day Pauline visited the facility). With upwards of 40 cars parked at the tent, it’s blindingly clear that SpaceX is not simply using the tent as a temporary storage location – alongside the arrival of composite fabrication materials (prepreg sheets, epoxy, etc) from Airtech International, SpaceX undeniably intends to begin initial fabrication of the first BFR prototypes in this tent, although they will likely eventually move the activities to the Berth 240 Mars rocket factory. That’s certainly not a sentence I ever expected to write, but it is what it is.
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- Airtech supplies arrive at the BFR tent on April 14. Airtech is a composites supplier with a branch located just miles away from Port of San Pedro. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Lots of cars at the BFR tent. This also provides a sense of scale for the tent’s absolutely massive access flaps. (Pauline Acalin)
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- April 2018. (Pauline Acalin)
SpaceX’s giant, temporary tent currently housing the company’s BFR/BFS fabrication tooling while their permanent facility awaits construction a couple miles away. #SpaceX #BFR pic.twitter.com/a8Tj6QLmUz
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) April 15, 2018
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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
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This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
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Elon Musk has updated his timeline for when humans will walk on Mars and for when ships will simply get there.
The objective of getting to Mars has been one of Musk’s biggest goals since becoming a serial entrepreneur and realizing that time on Earth is limited. Musk has said several times he hopes to die on Mars, and not by impact.
Musk now believes that people will be on Mars in “roughly 5 to 7 years.” He said that a Mars lander will get there “a few years sooner.”
People on Mars in roughly 5 to 7 years.
Mars lander a few years sooner.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
The response from Musk comes after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that SpaceX’s biggest priority is the Moon and not Mars. Because of this, Isaacman conceded that he believes nuclear power and propulsion investments will provide “potentially the pathway with the fewest miracles required to put four people on Mars in the next 10 to 15 years.”
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Of course, this is what NASA can do through taxpayer funding and nuclear investments, he added.
Musk’s grand ambitions are much more optimistic than most, and it is certainly a double-edged sword. This is not the first time timelines for Mars have been somewhat lofty, especially to those normal thinkers like you and me, not super geniuses like Musk.
In fact, the SpaceX and Tesla frontman has said on at least a dozen occasions that we could be on Mars in the coming years. Musk said 2020 would be the big year as early as 2009. In 2020, he was “highly confident” of a landing in 2026, and had even said 2024 in a best-case scenario.
The point is, the range has varied, and it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll get there. This latest adjustment to the timeline is typical of Musk, and while the Moon has seemingly taken priority over Mars, it is still worth mentioning that the ultimate goal is to make life multiplanetary, and it starts potentially with the Red Planet.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
