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SpaceX just blew up a Starship tank on purpose and Elon Musk says the results are in
Before dawn on January 10th, SpaceX technicians and engineers intentionally blew up a miniature Starship tank in order to test recently-upgraded manufacturing and assembly methods, likely to be used to build the first Starships bound for flight tests and orbit.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk quickly weighed in on Twitter later the same day, revealing some crucial details about the Starship tank test and effectively confirming that it was a success. While somewhat unintuitive, this is the second time SpaceX has intentionally destroyed largely completed Starship hardware in order to determine the limits of the company’s current methods of production and assembly.
Most notably, on November 20th, SpaceX is believed to have intentionally overpressurized the Starship Mk1 prototype in a very similar – albeit larger-scale – test, destroying the vehicle and sending its top tank dome flying hundreds of feet into the air. It’s generally believed that SpaceX (or perhaps even just Musk) decided that Starship Mk1 was not fit to fly, leading the company to switch gears and deem the prototype a “manufacturing pathfinder” rather than the first Starship to fly – which Musk had explicitly stated just a few months prior.
Bopper (Baby StarPopper) this morning after the overpressure event at SpaceX Boca Chica. ??@NASASpaceflight https://t.co/nCG7E9XtKM pic.twitter.com/PRTDQvvlRh— Mary (@BocaChicaGal) January 10, 2020
Dome to barrel weld made it to 7.1 bar, which is pretty good as ~6 bar is needed for orbital flight. With more precise parts & better welding conditions, we should reach ~8.5 bar, which is the 1.4 factor of safety needed for crewed flight.— Buff Mage (@elonmusk) January 10, 2020
Instead, Starship Mk1 suffered irreparable damage during its pressurization test and was rapidly scrapped in the weeks following, although several segments were thankfully salvaged – perhaps for use on future prototypes. Along those lines, it can arguably be said that the results from the mini Starship tank’s Jan. 10 pop test have paved the way for SpaceX to build the first truly flightworthy Starship prototypes – potentially all the way up to the first spaceworthy vehicles.
Hours after the test, Musk revealed that the Starship test tank failed almost exactly where and how SpaceX expected it would, bursting when the weld joining the upper dome and tank wall failed. Critically, the tank reached a maximum sustained pressure of 7.1 bar (103 psi), some 18% over the operating pressure (6 bar/87 psi) Musk says Starship prototypes will need to be declared fully capable of orbital test flights. In other words, given the tank’s size, it survived an incredible ~20,000 metric tons (45 million lbf) of force spread out over its surface area, equivalent to about 20% the weight of an entire US Navy aircraft carrier.
Musk also revealed that SpaceX will require Starships to survive a minimum of 140% of that operating pressure before the company will allow the spacecraft to launch humans.
Some have less than generously taken to smugly noting that several modern spaceflight and engineering standards require that launch vehicle tankage be rated to survive no less than 125% of their operating pressure, while this test tank would be rated for less than 118% under identical conditions. However, this ignores several significant points of interest. First and foremost, the Starship test tank intentionally destroyed on January 10th was assembled from almost nothing – going from first weld to a completed pressurization test – in less than three weeks (20 days).
Second, all visible welding and assembly work was performed outside in the South Texas elements with only a minor degree of protection from the coastal winds and environment. Although some obvious tweaks were made to the specific methods used to assembly the prototype tank, it also appears that most of the welding was done by hand. For the most part, in other words, the methods used to build this improved test article were largely unchanged compared to Starship Mk1, which is believed to have failed around 3-5 bar (40-75 psi).
Additionally, it appears that almost all aspects of this test tank have smaller structural margins, meaning that the tank walls and domes are likely using steel stock that is substantially thinner than what was used on Starship Mk1. Nevertheless, thanks to the addition of continuous (single-weld) steel rings, a tweaked dome layout, and slightly refined welding, this test tank has performed anywhere from 20% to 200+% better than Starship Mk1 – again, all while coming together from scratch in a period of less than three weeks.
As Musk notes, with relatively minor improvements to welding conditions and the manufacturing precision of Starship rings and domes, SpaceX can likely ensure that Starships (and thus Super Heavy boosters) will be able to survive pressures greater than 8.5 bar (125 psi), thus guaranteeing a safety margin of at least 40%. Even a minor improvement of ~6% would give vehicles a safety margin of 125%, enough – in the eyes of engineering standards committees – to reasonably certify Starships for orbital test flights.
All things considered, it’s safe to assume that SpaceX is going to begin building and assembling Starship SN01 (formerly Mk3) hardware almost immediately. Given that this test tank took just 20 days to assemble, it’s safe to say that the upgraded prototype’s tank section could be completed in just a handful of weeks. Stay tuned for progress reports.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
News
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Elon Musk
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
