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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
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.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.
Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.
Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.
He said:
“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:
It’s out of this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Excitement guaranteed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.
Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.
However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
