News
SpaceX, Boeing astronaut spacecraft working towards orbital meet-up in 2020
According to Boeing’s new Starliner testing plan, the spacecraft could potentially meet SpaceX’s own Crew Dragon astronaut spacecraft in orbit at the International Space Station (ISS) later this year.
Following Starliner’s near-catastrophic December 2019 orbital flight test (OFT), Boeing and NASA have finally announced that – at a minimum – a second uncrewed flight test will have to be completed before the company will be allowed to launch astronauts. According to the Washington Post, Starliner’s return to flight is expected to occur no earlier than October or November 2020, 10 or 11 months after it suffered several major software failures during its first spaceflight. While delays to that flight schedule are incredibly likely, it does mean that there’s a chance that SpaceX’s second crewed Crew Dragon launch could coincide with Starliner’s second orbital mission — a first for the two NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) providers.
Just one week before NASA and Boeing revealed plans to refly Starliner’s uncrewed flight test, NASA announced that SpaceX’s first operational Crew Dragon launch now has a full four astronauts assigned to it. Scheduled to launch no earlier than Q4 2020, the spacecraft will carry three NASA astronauts and one Japanese (JAXA) astronaut to the ISS, remaining in orbit for at least six months before returning its crew back to Earth. Now, there’s a chance that SpaceX’s first operational Crew Dragon will be joined in orbit by Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft sometime soon after arriving on station.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, Boeing’s Starliner OFT suffered several near-catastrophic close calls in the few days it spent in space, all of which appear to have egregiously shoddy and unqualified software to blame.
“Starliner launched atop a ULA Atlas V rocket on its orbital launch debut (OFT) on December 20th, 2019. Atlas V performed flawlessly but immediately after Starliner separated from the rocket, things went very wrong.
Bad software ultimately caused the spacecraft to perform thousands of uncommanded maneuvering thruster burns, depleting a majority of its propellant before Boeing was able to intervene. Starliner managed to place itself in low Earth orbit (LEO), but by then it had nowhere near enough propellant left to rendezvous and dock with the ISS – one of the most crucial purposes of the flight test. Unable to complete that part of the mission, Boeing instead did a few small tests over the course of 48 hours in orbit before commanding the spacecraft’s reentry and landing on December 22nd.
The Starliner spacecraft also reportedly almost suffered a second major software failure just hours before reentry. According to NASA and Boeing comments in a press conference held only after news of that second failure broke, a second Starliner software bug – caught only because the first failure forced Boeing to double-check its code – could have had far more catastrophic consequences. NASA stated that had the second bug not been caught, some of Starliner’s thruster valves would have been frozen, either entirely preventing or severely hampering the spacecraft’s detached trunk from properly maneuvering in orbit. Apparently, that service module (carrying fuel, abort engines, a solar array, and more) could have crashed into the crew module shortly after detaching.”
Teslarati.com — February 11th, 2020
The only sane response was obviously for NASA to require Boeing to successfully complete a second Orbital Flight Test (OFT), a necessary decision the space agency and card-holder was bizarrely hesitant to acknowledge. Now, almost four months after Starliner was nearly lost on its first orbital flight test, NASA and Boeing have finally stated the obvious and confirmed that a second OFT will be required before astronauts can fly on Starliner. Even then, if things go wrong during OFT2 or Boeing completes the mission but still fails to rectify all faults identified by a joint failure investigation, NASA may still delay the spacecraft’s astronaut launch debut.
SpaceX has undeniably had its own stumbles while developing Crew Dragon, most notably when the first successfully flight-proven spacecraft violently exploded moments before a static fire test in April 2019. SpaceX was able to rectify the responsible design flaws and successfully complete an identical static fire test less than seven months later, followed by a second successful launch less than three months after that. Based on WaPo’s indication that Starliner’s second OFT is scheduled for Q4 2020, Boeing is now anywhere from 12-18 months behind SpaceX with its efforts to launch NASA astronauts to and from the space station. SpaceX successfully completed Crew Dragon’s OFT equivalent in March 2019.
Regardless, if Crew Dragon performs flawlessly during its Demo-2 astronaut launch debut – scheduled no earlier than mid-to-late May – and Boeing’s Starliner OFT2 mission launches on time in Q4 2020, there is a great chance that both spacecraft will be simultaneously docked to the space station. Better circumstances would be unequivocally preferable but it will still mark an important symbolic milestone for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) and assured access to the ISS.
News
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.
During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.
While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.
Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.
He said:
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”
NEWS: Elon Musk says FSD Unsupervised is “pretty much solved at this point” and that @Tesla will be launching Robotaxis with no safety monitors in about 3 weeks in Austin, Texas. He also teased a new FSD model is coming in about 1-2 months.
“We’re just going through validation… https://t.co/Msne72cgMB pic.twitter.com/i3wfKX3Z0r
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2025
It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”
With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.
This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.
Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.
But it is close.
That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.
All we can say is, we’ll see.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.
Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.
It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.
Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.
He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.
Musk replied, basically confirming it:
As usual, Eric is accurate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.
AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.
It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.
The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.
But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.
Tesla has added the 15th automaker to the growing list of companies whose EVs can utilize the Supercharger Network this year, as BMW is the latest company to gain access to the largest charging infrastructure in the world.
BMW became the 15th company in 2025 to gain Tesla Supercharger access, after the company confirmed to its EV owners that they could use any of the more than 25,000 Supercharging stalls in North America.
Welcome @BMW owners.
Download the Tesla app to charge → https://t.co/vnu0NHA7Ab
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) December 10, 2025
Newer BMW all-electric cars, like the i4, i5, i7, and iX, are able to utilize Tesla’s V3 and V4 Superchargers. These are the exact model years, via the BMW Blog:
- i4: 2022-2026 model years
- i5: 2024-2025 model years
- 2026 i5 (eDrive40 and xDrive40) after software update in Spring 2026
- i7: 2023-2026 model years
- iX: 2022-2025 model years
- 2026 iX (all versions) after software update in Spring 2026
With the expansion of the companies that gained access in 2025 to the Tesla Supercharger Network, a vast majority of non-Tesla EVs are able to use the charging stalls to gain range in their cars.
So far in 2025, Tesla has enabled Supercharger access to:
- Audi
- BMW
- Genesis
- Honda
- Hyundai
- Jaguar Land Rover
- Kia
- Lucid
- Mercedes-Benz
- Nissan
- Polestar
- Subaru
- Toyota
- Volkswagen
- Volvo
Drivers with BMW EVs who wish to charge at Tesla Superchargers must use an NACS-to-CCS1 adapter. In Q2 2026, BMW plans to release its official adapter, but there are third-party options available in the meantime.
They will also have to use the Tesla App to enable Supercharging access to determine rates and availability. It is a relatively seamless process.
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
