News
SpaceX braces for Florida-bound Dorian as hurricane threatens local Starship facility
Hurricane Dorian is currently growing into a potentially devastating Atlantic storm some 1,200mi (~2000km) off the Florida Coast and local spaceflight facilities – including SpaceX’s launch pads and Starship campus – are at high risk.
As of the latest storm advisories, Hurricane Dorian is likely to grow into a Category 3 or 4 storm prior to making landfall somewhere along the East Coast of Central Florida. Dorian’s ground track forecast is unusually uncertain just four days out from landfall, but the Space Coast’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS), and other local spaceflight facilities (including SpaceX’s) are at high risk and are preparing for a worst-case scenario.
HURCON V – I
As of 0800hrs Wednesday morning, Brigadier General Doug Schiess – Commander of the 45th Space Wing at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Director of the Eastern Range at Patrick Air Force Base – initiated HURCON V preparations across Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) and surrounding areas. This precaution is triggered when storm winds in excess of 50 knots (58mph) are measured fewer than 96 hours to landfall. While CCAFS hurricane operations begin 96h out from landfall, KSC’s preparations begin after HURCON IV, indicating that storm winds in excess of 50 knots (58mph) have been measured 72 hours out from landfall. All facilities then follow a HURCON IV – I warning system that defines a series of preparation events and personnel evacuation plans.
A HURCON IV issuance will see all personnel report for duty as usual while specialized teams will begin implementing organization-specific checklists, vehicles are fueled, and storm Ride-Out Team (ROT) personnel will be identified. From there as the storm approaches non-essential personnel will be evacuated, facilities will be secured, and roads will be closed. ROT personnel will remain on-site and will begin the evaluation of the premises once the storm has passed.
SpaceX follows KSC’s lead, battens down Starship hatches
As SpaceX leases Launch Complex 39-A from KSC it is expected that they will follow all precautions initiated by KSC as they did almost two years ago amid launch preparations during HURCON III conditions while facing down Hurricane Irma. SpaceX has released an official statement confirming the obvious: the company is working closely with KSC and CCAFS to monitor weather conditions and plan to take all necessary precautions before, during, and after landfall.
SpaceX may not be new to preparing its Florida launch facilities for hurricanes and tropical storms, but Hurricane Dorian poses entirely new challenges due to the fact that the company has recently begun operating a fairly extensive Starship production facility in Cocoa, Florida. The vast majority of Cocoa’s work is done entirely out in the open, rarely protected by more than a spartan windbreak or temporary tent. According to local photographer Greg Scott, SpaceX has paused all Starship production work for the moment and is working all-out to secure its facilities as the potentially catastrophic Cat 4 Hurricane Dorian fast approaches.
The total lack of hurricane-rated protection puts SpaceX’s Starship facility at exceptionally high risk. The Cocoa production facility is thus facing many obstacles with hurricane preparedness as the majority of Starship production takes place outside and is completely vulnerable to the elements. Aerial photos depict what a daunting – if not utterly impossible – task it will be to secure all of the current production pieces of Starship Mk2.
Along with the main section structures and the completed nose cone section of Starship, many smaller fabrication pieces including large steel rings, a large bulkhead, and an array of assembly tools will need to be secured. Luckily a newly constructed wind guard structure covered in a white canvas material seemingly just reached completion and may be used to house the largest section of Starship if teams can manage to move it inside before storm conditions arrive.
Although it is surely going to suffer some damage from hurricane-force winds, the tent structure should offer some limited protection for any hardware that can be moved inside it. While Starship is being fabricated to withstand the stresses of launch and re-entry conditions, it may not be able to stand against the fury of a hurricane in its current fragile state.
Been here before…
SpaceX has faced damage to Starship prototypes at the hand of wind before. The first prototype – now known as Starhopper – constructed at their testing facility in Boca Chica, TX originally featured a tall nose cone portion that was ultimately lost. A storm that brought 50mph (80 km/h) wind gusts blew through and knocked the fairing piece off of its concrete stand and resulted in a completely crumpled heap of steel mess. The loss of the nose cone ended up being purely aesthetic and caused little to no setback to Starhopper testing – delayed instead by issues with Raptor engines.
Any damage suffered in Cocoa as an effect of Hurricane Dorian will almost certainly cause setbacks for SpaceX. Even if SpaceX gets extremely lucky and suffers no direct damage from a glancing blow, disruption to local infrastructure (power, waste, water, industry) could significantly hamper production operations. In the event that Dorian makes landfall at or near Cape Canaveral, Starship Mk2 and the many Super Heavy-related steel rings and facilities situated around the Cocoa campus could easily be destroyed or damaged beyond salvage, owing to the fact that they are made out of relatively thin and lightweight metal and have expansive, sail-like surface areas.
On the plus side, if any of the above does occur, SpaceX is simultaneously building a second near-identical prototype – Starship Mk1 – at its Boca Chica, Texas facilities. Disruption is undesirable, but SpaceX and its Starship program will likely (and hopefully) be largely unharmed. Additionally, SpaceX’s next Falcon 9 launch out of Florida is an internal Starlink mission scheduled no earlier than late October, leaving at least 1.5-2 months for clean-up and any necessary repairs.
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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.
Tesla is planning to roll out some pretty significant safety and accident avoidance features with Full Self-Driving version 15, which will be the next major FSD deployment from the company.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy used a near-miss this week to preview what the company says is the next leap in Full Self-Driving.
In response to a driver whose car had swerved away from another vehicle pulling out of a parking lot, Elluswamy wrote that he was glad the owner was safe and that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” would arrive with FSD v15.
Glad you are safe. Even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance coming as part of the next big upgrade (v15).
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 11, 2026
The comment landed as Tesla continues to treat software as the primary safety upgrade path. v15 is described internally as a larger architectural step, with a much bigger neural network and tighter coupling between prediction and control.
The company has already begun using early v15 software in some robotaxi operations while rolling out safety features such as Automatic Collision Evasion into current customer cars, allowing the driving stack to intervene even when the driver is in manual control.
Tesla is rolling out a new FSD version with a massive safety addition
Tesla’s published telemetry is the backbone of its safety argument. In recent North American Vehicle Safety Report data, vehicles with FSD (Supervised) engaged traveled roughly 5.1 million to 5.7 million miles between major collisions, defined as airbag-deployment events.
Tesla’s estimate of the U.S. average over the same period is about 699,000 miles per comparable crash. That is the comparison Tesla often frames as roughly seven times fewer major collisions.
A tighter comparison uses the same Tesla fleet. Cars driven manually with active safety features such as automatic emergency braking still recorded a major collision about every 2.1 million miles. Against that baseline, FSD’s advantage shrinks to roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times fewer severe crashes, which independent researchers argue is the more apples-to-apples figure.
European data released in 2026 pointed in the same direction: Tesla reported FSD as 3.5 times safer than manual driving in the Netherlands and 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas with active safety across more than 100 million kilometers in five approved countries.
Those numbers do not settle every debate. NHTSA’s Standing General Order still shows Tesla accounting for the large majority of U.S. Level 2 driver-assist crash reports, in part because the fleet logs far more assisted miles than rivals. Critics also note that Tesla’s “U.S. average” mixes crash definitions and driving mix.
Even so, Tesla’s own same-car comparisons, plus lower rates of automatic emergency braking and harsh maneuvers when FSD is engaged, are the evidence Elluswamy is pointing to when he says v15 will push prediction and collision avoidance further. The claim is not that software already eliminates risk. It is that each major version is meant to widen the gap between the system and an unaided human driver.
Cybertruck
Tesla’s most delayed Cybertruck feature is finally here
Tesla finally links Cybertruck Powershare with Powerwall 3 for extended home backup after years overdue.
Tesla’s Cybertruck can now pair with a Powerwall 3 to keep a house running longer during an outage, a feature the company first promised when the truck launched in November 2023.
The official Cybertruck account posted the update on X Thursday: “Powerwall 3 & I can now power your house together. This extends your home backup by over 3 days, equivalent to 9 additional Powerwalls,” Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill confirmed the rollout separately, calling it the first time a vehicle and a home battery have worked together this way. Powerwall 2 and Powerwall+ compatibility is still coming later this year, per both the Cybertruck account and Morrill.
Powerwall 3 & I can now power your house together⁰ ⁰This extends your home backup by over 3 days, equivalent to 9 additional Powerwalls pic.twitter.com/8G2twIm6AN
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 10, 2026
Powershare itself is not new. Tesla enabled the version that lets Cybertruck power tools, appliances or another EV through its bed outlets when the truck launched in 2023. Home backup through a Powershare Gateway and Universal Wall Connector arrived in 2024, and Tesla extended that support to homes with solar the following year. What has been missing until now is Powershare working alongside an existing Powerwall, instead of functioning as a separate backup source competing for the same job.
The pairing matters because a single Powerwall home battery typically covers a home for about a day, less if usage is heavy or the outage stretches into a heat wave or freeze. A second Powerwall for more backup storage costs several thousand dollars installed. A Cybertruck instead uses a battery the owner already has, one large enough here to add roughly three more days of backup without mounting another unit or booking an installer visit. For households in wildfire, hurricane or winter storm regions where outages run past a day, that keeps the refrigerator and medical equipment running instead of shutting down.
The company told owners in October 2024 that Powerwall integration was coming sometime in 2025. That date passed, and in December 2025 Tesla pushed the target to mid-2026, with Morrill explaining at the time that two grid-forming devices need to negotiate which one manages a home during an outage, and that certifying the process across multiple generations of Powerwall took longer than expected.
For owners who bought Powershare hardware expecting it to work with whatever battery setup they already had, Thursday’s update closes a gap that has shown up repeatedly in owner complaints since Cybertruck deliveries began. Tesla has also rolled out a separate Powershare grid support program in Texas, letting Cybertrucks send power back to the grid during high demand events, so the truck’s role in a home’s energy setup keeps expanding even as individual pieces of it arrive later than promised.
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla plans big safety improvements for Full Self-Driving v15
