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SpaceX prepares to break ground on Starship launch facilities at Pad 39A
As of September 14th, SpaceX is nearly ready to break ground on what will likely be the first orbital-class Starship and Super Heavy launch pad, coming in the form of an addition to the company’s NASA-leased LC-39A pad at Kennedy Space Center.
Based on environmental assessment documents published in August 2019, the modifications SpaceX plans to make to Pad 39A are surprisingly minor and could arguably take just a handful of months from start to finish. Once complete, SpaceX will possess dedicated Starship launch facilities in both Florida and Texas, although there is a strong chance that Pad 39A will be ready to support orbital launch attempts well before SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site is certified.
Per NASASpaceflight.com’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) sources, the new activity and equipment at Pad 39A was confirmed to be the start of Starship-related modifications. However, the basic location of the new activity supports the theory that the work is Starship-related irrespective of any sourced confirmation.
Maps published in an August 2019 Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) show that SpaceX is currently staging construction materials and equipment in the same quadrant that a majority of Starship’s Pad 39A ground systems will eventually be located. According to the draft EA, SpaceX will likely continue to use its existing 39A hangar, additionally supported by a comment from CEO Elon Musk indicating that Starship and Super Heavy will be more or less structurally stable in horizontal positions. The 39A hangar is large enough to house Starships and Super Heavy boosters, although their presence would almost certainly impact Falcon 9/Heavy operations
Still, Starship and Super Heavy will be vertically integrated into a single ‘stack’ prior to launch. According to SpaceX, a large, mobile crane will be used temporarily and will eventually be replaced with a permanent, fixed-structure crane at some point in the future. Aside from a propellant farm and associated plumbing for Starship’s liquid methane fuel supply, the EA shows plans for new water percolation and retention ponds, as well as a new landing zone located just a few hundred feet away from the planned launch mount.
Until the FAA performs an environmental assessment of rocket landings at Pad 39A, SpaceX will land Starships at its established LZ-1/2 landing zones, while Super Heavy will be exclusively recovered via drone ship until SpaceX has permission to literally perform return to launch site (RTLS) landings.
As with most SpaceX projects, Pad 39A’s Starship-related development is effectively structured in phases. The first phase focuses primarily on suborbital Starship flight tests and will require a relatively spartan launch mount/stand and water-cooled thrust diverter. SpaceX is in the middle of preparing to build the concrete foundation that said Starship launch mount and deluge system will be installed on. Once SpaceX is ready for orbital Starship launch attempts (and thus Super Heavy booster involvement), the company will either stretch the existing launch mount a dozen or so meters taller or build a new structure tall enough to prevent Super Heavy from destroying the concrete foundation.
That latter task will be quite the challenge, given that a full-up Super Heavy booster at full thrust could produce almost twice as much thrust as NASA’s Saturn V rocket, the massive launch vehicle Pad 39A was originally built to support. According to Elon Musk, Starship’s first orbital launch attempt(s) could begin as early as November or December 2019, although sometime in Q1 or Q2 2020 is a far safer bet. Either way, it’s possible that SpaceX will transport Starship Mk2 to Pad 39A as early as this month (September 2019) and the first launch of a Starship prototype (likely Mk1) is scheduled as early as October 13th. Starship Mk2 could be ready for its own flight debut soon after.
Stay tuned as SpaceX continues to fire on all cylinders in pursuit of its fully-reusable, next-generation launch vehicle.
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Tesla is showing us that Cybercab mass production is well underway
Tesla’s Cybercab drives itself off the Gigafactory Texas line in a striking new production video.
Tesla has provided a first look from inside a production Cybercab as it drove itself off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. The video footage, posted on X, opens on the factory floor with robotic arms and assembly equipment visible through the Cybercab windshield, and follows the car through a branded tunnel marked “Cybercab”, before autonomously navigating itself to a holding lot.
The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas production line on February 17, 2026, with Musk writing on X, “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.” April marked the official shift to volume production. The Giga Texas line is being prepared to produce hundreds of units per week, with 60 units already spotted on the Gigafactory campus earlier this month.
Purpose-built for autonomy
Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/Y9qG3KyWBa
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 23, 2026
The Cybercab was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk said he believed the average operating cost would be around $0.20 per mile, and that buyers would be able to purchase one for under $30,000. The two-seat design is deliberate. Musk noted that 90 percent of miles driven involve one or two people, making a compact two-passenger vehicle the most efficient configuration for a fleet-scale robotaxi. Eliminating rear seats also removes complexity and cost, supporting that sub-$30,000 target.
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once several factories reach full design capacity. The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and relies entirely on Tesla’s vision-based FSD system. What the video shows is the first evidence of that system working not as a demo, but as a production reality, driving itself off the line and into the world.
🚗 Our first ride in Tesla Cybercab last October: pic.twitter.com/kGqIqgJPRn https://t.co/BITCXFhbVd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2025
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Tesla is showing us that Cybercab mass production is well underway
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
