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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk teases Mars breakthroughs as Starship design radically changes
During an interview with Axios, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk noted that he was “[really fired up about] a number of breakthroughs [SpaceX had recently made]” while being asked about his thoughts on the likelihood of him personally going to Mars (“70%”).
The minute-long teaser did not go much deeper but it certainly raises a number of questions (and hints at explanations) for a rapid-fire series of contradictory developments and changes to SpaceX’s BFR – since renamed to “Starship” and “Super Heavy” – per a series of tweets from Musk over the last two weeks.
In a typical Muskian fashion, when Axios interviewers asked, “What is the likelihood that you personally will go to Mars?”, the CEO responded with an exact percentage – 70% – without skipping a beat. Musk also fervently and rather eloquently refuted the popular and harebrained idea that any SpaceX-enabled Mars colony would simply become “an escape hatch for the rich”. If the rich wanted Mars or lunar bases as “escape hatches”, there are dozens of multibillionaires that could singlehandedly fund Musk’s estimated $2-10B price tag for the completion of the entire BFR development program while still retaining 50-90% of their net worth.
Musk’s retort is worth reading in full.
Mike Allen: “[Mars] could be an escape hatch for rich people.”
Elon Musk: “No! Your probability of dying on Mars is much higher than earth. Really the ad for going to Mars would be like Shackleton’s ad for going to the Antarctic. It’s gonna be hard. There’s a good chance of death, going in a little can through deep space. You might land successfully. Once you land successfully, you’ll be working nonstop to build the base. So, you know, not much time for leisure, and once you get there, even after doing all this, it’s a very harsh environment, so there’s a good chance you die there. We think you can come back but we’re not sure. Now, does that sound like an escape hatch for rich people?”
Back to BFR
While thoroughly entertaining, the most interesting aspect of this one-minute teaser was the approximate two seconds where Musk suggested that SpaceX had recently made several major breakthroughs in the context of BFR and Mars. What exactly those breakthroughs could be is entirely unclear, but the fact that Musk seemed positive about the recent developments and spoke of “breakthroughs” at all feels like an encouraging sign that the last two weeks of Musk’s chaotic announcements, updates, and abrupt cancellations are less indicative of program instability than they initially seemed to be.
Most notably, Musk appeared to announce and then completely cancel a sort of mini-spaceship that SpaceX was to base off of Falcon 9’s upper stage as a BFR spaceship technology demonstrator in less than two weeks. If realized, that mini-BFS would have reentered Earth’s atmosphere at orbital velocities to flight-test hypersonic fins and a new “ultra light” heat shield that will be (or would have been) critical for the overall success of BFS/Starship.
Contour remains approx same, but fundamental materials change to airframe, tanks & heatshield
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2018
Ironically, in the middle of writing this article, Musk tweeted specifically about “fundamental” changes to the spaceship, leaving little more than the general appearance and propulsion systems unchanged. In essence, the design of BFS/Starship is now almost unrecognizable when compared with past iterations, at least from a perspective of the ship’s most critical systems.If Starship will not be built out of composites, then it’s possible that the multiple years SpaceX engineers and technicians have spent trying to develop large carbon composite propellant tanks (2016-present) and the time, energy, and capital put into those efforts will be almost entirely for naught if BFR pivots away from composite tanks.
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- A tall platform was moved inside the tent around November 10th, likely to support the integration of the tank dome and barrel section. (Pauline Acalin)
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- The dome was spied inside the tent on November 12. (Pauline Acalin)
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- SpaceX’s BFR tent is filled with custom hardware that is predominately useful only for building large composite rocket parts. (Pauline Acalin)
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- SpaceX’s huge Port of LA-based BFR tent, September 18th. (Pauline Acalin)
By all appearances, dozens of employees have spent the last year accepting delivery of $10-50M worth of custom-built composite tooling, setting it up, and building giant composite tank domes and segments. If composite tanks are no longer planned for the booster or spaceship, all that work may have been for nothing. Needless to say, we could certainly do for Musk’s proposed Reddit AMA – if not an entirely new BFR update event – to shed some light on the machinations behind these earthshaking programmatic changes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 aborted at Zero and Musk just told us what broke
Four Raptor engines failed to ignite at T-zero, forcing SpaceX to scrub Starship Flight 13 Thursday.
SpaceX scrubbed the Starship Flight 13 launch attempt Thursday evening at the last possible moment, after four of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor 3 engines failed to ignite during the startup sequence. The 90-minute window had opened at 6:45 p.m. EDT from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, and the countdown had proceeded without issue all day, with more than 11.5 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen being fully loaded into the rocket before the automated abort triggered. SpaceX’s launch directors posted on X, “Standing down from today’s flight test attempt,” and shut down the livestream shortly after.
Musk confirmed the root cause within hours. “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” he wrote on X. “To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed and replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week.” SpaceX engineers began draining propellant tanks immediately and Booster 20 was rolled back to its hangar for inspection.
The timing adds a layer of significance that did not exist during any of the previous 12 Starship flights. This is the first time SpaceX has attempted to launch Starship since the company made its stock market debut in June, listing under ticker SPCX at $135 per share. Public investors are now watching every Starship outcome in real time, and a last-second abort carries more visibility than it would have six months ago.
Flight 13 was designed to be one of the most consequential tests in the program’s history. It was set to carry 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational payload Starship has ever attempted to deploy. Six of those satellites carried external cameras to photograph Starship’s heat shield from the outside during flight, which would act as a self-inspection approach SpaceX has never attempted before. The mission also needed to complete a Raptor engine relight in space, a step SpaceX skipped on Flight 12 in May after losing an engine during ascent. That Flight 12 booster also flipped 90 degrees off course during its boostback burn when five engines failed to reignite.
SpaceX has not announced an official next launch date. Musk’s “early next week” window points to July 21 or 22 at the earliest, pending the engine swap and a return to the pad.
Elon Musk flew under the radar with his recent purchase of a $1 billion energy company, according to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) documents.
Transaction number 202612350 listed Tesla and SpaceX frontman Elon Musk as the acquiring party and CF APR Super Holdings LLC as the seller, with New APR Energy, LLC as the acquired entity. The deal, which closed without public announcement, came to light on May 14.
BREAKING: Elon Musk acquires Jacksonville power company APR Energy in a deal valued at more than $1,000,000,000.00.
— Polymarket Money (@PolymarketMoney) July 15, 2026
Analysts inferred the deal’s scale from minority stakeholder disclosures, including one report of a 5 percent interest sold for approximately $50.4 million. Fortress Investment Group had purchased APR’s assets in late 2024, rebranded the operation as New APR Energy, and subsequently transferred ownership to Musk.
APR Energy specializes in rapidly deployable power infrastructure. The company maintains one of the world’s largest fleets of mobile gas and diesel turbines, with more than 1.1 gigawatts of generation capacity. Its modular units, which are often trailer-mounted, enable turnkey installations ranging from 20 MW to over 500 MW.
APR provides full engineering, procurement, construction, operation, and maintenance services for behind-the-meter power plants, serving everything from data centers, utilities, and industrial clients.
The firm has expanded aggressively to meet surging demand, recently adding turbines and deploying over 100 MW for a major AI hyperscaler. Its solutions bridge critical gaps where grid interconnections face delays of two to five years, according to Yahoo.
The acquisition means something more for Musk. As he continues to expand projects in artificial intelligence, especially xAI, his AI venture, there is a greater need to supply energy-intensive supercomputing clusters, including the Colossus project, with what they need: reliable and high-capacity power.
Ownership of APR provides immediate access to flexible generation assets that can be deployed adjacent to data centers, reducing dependence on a strained infrastructure. It also complements Tesla’s energy storage business, so Musk will be able to pull from his own entities to address the rapid scaling demands of AI training and compute.
Tesla had a petition protesting a recall to fix a potential issue with 2017-2023 Model Y and Model 3 vehicles’ headlights was denied, as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) disagreed with the company’s opinion of things.
The recall covers approximately 19,917 Model Y and Model 3 vehicles built from 2017 to 2023. Tesla initially submitted a noncompliance report for the headlights on these vehicles on March 15, 2024. Tesla then petitioned for an exemption from the fix, which violated FMVSS No. 108 (40 CFR 571.108), arguing that the “noncompliance is inconsequential as it relates to motor vehicle safety.
🚨 Tesla was denied a petition by the NHTSA to avoid a recall of 19,900 2017-2023 Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
The NHTSA found that the vehicles’ headlights may exceed maximum lighting levels. Tesla argued it was inconsequential and did not require a recall. pic.twitter.com/m8Jmm1teLL
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 16, 2026
The NHTSA disagreed, stating that Tesla’s conclusion that the headlights do not increase any risk was not an opinion it shared. The agency said it disagreed with Tesla’s assumption that glare is not increased to surrounding traffic. This issue could be highlighted even more in certain weather conditions.
Tesla will be required to remedy the issue, the NHTSA ruled:
“In consideration of the foregoing, NHTSA has decided that Tesla has not met its burden of persuasion that the subject FMVSS No. 108 noncompliance is inconsequential to motor vehicle safety. Accordingly, Tesla’s petition is hereby denied, and Tesla is consequently obligated to provide notification of and free remedy for that noncompliance under 49 U.S.C. 30118 and 30120.”
The issue here appears to be the angle of the headlights and the brightness they emit during operation. The NHTSA report states that:
“Tesla’s headlamp supplier, Marelli Automotive Lighting, tested 25 right-hand and 25 left-hand lamps, and for this sample, found the maximum photometric intensity measured in the 10°U to 90°U and 90°L to 90°R zone was between 136.2 cd and 230.1 cd for the right-hand lamps and between 117.5 cd and 160.3 cd for the left-hand lamps. According to Tesla, these tests revealed that the photometric intensity of the right-hand and left-hand headlamp lower beam on the subject vehicles may measure as much as 230.1 cd in the 10°U to 90°U and 90°L to 90°R zone, exceeding the maximum photometric intensity by 105.1 cd. Additionally, Tesla states that a left-hand lamp tested by a Transport Canada recognized laboratory measured a maximum of 171.27 cd in the 10°U to 90°U and 90°L to 90°R zone. Despite these measurements exceeding the allowed photometric maximum of 125 cd, Tesla believes that the subject noncompliance is inconsequential to motor vehicle safety.”
Tesla also argued at some points that the headlights had not been deemed responsible for any complaints, accidents, or injuries related to the noncompliance.
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 aborted at Zero and Musk just told us what broke
Elon Musk secretly acquires $1B energy company to power the AI future
