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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk teases Mars breakthroughs as Starship design radically changes

SpaceX's massive BFR mandrel, used to mold its composite tanks and structures. (SpaceX)

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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.

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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?”

Getting to here is not a cheap endeavor and loans could help SpaceX pave the way. (SpaceX)

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.

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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.

 

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.

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla opens Robotaxi access to everyone — but there’s one catch

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has officially opened Robotaxi access to everyone and everyone, but there is one catch: you have to have an iPhone.

Tesla’s Robotaxi service in Austin and its ride-hailing service in the Bay Area were both officially launched to the public today, giving anyone using the iOS platform the ability to simply download the app and utilize it for a ride in either of those locations.

It has been in operation for several months: it launched in Austin in late June and in the Bay Area about a month later. In Austin, there is nobody in the driver’s seat unless the route takes you on the freeway.

In the Bay Area, there is someone in the driver’s seat at all times.

The platform was initially launched to those who were specifically invited to Austin to try it out.

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Tesla confirms Robotaxi is heading to five new cities in the U.S.

Slowly, Tesla launched the platform to more people, hoping to expand the number of rides and get more valuable data on its performance in both regions to help local regulatory agencies relax some of the constraints that were placed on it.

Additionally, Tesla had its own in-house restrictions, like the presence of Safety Monitors in the vehicles. However, CEO Elon Musk has maintained that these monitors were present for safety reasons specifically, but revealed the plan was to remove them by the end of the year.

Now, Tesla is opening up Robotaxi to anyone who wants to try it, as many people reported today that they were able to access the app and immediately fetch a ride if they were in the area.

We also confirmed it ourselves, as it was shown that we could grab a ride in the Bay Area if we wanted to:

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The launch of a more public Robotaxi network that allows anyone to access it seems to be a serious move of confidence by Tesla, as it is no longer confining the service to influencers who are handpicked by the company.

In the coming weeks, we expect Tesla to then rid these vehicles of the Safety Monitors as Musk predicted. If it can come through on that by the end of the year, the six-month period where Tesla went from launching Robotaxi to enabling driverless rides is incredibly impressive.

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Tesla analyst sees Full Self-Driving adoption rates skyrocketing: here’s why

“You’ll see increased adoption as people are exposed to it. I’ve been behind the wheel of several of these and the different iterations of FSD, and it is getting better and better. It’s something when people experience it, they will be much more comfortable utilizing FSD and paying for it.”

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tesla interior operating on full self driving
Credit: TESLARATI

Tesla analyst Stephen Gengaro of Stifel sees Full Self-Driving adoption rates skyrocketing, and he believes more and more people will commit to paying for the full suite or the subscription service after they try it.

Full Self-Driving is Tesla’s Level 2 advanced driver assistance suite (ADAS), and is one of the most robust on the market. Over time, the suite gets better as the company accumulates data from every mile driven by its fleet of vehicles, which has swelled to over five million cars sold.

The suite features a variety of advanced driving techniques that many others cannot do. It is not your typical Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) and Lane Keeping ADAS system. Instead, it can handle nearly every possible driving scenario out there.

It still requires the driver to pay attention and ultimately assume responsibility for the vehicle, but their hands are not required to be on the steering wheel.

It is overwhelmingly impressive, and as a personal user of the FSD suite on a daily basis, I have my complaints, but overall, there are very few things it does incorrectly.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.1.7 real-world drive and review

Gengaro, who increased his Tesla price target to $508 yesterday, said in an interview with CNBC that adoption rates of FSD will increase over the coming years as more people try it for themselves.

At first, it is tough to feel comfortable with your car literally driving you around. Then, it becomes second nature.

Gengaro said:

“You’ll see increased adoption as people are exposed to it. I’ve been behind the wheel of several of these and the different iterations of FSD, and it is getting better and better. It’s something when people experience it, they will be much more comfortable utilizing FSD and paying for it.”

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Tesla Full Self-Driving take rates also have to increase as part of CEO Elon Musk’s recently approved compensation package, as one tranche requires ten million active subscriptions in order to win that portion of the package.

The company also said in the Q3 2025 Earnings Call in October that only 12 percent of the current ownership fleet are paid customers of Full Self-Driving, something the company wants to increase considerably moving forward.

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Tesla scores major court win as judge rejects race bias class action

The ruling means the 2017 lawsuit cannot proceed as a class action because plaintiff attorneys were unable to secure testimony commitments from at least 200 workers.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla scored a significant legal victory in California after a state judge reversed a class certification in a high-profile race harassment case involving 6,000 Black workers at its Fremont plant. The ruling means the 2017 lawsuit cannot proceed as a class action because plaintiff attorneys were unable to secure testimony commitments from at least 200 workers ahead of a 2026 trial, a threshold the judge viewed as necessary to reliably represent the full group.

No class action

In a late-Friday order, California Superior Court Judge Peter Borkon concluded that the suit could not remain a class action, stating he could not confidently apply the experiences of a much smaller group of testifying workers to thousands of potential class members. His ruling reverses a 2024 decision by a different judge who had certified the case under the belief that a trial of that size would be manageable, as noted in a Reuters report.

The lawsuit was originally filed by former assembly-line worker Marcus Vaughn, who alleged that Black employees at Tesla’s Fremont factory were exposed to various forms of racially hostile conduct, including slurs, graffiti, and instances of disturbing objects appearing in work areas. Tesla has previously said it does not tolerate harassment and has removed employees found responsible for misconduct. Neither Tesla nor the plaintiffs’ legal team immediately commented on the latest ruling.

Tesla’s legal challenges

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While the decertification narrows the scope of this particular case, Tesla still faces additional litigation over similar allegations. A separate trial involving related claims brought by a California state civil rights agency is scheduled just two months after the now-vacated class trial date. The company is also contending with federal race discrimination claims filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alongside several individual lawsuits it has already resolved.

For now, the reversal removes the large-scale exposure Tesla would have faced in a unified class trial, shifting the dispute back to individual claims rather than a single mass action. The case is Vaughn v. Tesla, filed in Alameda County Superior Court.

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