News
SpaceX’s 2018 Crew Dragon launch debut imminent as spacecraft hardware comes together
SpaceX’s first spaceworthy Crew Dragon spacecraft officially has a confident launch target in hand as a flood of activity has begun to complete, ship, test, and deliver multiple critical components ranging from the Dragon capsule itself to the Falcon 9 Block 5 first and second stages for that capsule’s November or December launch debut.
As of today, SpaceX has between three and four months to finish up a significant – but by no means impossible – amount of work, ranging from actual hardware completion, integration, and preflight checkouts and testing to a veritable flood of paperwork required by NASA before any Commercial Crew launch can proceed.
Watch live as @NASA announces the astronauts assigned to fly aboard Crew Dragon and launch from American soil for the first time since the final Space Shuttle mission in 2011 → https://t.co/rdhLIxFGwa pic.twitter.com/Y640lpu13G
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 3, 2018
Paper beats rock(et)
In fact, given comments from SpaceX’s President and COO Gwynne Shotwell and CEO Elon Musk, the executives appeared to be very confident that the hardware for the first uncrewed demo mission (DM-1) and second crewed test flight (DM-2) would be ready for launch. These comments most likely group software under that hardware umbrella, meaning that Shotwell and Musk seem to be very subtly commenting on the immense bureaucratic workload required from SpaceX before NASA will permit them to launch.
Decades of experience as a military-industrial complex stalwart has readily prepared Boeing to deal with those vast ‘certification’ workloads, but that certainly doesn’t mean that NASA couldn’t find a more pragmatic and less oppressive balance between carelessness and a downright obsessive compulsion to document every molecule of their commercial providers’ hardware, software, and wetware (employees, management, organizational structure).
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- The first spaceworthy Crew Dragon capsule is already in Florida, preparing for its November 2018 launch debut. The same capsule will be refurbished and reflown as few as three months after recovery. (SpaceX)
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- Crew Dragon approaches the International Space Station in this render. (SpaceX)
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- Crew Dragon separates from its trunk segment. (SpaceX)
Falcon 9 preps for Crew Dragon
Despite the often-onerous bureaucratic demands of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program office, SpaceX is moving rapidly ahead with a range of hardware, all critical for the Crew Dragon’s November/December launch debut. With the capsule itself already in Florida and the DM-1 Dragon’s trunk nearing shipment from Hawthorne to Cape Canaveral (currently NET September), the next and perhaps most important piece is Falcon 9 itself.
Confirmed earlier this year in a quarterly NASA Commercial Crew update, SpaceX assigned Falcon 9 Booster 1051 to Crew Dragon’s debut launch. That rocket booster and its complementary upper stage are already at SpaceX’s McGregor, TX rocket testing facility undergoing a number of acceptance tests and checkouts as of today, confirming a number of critical facts. Most importantly, the presence of integrated the B1051 booster in Texas appears to imply that SpaceX has successfully fixed slight design flaws in their Merlin 1D engines and composite-overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), even if the paperwork to officially ‘certify’ them for flight has not been completed.
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- Fresh Block 5 Merlin 1D engines are built and assembled in Hawthorne, CA before heading to Texas for testing. (SpaceX)
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- A SpaceX technician documents the condition of Falcon 9 B1048’s Block 5 Merlin engines, 08/01/18. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Falcon 9 shows off some of its COPVs in a tour of SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory. (SpaceX)
This meshes nicely with details provided in a recent NASA Commercial Crew news post, which stated that “Falcon 9’s first and second stages for the Demo-1 [Crew Dragon] mission are targeted to ship … [to] McGregor, Texas for additional testing in August.” Ship they did and the booster may well have beaten that “August” timeframe according to photos of the facility from mid-July. When exactly that testing will wrap up in Texas is unclear but it would be reasonable to expect the rocket booster and upper stage to ship to SpaceX’s Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) in Cape Canaveral within 4-6 weeks, giving the company a solid month and a half to integrate the rocket, static fire it at the pad, complete assembly of Crew Dragon, and attach the spacecraft to its Falcon 9 rocket ahead of launch.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship Version 3 booster crumples in early testing
Photos of the incident’s aftermath suggest that Booster 18 will likely be retired.
SpaceX’s new Starship first-stage booster, Booster 18, suffered major damage early Friday during its first round of testing in Starbase, Texas, just one day after rolling out of the factory.
Based on videos of the incident, the lower section of the rocket booster appeared to crumple during a pressurization test. Photos of the incident’s aftermath suggest that Booster 18 will likely be retired.
Booster test failure
SpaceX began structural and propellant-system verification tests on Booster 18 Thursday night at the Massey’s Test Site, only a few miles from Starbase’s production facilities, as noted in an Ars Technica report. At 4:04 a.m. CT on Friday, a livestream from LabPadre Space captured the booster’s lower half experiencing a sudden destructive event around its liquid oxygen tank section. Post-incident images, shared on X by @StarshipGazer, showed notable deformation in the booster’s lower structure.
Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk had commented as of Friday morning, but the vehicle’s condition suggests it is likely a complete loss. This is quite unfortunate, as Booster 18 is already part of the Starship V3 program, which includes design fixes and upgrades intended to improve reliability. While SpaceX maintains a rather rapid Starship production line in Starbase, Booster 18 was generally expected to validate the improvements implemented in the V3 program.
Tight deadlines
SpaceX needs Starship boosters and upper stages to begin demonstrating rapid reuse, tower catches, and early operational Starlink missions over the next two years. More critically, NASA’s Artemis program depends on an on-orbit refueling test in the second half of 2026, a requirement for the vehicle’s expected crewed lunar landing around 2028.
While SpaceX is known for diagnosing failures quickly and returning to testing at unmatched speed, losing the newest-generation booster at the very start of its campaign highlights the immense challenge involved in scaling Starship into a reliable, high-cadence launch system. SpaceX, however, is known for getting things done quickly, so it would not be a surprise if the company manages to figure out what happened to Booster 18 in the near future.
News
Tesla FSD (Supervised) is about to go on “widespread” release
In a comment last October, Elon Musk stated that FSD V14.2 is “for widespread use.”
Tesla has begun rolling out Full Self-Driving (Supervised) V14.2, and with this, the wide release of the system could very well begin.
The update introduces a new high-resolution vision encoder, expanded emergency-vehicle handling, smarter routing, new parking options, and more refined driving behavior, among other improvements.
FSD V14.2 improvements
FSD (Supervised) V14.2’s release notes highlight a fully upgraded neural-network vision encoder capable of reading higher-resolution features, giving the system improved awareness of emergency vehicles, road obstacles, and even human gestures. Tesla also expanded its emergency-vehicle protocols, adding controlled pull-overs and yielding behavior for police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances, among others.
A deeper integration of navigation and routing into the vision network now allows the system to respond to blocked roads or detours in real time. The update also enhances decision-making in several complex scenarios, including unprotected turns, lane changes, vehicle cut-ins, and interactions with school buses. All in all, these improvements should help FSD (Supervised) V14.2 perform in a very smooth and comfortable manner.
Elon Musk’s predicted wide release
The significance of V14.2 grows when paired with Elon Musk’s comments from October. While responding to FSD tester AI DRIVR, who praised V14.1.2 for fixing “95% of indecisive lane changes and braking” and who noted that it was time for FSD to go on wide release, Musk stated that “14.2 for widespread use.”
FSD V14 has so far received a substantial amount of positive reviews from Tesla owners, many of whom have stated that the system now drives better than some human drivers as it is confident, cautious, and considerate at the same time. With V14.2 now rolling out, it remains to be seen if the update also makes it to the company’s wide FSD fleet, which is still populated by a large number of HW3 vehicles.
News
Tesla FSD V14.2 starts rolling out to initial batch of vehicles
It would likely only be a matter of time before FSD V14.2 videos are posted and shared on social media.
Tesla has begun pushing Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.2 to its initial batch of vehicles. The update was initially observed by Tesla owners and veteran FSD users on social media platform X on Friday.
So far, reports of the update have been shared by Model Y owners in California whose vehicles are equipped with the company’s AI4 hardware, though it would not be surprising if more Tesla owners across the country receive the update as well.
Based on the release notes of the update, key improvements in FSD V14.2 include a revamped neural network for better detection of emergency vehicles, obstacles, and human gestures, as well as options to select arrival spots.
It would likely only be a matter of time before FSD V14.2 videos are posted and shared on social media.
Following are the release notes of FSD (Supervised) V14.2, as shared on X by longtime FSD tester Whole Mars Catalog.
Release Notes
2025.38.9.5
Currently Installed
FSD (Supervised) v14.2
Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.2 includes:
- Upgraded the neural network vision encoder, leveraging higher resolution features to further improve scenarios like handling emergency vehicles, obstacles on the road, and human gestures.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, in a Parking Garage, or at the Curbside.
- Added handling to pull over or yield for emergency vehicles (e.g. police cars, fire trucks, ambulances.
- Added navigation and routing into the vision-based neural network for real-time handling of blocked roads and detours.
- Added additional Speed Profile to further customize driving style preference.
- Improved handling for static and dynamic gates.
- Improved offsetting for road debris (e.g. tires, tree branches, boxes).
- Improve handling of several scenarios including: unprotected turns, lane changes, vehicle cut-ins, and school busses.
- Improved FSD’s ability to manage system faults and improve scenarios like handling emergency vehicles, obstacles on the road, and human gestures.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, in a Parking Garage, or at the Curbside.
- Added handling to pull over or yield for emergency vehicles (e.g. police cars, fire trucks, ambulances).
- Added navigation and routing into the vision-based neural network for real-time handling of blocked roads and detours.
- Added additional Speed Profile to further customize driving style preference.
- Improved handling for static and dynamic gates.
- Improved offsetting for road debris (e.g. tires, tree branches, boxes).
- Improve handling of several scenarios, including unprotected turns, lane changes, vehicle cut-ins, and school buses.
- Improved FSD’s ability to manage system faults and recover smoothly from degraded operation for enhanced reliability.
- Added alerting for residue build-up on interior windshield that may impact front camera visibility. If affected, visit Service for cleaning!
Upcoming Improvements:
- Overall smoothness and sentience
- Parking spot selection and parking quality
SpaceX Starship Version 3 booster crumples in early testing
Tesla FSD (Supervised) is about to go on “widespread” release
