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SpaceX’s drone ships near return-to-action with Block 5 Falcon 9 landings

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7 years ago

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Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin’s recent trips to drone ship Just Read The Instructions’ berth in Port of San Pedro shows that SpaceX technicians are nearly done preparing the hibernating vessel for a return to Falcon 9 rocket recoveries in the Pacific Ocean, a ten-month drought likely to end for good on July 20th.

Although it’s hard to believe, SpaceX’s West Coast autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) has been effectively marooned at its Port of Los Angeles berth for more than nine full months, with the vessel’s last recovery occurring just after the October 9 launch of ten Iridium NEXT satellites, the fourth of five SpaceX Vandenberg launches in 2017 (and the fourth of four West Coast booster landings).

SpaceX’s West coast drone ship Just Read The Instructions getting some much needed fresh paint in 2017. (Instagram, anonymous)

Three months after that October mission and booster recovery, SpaceX expended their next California launch and marked the beginning of a streak of eight missions where flight-proven Block 3 and 4 boosters could have been recovered but no attempts were made. While intermixed with the spectacle of Falcon Heavy’s dual side booster landings at LZ-1, the debut launch and recovery of Falcon 9 Block 5, and two other Block 4 booster recoveries, the majority of SpaceX’s launches since December 2017 have been treated as expendable – put simply, the company decided that recovering and refurbishing twice-flown boosters of older Falcon 9 blocks was not worth the effort and expense.

Instead, those well-worn boosters were expended in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans after partially supporting a series of experimental tests designed to gather additional data on the recovery envelope of SpaceX’s partially reusable rockets. The rationale makes sense – SpaceX fundamentally sacrificed some of its older, less-reusable Falcon 9 boosters for the sake of knowledge that may allow their highly reusable Falcon 9 Block 5 predecessors a better chance of successfully landing even after exceptionally fast, hot, and high-energy recoveries, a necessity if the upgraded rockets are to be reused 10 to 100 times, as is the goal.

Although Just Read The Instructions spent several months without a full complement of maneuvering thrusters, thanks in part to efforts to keep its besieged East coast sister Of Course I Still Love You operational, photographer Pauline Acalin’s photos over the last several months show that the vessel now has four full thrusters installed and ready to bring it back into rocket recovery action in the Pacific Ocean.

Still, the abrupt return to expendable rocket launches after a year – 2017 – filled to the brim with 18 of 18 successful launches and 14 of 14 successful landings led to a decidedly fascinating vein of disapproval in the SpaceX enthusiast and broader spaceflight fan communities – people had grown accustomed to the adrenaline-soaked thrill of routine Falcon 9 rocket landings. Some expressed worries that regularly and intentionally expending large hunks of metal in the ocean could harm their ecosystems and was tantamount to littering. None the wiser, every other launch provider in the world continues to expend all of their rocket boosters without any attempts at recovery like the nearly all non-Shuttle rocket launches in the past six decades, and their tepidly reusable next-generation rockets are unlikely to even begin attempting hardware recovery until the mid-2020s at the earliest.

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Frankly, SpaceX’s abrupt successes with orbital-class rocket recovery struck a chord with observers, demonstrating just how intuitive attempting to recover expensive rocket hardware really is, while also bringing into clear focus the actual insanity of failing to try and of the seemingly ad-hoc rationalization of expendable rocketry. Thankfully, we still have SpaceX, and the company’s spate of rocket booster sacrifices is likely just one expendable launch away from coming to an effective end for the indefinite future, with that particular launch – CRS-15 – scheduled less than two weeks from now, on June 29th.

 

After CRS-15, which will probably see its twice-flown Block 4 booster expended in the Atlantic, a combination of Block 5 Falcon 9s and Heavies will theoretically bring to an end the practice of expending orbital rocket boosters, at least on SpaceX’s watch. Considering that the upgraded boosters have been designed and built to launch as many as ten times with minimal refurbishment and potentially 100+ times with regular maintenance, the opportunity cost of an expended Block 5 rocket booster is so high that it is difficult to imagine SpaceX will be easily swayed to expend one until it’s flown at least several times prior.

We here at Teslarati eagerly await the imminent demise of expendable rockets, set to begin in earnest – at least for SpaceX – around July 19th and 20th with two Falcon 9 Block 5 launches on two coasts, one with Telstar 19V (Florida) and the other with Iridium-7 (California).

Follow us for live updates, peeks behind the scenes, and photos from Teslarati’s East and West coast photographers.

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Teslarati   –   Instagram – Twitter

Tom Cross – Twitter

Pauline Acalin – Twitter

Eric Ralph – Twitter

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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 adds 15th automaker to Supercharger access in 2025

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3 hours ago

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December 10, 2025

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tesla supercharger
Credit: Tesla

Tesla has added the 15th automaker to the growing list of companies whose EVs can utilize the Supercharger Network this year, as BMW is the latest company to gain access to the largest charging infrastructure in the world.

BMW became the 15th company in 2025 to gain Tesla Supercharger access, after the company confirmed to its EV owners that they could use any of the more than 25,000 Supercharging stalls in North America.

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Newer BMW all-electric cars, like the i4, i5, i7, and iX, are able to utilize Tesla’s V3 and V4 Superchargers. These are the exact model years, via the BMW Blog:

  • i4: 2022-2026 model years
  • i5: 2024-2025 model years
    • 2026 i5 (eDrive40 and xDrive40) after software update in Spring 2026
  • i7: 2023-2026 model years
  • iX: 2022-2025 model years
    • 2026 iX (all versions) after software update in Spring 2026

With the expansion of the companies that gained access in 2025 to the Tesla Supercharger Network, a vast majority of non-Tesla EVs are able to use the charging stalls to gain range in their cars.

So far in 2025, Tesla has enabled Supercharger access to:

  • Audi
  • BMW
  • Genesis
  • Honda
  • Hyundai
  • Jaguar Land Rover
  • Kia
  • Lucid
  • Mercedes-Benz
  • Nissan
  • Polestar
  • Subaru
  • Toyota
  • Volkswagen
  • Volvo

Drivers with BMW EVs who wish to charge at Tesla Superchargers must use an NACS-to-CCS1 adapter. In Q2 2026, BMW plans to release its official adapter, but there are third-party options available in the meantime.

They will also have to use the Tesla App to enable Supercharging access to determine rates and availability. It is a relatively seamless process.

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Tesla adds new feature that will be great for crowded parking situations

This is the most recent iteration of the app and was priming owners for the slowly-released Holiday Update.

Published

7 hours ago

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December 10, 2025

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Credit: Grok

Tesla has added a new feature that will be great for crowded parking lots, congested parking garages, or other confusing times when you cannot seem to pinpoint where your car went.

Tesla has added a new Vehicle Locator feature to the Tesla App with App Update v4.51.5.

This is the most recent iteration of the app and was priming owners for the slowly-released Holiday Update.

While there are several new features, which we will reveal later in this article, perhaps one of the coolest is that of the Vehicle Locator, which will now point you in the direction of your car using a directional arrow on the home screen. This is similar to what Apple uses to find devices:

In real time, the arrow gives an accurate depiction of which direction you should walk in to find your car. This seems extremely helpful in large parking lots or unfamiliar shopping centers.

Getting to your car after a sporting event is an event all in itself; this feature will undoubtedly help with it:

Tesla’s previous app versions revealed the address at which you could locate your car, which was great if you parked on the street in a city setting. It was also possible to use the map within the app to locate your car.

However, this new feature gives a more definitive location for your car and helps with the navigation to it, instead of potentially walking randomly.

It also reveals the distance you are from your car, which is a big plus.

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Along with this new addition, Tesla added Photobooth features, Dog Mode Live Activity, Custom Wraps and Tints for Colorizer, and Dashcam Clip details.

All in all, this App update was pretty robust.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk shades Waymo: ‘Never really had a chance’

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8 hours ago

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December 10, 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk shaded Waymo in a post on X on Wednesday, stating the company “never really had a chance” and that it “will be obvious in hindsight.”

Tesla and Waymo are the two primary contributors to the self-driving efforts in the United States, with both operating driverless ride-hailing services in the country. Tesla does have a Safety Monitor present in its vehicles in Austin, Texas, and someone in the driver’s seat in its Bay Area operation.

Musk says the Austin operation will be completely void of any Safety Monitors by the end of the year.

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With the two companies being the main members of the driverless movement in the U.S., there is certainly a rivalry. The two have sparred back and forth with their geofences, or service areas, in both Austin and the Bay Area.

While that is a metric for comparison now, ultimately, it will not matter in the coming years, as the two companies will likely operate in a similar fashion.

Waymo has geared its business toward larger cities, and Tesla has said that its self-driving efforts will expand to every single one of its vehicles in any location globally. This is where the true difference between the two lies, along with the fact that Tesla uses its own vehicles, while Waymo has several models in its lineup from different manufacturers.

The two also have different ideas on how to solve self-driving, as Tesla uses a vision-only approach. Waymo relies on several things, including LiDAR, which Musk once called “a fool’s errand.”

This is where Tesla sets itself apart from the competition, and Musk highlighted the company’s position against Waymo.

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Jeff Dean, the Chief Scientist for Google DeepMind, said on X:

“I don’t think Tesla has anywhere near the volume of rider-only autonomous miles that Waymo has (96M for Waymo, as of today). The safety data is quite compelling for Waymo, as well.”

Musk replied:

“Waymo never really had a chance against Tesla. This will be obvious in hindsight.”

Tesla stands to have a much larger fleet of vehicles in the coming years if it chooses to activate Robotaxi services with all passenger vehicles. A simple Over-the-Air update will activate this capability, while Waymo would likely be confined to the vehicles it commissions as Robotaxis.

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