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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk forecasts a dozen Starship launches next year
CEO Elon Musk has provided a small update on SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket in a brief statement to and Q&A with the board of the US National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.
While it’s now been more than two years since Musk last gave a proper presentation on the Starship program, a number of excellent questions from board members still managed to extract a handful of new details about the fully reusable rocket, which the SpaceX CEO says aims to “be a generalized transport mechanism for the [entire] solar system.” According to Musk, though, the most pressing near-term issues facing SpaceX are more down to Earth.
Reiterated several times in his comments to the National Academies, Musk says that the current limiting factor for Starship is securing regulatory approvals from the FAA for the rocket’s first orbital test flights, which SpaceX and Musk initially hoped would begin as early as mid-2021. Targets from July to November 2021 have since come and gone, while SpaceX has only begun to make concerted progress towards Starship’s first orbital launch in the last two or so months. Almost two months after its first rollout, Starship S20 – the first orbital-class prototype – began integrated testing, completing ambient and cryogenic proof tests in late September and its first Raptor preburner and static fire tests in the second half of October.
Most recently, after almost a month spent inactive at SpaceX’s Starbase test facilities, Starship S20 fired up all six of its Raptor engines – the first test of its kind and a major milestone for the program. Save for the completion of some relatively simple closeout tasks, Starship S20 is now more or less qualified for flight after its successful static fire. That leaves Super Heavy Booster 4 (B4) – the first stage meant to carry Ship 20 into space – up next on SpaceX’s South Texas testing docket after almost four agonizing months spent sitting, untested, at various Starbase facilities.
Musk says that SpaceX preparing to complete “a bunch of tests in December” with the implication that those tests likely include the first full Super Heavy wet dress rehearsal (WDR) with thousands of tons of live propellant and the first several booster static fire tests. Recently refitted with 29 Raptor engines for the third time in four months, it appears that SpaceX is finally close to finishing Super Heavy B4 to a point that will allow the booster to begin integrated testing. Through Super Heavy B3, which completed testing this summer, SpaceX thankfully already knows that the basic booster design is a structurally sound pressure vessel with plumbing and systems capable of surviving a three-Raptor static fire.
Still, that’s barely more than 10% of the total number of engines Super Heavy will need operational to send Starship to orbit. After months at the pad, SpaceX is finally closing out Booster 4’s aft section and installing a basic heat shield around its 29 Raptor engines, which will produce up to ~5400 metric tons (~12M lbf) of thrust at liftoff – more than any other rocket in history. Following Starship S20’s recent success, SpaceX has now fired six Raptors simultaneously and in close proximity without issue. However, Super Heavy B4 will have to fire 29 engines packed into roughly the same amount of space. No other liquid rocket stage in history has a more densely-packed thrust section, averaging at least 85 tons of thrust per square meter (~125 psi) of available engine space.
It’s thus likely that SpaceX will split Super Heavy B4’s first static fire campaign into several different parts, possibly involving seperate tests of the center cluster of nine Raptor Center (RC) engines and outer ring of 20 Raptor Boost (RB) engines before firing up all 29 together. Even if that testing is completed without issue on the first attempts, SpaceX will still likely want to perform a full wet dress rehearsal – and possibly even another 29-engine static fire – with Ship 20 installed on top of Booster 4.
Musk also believes that Starbase’s first orbital launch site will be complete as early as “later this month” – essential for full booster testing. Once all testing is complete, Musk says Starship, Super Heavy, and Starbase should be ready for their first orbital launch attempt as early as January or February 2022. Of course, that launch is entirely contingent upon FAA environmental approval and launch licensing, the former still incomplete and the latter unable to proceed until the former is complete. If the FAA reaches a favorable conclusion, meets its recently-announced target of December 31st to complete Starbase’s environmental review, and grants SpaceX a new launch license just days or a few weeks later, a January-February launch isn’t out of the question.
Looking further into 2022, Musk also revealed that he hopes SpaceX will complete “a dozen [Starship] launches” next year – incredibly ambitious by any measure. There isn’t a rocket in history that’s achieved double-digit launches in the same year as its debut. More importantly, even if the FAA environmental review SpaceX is in the middle of ends with the best possible outcome for Starship, it limits the company to either 3, 5, or 8 (it’s somewhat ambiguous) orbital launch attempts per year. Still, even a ‘mere’ three orbital Starship launch attempts in 2022 would be an incredible acheivement for SpaceX – let alone five, or Musk’s forecast of a dozen.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s next Uranium in Uranus merch is Boring Company’s weirdest tease yet
Elon Musk teased a glowing new Boring Company merch idea, complete with a Geiger counter.
Elon Musk teased the next piece of Boring Company merchandise on X Saturday, and it is exactly as unserious as fans of the company’s product history have come to expect. “The next @boringcompany merch will put Uranium in Uranus,” Musk wrote in a thread posted early Saturday morning. He followed up by explaining that the item would glow in the dark, “because otherwise how could you find it,” and that a Geiger counter would be sold separately as “an optional strap-on.”
Musk closed the thread with a line that doubles as a mission statement for the tunneling company’s merchandise arm: “It’s not easy coming up with something that is both outrageously unsellable and yet extremely popular.”
The Boring Company has built a small but consistent side business out of novelty items that start as jokes and end up selling out. The company’s Not-a-Flamethrower raised roughly $10 million in a few days back in 2018, moving all 20,000 units it produced. Its Burnt Hair perfume, priced around $100 a bottle, sold out fast enough that scalpers were flipping units on eBay for ten times the retail price. Boring Bricks, made from tunneling spoil, followed the same playbook of teasing a product on X months before it became real.
Musk has not said what the actual item will be, only that it involves uranium and glows in the dark. Given the pattern, that vagueness is probably intentional. Past merch announcements have started as one-line jokes and taken weeks or months to turn into an actual product listing on the company’s site, and there is no guarantee this one follows through at all.
The timing lines up with a period of real momentum for the Boring Company outside of the joke merchandise. The company said last week it plans to double the number of operational stations on its Vegas Loop by the end of the year, a target tied to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers. Prufrock-5, one of the company’s tunnel boring machines, also just wrapped a test tunnel in Bastrop, Texas, and is expected to relaunch on its next assignment in November.
Whether the uranium joke turns into an actual product remains to be seen. Musk’s post did not include a price, a shipping date, or even a name for the item, which has historically meant a Boring Company website page goes up quietly, password protected, sometime before an announcement.
News
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
NASA just gave SpaceX a $946 million contract for three more astronaut missions through 2030.
NASA has awarded SpaceX a $946 million contract modification covering three more astronaut missions to the International Space Station, according to an announcement the agency published Friday. The award adds Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s existing Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract, bringing the agreement’s total value to $5.92 billion across 17 flights.
SpaceX confirmed the award on X, writing that it was excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the Space Station from Florida. The new missions cover ground, launch, in orbit, and return operations, along with cargo transport and a lifeboat capability while docked at the station, and the period of performance runs through 2030.
We’re excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch @NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the @Space_Station from Florida https://t.co/Qm16vVK9F3 pic.twitter.com/drg3s7GtuM
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2026
The award follows a notice of intent NASA issued in May, when the agency first signaled it would purchase up to six additional post certification missions from SpaceX. Teslarati covered that filing at the time, noting NASA cited technical issues and schedule delays encountered by Boeing as a driving factor. Friday’s contract modification locks in three of those six missions, with the remaining three left open for NASA to award later, potentially to Boeing if Starliner clears certification.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has still not flown an operational crew rotation mission for NASA. The spacecraft’s most recent crewed test flight in 2024 ended without the astronauts returning aboard Starliner, and the company has spent the time since working through thruster problems. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said this week that SpaceX is not retiring Crew Dragon today, for sure, while stopping short of committing to fly it past 2030.
Crew-12 is currently docked at the space station, and NASA has said Crew-13 is targeting a launch in the coming weeks. The newly awarded Crew-15 through Crew-17 missions extend SpaceX’s role as NASA’s primary way of getting astronauts to and from orbit well into the back half of the decade, regardless of what happens with Starliner or Starship in the meantime.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Elon Musk’s next Uranium in Uranus merch is Boring Company’s weirdest tease yet
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
