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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shows off Starship’s 3 Raptor engines in best photos yet

Starship Mk1 shows off three Raptor engines, installed on the rocket prototype ahead of Elon Musk's September 28th presentation. (SpaceX)

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken to Twitter to publish yet more photos of the company’s Starship Mk1 rocket prototype, this time posting what are – by far – the best official photos of Raptor engines yet taken.

This marks the first time that a SpaceX prototype of any kind has had more than one Raptor engine installed, a fairly symbolic but still significant milestone that follows in the footsteps of Starhopper’s successful single-engine flight test campaign. With Starhopper now heading into retirement, Starship Mk1 is preparing to support the program’s next major steps: full-scale, high-altitude flight tests powered by three Raptor engines.

The sight of three Raptor engines installed on the first true Starship prototype is undeniably hard to downplay. In barely seven months, SpaceX has gone from the very first static fire of a full-scale Raptor engine – serial number 01 – to flight-testing Raptor SN06 and producing enough engines to bestow Starship Mk1 with its own set of three engines. According to the latest comments from Elon Musk, Starship is meant to be powered by three ‘sea level’ Raptors and three vacuum-optimized Raptors – RVacs. RVac may or may not be ready to support the flight tests of early prototypes like Mk1 and Mk2, meaning that their three SL engines will likely be the sole propulsion for the time being.

Together, three SL Raptors operating at full thrust should be capable of producing up to 600 tons (1.3M lbf) of thrust. Per Musk’s note that Starship Mk1 likely weighs around 200 tons (~450,000 lb) empty, this means that a triple-engined Starship will be able to lift off with up to 400 tons (900,000 lb) of propellant, likely translating into roughly 200-300 seconds of untethered triple-engine operation.

Starship Mk1’s three Raptors are probably not the engines that will support the prototype’s first flight tests. (SpaceX)

“NOT FOR FLIGHT”

However, the engine installation milestone and subsequent photos are undeniably spectacular, but signs suggest that some level of pragmatism is in order. Visible in two of the three photos published by Musk, all three Raptors still have their transport rings installed just below each engine’s throat. Hardware at the base of one photo indicates that they were likely taken yesterday, on the evening of September 25th. Musk revealed that the three Raptors were installed late on September 22nd, up to three days prior.

Combined, the presence of the transport rings – “NOT FOR FLIGHT”, as their labels note – is a strong indicator that their installation is only temporary, likely in support of Elon Musk’s imminent September 28th Starship presentation. Without more information, it’s impossible to read much further into the temporary installation of Raptors. What it does confirm is that – for any number of reasons – flight-ready Raptors are not quite ready to support the Starship Mk1/Mk2. SpaceX has proven that Raptor is capable of supporting Starhopper for almost a full minute of powered flight, but behaviors observed near the end of that flight suggest that even that may have been pushing the engine’s limits.

All things considered, SpaceX is making progress at an almost unfathomable pace. Just seven months into full-scale Raptor test fires, it’s easy to believe that a lot of development work and refinement remains before the new engine family will be ready to reliably support multi-minute flight tests, let alone orbital launch attempts. Most orbital-class engine development programs aim for tens or even hundreds of thousands of seconds of test fires before attempting their first flights, but SpaceX is not most companies and is sticking closely to its preferred “test as you fly” methods and agile development strategies.

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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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Investor's Corner

Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’

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Credit: MarcoRP | X

Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.

In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.

In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:

“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”

This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.

The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.

The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.

This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX gets initial stock coverage from Tesla’s biggest bull

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SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12
SpaceX Starship V3 flight 12 (Credit: SpaceX)

Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).

Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.

“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”

Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12

Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.

It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”

Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.

There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:

“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”

SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.

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Tesla expands massive safety feature worldwide in latest update

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”

Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.

For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.

The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):

“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”

Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.

Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.

The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.

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