News
SpaceX’s Elon Musk talks Starship heatshield, rocket landings on Joe Rogan podcast
In a multi-hour February 2021 interview with Elon Musk himself, Joe Rogan inexplicably told the famous engineer and CEO that he had never seen a SpaceX rocket landing.
Of course, the 200+ minute conversation did produce a few minor tidbits of interesting information about SpaceX (and much more about Tesla projects), but Rogan’s statement that he’d never seen a SpaceX rocket landing before stole the limelight by a long shot.
SpaceX landed its first Falcon 9 booster – to an extraordinary amount of fanfare – in December 2015. In the five years since that breakthrough, SpaceX has successfully landed Falcon boosters 73 more times. A full 26 of those landings occurred in just the last 12 months. Falcon Heavy – responsible for spectacular, crowd-favorite performances – completed three dual-booster landings and one triple-booster landing between February 2018 and June 2019.
It’s not unimaginable that almost every single human on Earth with some level of access to the internet or social media is at least vaguely aware of or has watched videos of SpaceX landing rockets. To be clear, it is an unequivocal fact – including past comments on landings from Rogan himself – that Rogan has watched SpaceX land Falcon boosters at least once, if not several times. The only real takeaway, fellow readers, is that heavy, long-term drug use is inadvisable.
Cringeworthy moments aside, the interview did produce a select few minor details that weren’t explicitly known before. Most notably, Musk briefly discussed the challenge of developing a heat shield capable of safely returning orbital Starships back to Earth and revealed the main issue that SpaceX is currently working on.
Over the last six or so months, SpaceX has been gradually expanding small installations of heat shield tiles on Starship prototypes, ranging from vehicles that never left the ground to high-altitude Starships SN8 and SN9. Those tile installations have grown from a handful (4-8 on Starhopper in 2019) to literal hundreds on the most recent Starship completed by SpaceX.
During earlier ground testing and more recent hop tests with Starships SN5 and SN6, some of those ceramic composite tiles actually fell off or shattered, perhaps due to vibrations from Raptor engines or mechanical stress caused by Starship shrinking and contracting from thermal expansion. According to Musk, what SpaceX is trying to determine with those coupon-style tests is how to install a heat shield with tiles that are neither too close together or too far apart.
According to Musk, ceramic heat shield tiles placed too close together will ultimately shatter, break, or fall off when subjected to the stresses of Starship operations. Those stresses include the violent vibrations created by rocket propulsion supersonic to hypersonic travel, as well as airframe expansion and contraction that occurs when Starship’s steel hull is cyclically heated and cooled by Raptor burns and cryogenic propellant. In other words, assuming fragile, ceramic tiles are a necessity, they need to be placed far enough apart to avoid all of those possible pitfalls.
On the opposite hand, though, the entire point of Starship’s heat shield is to insulate it from extreme thermal stress during atmospheric reentry. If individual tiles are situated too far apart, superheated gas (plasma) produced during reentry will find its way between those tiles, heating up the structure they’re meant to keep cool. In the case of Starship, its steel hull is more than twice as resilient to reentry heating than comparable vehicles (like the Space Shuttle) with common aluminum frames, but a few millimeters of steel is still not enough to prevent weakening, damage, or outright burn-through in the face of orbital reentry.
In essence, SpaceX has to “get the gaps just right” – not too far apart to protect the airframe from plasma intrusion but not so close together that tiles impact or damage their neighbors as Starship cools and warms.
Elon Musk
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the closure of an investigation involving Elon Musk and social media platform X. The inquiry had been pending for about two years and examined whether the platform was used to coordinate attacks against members of the judiciary.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
According to a report from Agencia Brasil, the investigation conducted by the Federal Police did not find evidence that X deliberately attempted to attack the judiciary or circumvent court orders.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet concluded that the irregularities identified during the probe did not indicate fraudulent intent.
Justice Moraes accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation and ruled that the investigation should be closed. Under the ruling, the case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The inquiry stemmed from concerns that content on X may have enabled online attacks against Supreme Court justices or violated rulings requiring the suspension of certain accounts under investigation.
Justice Moraes had previously taken several enforcement actions related to the platform during the broader dispute involving social media regulation in Brazil.
These included ordering a nationwide block of the platform, freezing Starlink accounts, and imposing fines on X totaling about $5.2 million. Authorities also froze financial assets linked to X and SpaceX through Starlink to collect unpaid penalties and seized roughly $3.3 million from the companies’ accounts.
Moraes also imposed daily fines of up to R$5 million, about $920,000, for alleged evasion of the X ban and established penalties of R$50,000 per day for VPN users who attempted to bypass the restriction.
Brazil remains an important market for X, with roughly 17 million users, making it one of the platform’s larger user bases globally.
The country is also a major market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, which has surpassed one million subscribers in Brazil.
Elon Musk
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Amazon after the company opposed SpaceX’s proposal to launch a large satellite constellation that could function as an orbital data center network.
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
Amazon recently urged the FCC to reject SpaceX’s application to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites that could serve as artificial intelligence data centers in space.
The company described the proposal as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” arguing that SpaceX had not provided sufficient details about how the system would operate.
Carr responded by pointing to Amazon’s own satellite deployment progress.
“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote on X.
Amazon has declined to comment on the statement.
Amazon has been working to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite network, which is intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the program and has launched more than 200 satellites since April of last year.
Amazon has also asked the FCC for a 24-month extension, until July 2028, to meet a requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by July 2026, as noted in a CNBC report.
SpaceX’s Starlink network currently has nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves roughly 10 million customers. The FCC has also authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional satellites as the company continues expanding its global satellite internet network.
Energy
Tesla Energy gains UK license to sell electricity to homes and businesses
The license was granted to Tesla Energy Ventures Ltd. by UK energy regulator Ofgem after a seven-month review process.
Tesla Energy has received a license to supply electricity in the United Kingdom, opening the door for the company to serve homes and businesses in the country.
The license was granted to Tesla Energy Ventures Ltd. by UK energy regulator Ofgem after a seven-month review process.
According to Ofgem, the license took effect at 6 p.m. local time on Wednesday and applies to Great Britain.
The approval allows Tesla’s energy business to sell electricity directly to customers in the region, as noted in a Bloomberg News report.
Tesla has already expanded similar services in the United States. In Texas, the company offers electricity plans that allow Tesla owners to charge their vehicles at a lower cost while also feeding excess electricity back into the grid.
Tesla already has a sizable presence in the UK market. According to price comparison website U-switch, there are more than 250,000 Tesla electric vehicles in the country and thousands of Tesla home energy storage systems.
Ofgem also noted that Tesla Motors Ltd., a separate entity incorporated in England and Wales, received an electricity generation license in June 2020.
The new UK license arrives as Tesla continues expanding its global energy business.
Last year, Tesla Energy retained the top position in the global battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator market for the second consecutive year. According to Wood Mackenzie’s latest rankings, Tesla held about 15% of global market share in 2024.
The company also maintained a dominant position in North America, where it captured roughly 39% market share in the region.
At the same time, competition in the energy storage sector is increasing. Chinese companies such as Sungrow have been expanding their presence globally, particularly in Europe.
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
