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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk hints that Starship’s ‘sweating’ metal heat shield is no more
In the latest entry of SpaceX’s ever-changing Starship design process, CEO Elon Musk has indicated that the nominally reusable orbital spacecraft has moved away from a liquid-cooled steel heat shield to something slightly more traditional.
This information came as a SpaceX engineer announced during Cargo Dragon’s CRS-18 webcast that the twice-flown spacecraft would mark the first orbital test of a ceramic heat shield tile meant for use on Starship’s windward side. This major design change comes as a significant surprise and seems likely to either delay Starship’s orbital debut or hinder its ultimate reusability, although Musk just as recently claimed that the spacecraft could reach orbit for the first time less than six months from now.
Testing a possible Starship windward side ceramic tile. Maximizing emissivity is best for conductive/particle heating. Nice thing about steel is that tiles can be very thin, unlike carbon fiber or aluminum airframe.— ln(e) (@elonmusk) July 25, 2019
Thin tiles on windward side of ship & nothing on leeward or anywhere on booster looks like lightest option— ln(e) (@elonmusk) July 25, 2019
Back in late-2018 and early-2019, Musk took to Twitter to announce that SpaceX was pursuing an exotic metallic heat shield that would be cooled in large part by flowing liquid methane through tiny holes on its exterior, effectively ‘sweating’ away energy and preventing steel tiles from melting.
Despite incontrovertible evidence that SpaceX performed some amount of significant testing on the hexagonally-tiled steel heat shield concept, Musk’s July 24th tweets indicate that the liquid-cooled heat shield is unlikely to ever be used on Starship. For unknown reasons, SpaceX is instead pursuing some sort of thin ceramic heat shielding to protect the entirety of Starship’s windward side (i.e. the side facing the atmosphere during reentry). A handful of the first flight-qualified ceramic tiles – shaped for Dragon instead of Starship – will be tested on Cargo Dragon during the spacecraft’s orbital mission and eventual reentry.
Of note, this is not the only major design change Starship has undergone in just the last few months. Speaking on May 30th, Elon Musk stated that the design of Starship’s landing legs/fins and actuating wings and flaps has changed significantly since SpaceX revealed the new tripod fins + canard wings configuration in September 2018. According to Musk, that change will (or at least should) not significantly impact Starship’s schedule.
In fact, per his July 2019 claims that the first full-fidelity Starship prototype(s) could begin test flights in September/October and reach orbit as early as December/January, the Starship/Super Heavy schedule has actually radically sped up in the first half of 2019. In December 2018, Musk stated that he believed Starship had a 60% chance of reaching orbit in 2020, let alone late-2019.
For Starship, the massive spacecraft’s heat shield is arguably its single most important component. A failure to ensure that the heat shield is unprecedentedly reusable and reliable – even in the face of ultra-high-velocity interplanetary reentries – will severely limit Starship’s ability to achieve its ultimate goals of enabling affordable access to space and building a sustainable city on Mars. Musk’s comment that ceramic tiles are just “a possible” Starship heat shield element further indicates that SpaceX has yet to firmly settle on a heat shield design, let alone qualify said shield for orbital flight or kick off the mass-production necessary to completely cover multiple Starship halves.
Admittedly, there is still some good news in this unfortunate development. Most notably, the fact that Starship will still be made of steel means that the non-metallic heat shield tiles can be extremely thin and light, as they can be more or less directly attached to Starship’s steel hull. Additionally, steel Super Heavy boosters may be able to get away with zero heat shielding thanks to the relatively high melting point and heat resistance of certain varieties of stainless steel.
So long as both of those characteristics remain true, it’s likely that it will still make sense for Starship/Super Heavy to be built entirely out of steel instead of something like aluminum or carbon composite. With any luck, Elon Musk will provide a detailed update on the status of SpaceX’s next-generation launch vehicle soon after Starhopper survives its first untethered flight test.
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Elon Musk
Tesla owners surpass 8 billion miles driven on FSD Supervised
Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.
Tesla owners have now driven more than 8 billion miles using Full Self-Driving Supervised, as per a new update from the electric vehicle maker’s official X account.
Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.
“Tesla owners have now driven >8 billion miles on FSD Supervised,” the company wrote in its post on X. Tesla also included a graphic showing FSD Supervised’s miles driven before a collision, which far exceeds that of the United States average.
The growth curve of FSD Supervised’s cumulative miles over the past five years has been notable. As noted in data shared by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, annual FSD (Supervised) miles have increased from roughly 6 million in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and 4.25 billion in 2025. In just the first 50 days of 2026, Tesla owners logged another 1 billion miles.
At the current pace, the fleet is trending towards hitting about 10 billion FSD Supervised miles this year. The increase has been driven by Tesla’s growing vehicle fleet, periodic free trials, and expanding Robotaxi operations, among others.
Tesla also recently updated the safety data for FSD Supervised on its website, covering North America across all road types over the latest 12-month period.
As per Tesla’s figures, vehicles operating with FSD Supervised engaged recorded one major collision every 5,300,676 miles. In comparison, Teslas driven manually with Active Safety systems recorded one major collision every 2,175,763 miles, while Teslas driven manually without Active Safety recorded one major collision every 855,132 miles. The U.S. average during the same period was one major collision every 660,164 miles.
During the measured period, Tesla reported 830 total major collisions with FSD (Supervised) engaged, compared to 16,131 collisions for Teslas driven manually with Active Safety and 250 collisions for Teslas driven manually without Active Safety. Total miles logged exceeded 4.39 billion miles for FSD (Supervised) during the same timeframe.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s Music City Loop gains unanimous approval
After eight months of negotiations, MNAA board members voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to move forward with the project.
The Metro Nashville Airport Authority (MNAA) has approved a 40-year agreement with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to build the Music City Loop, a tunnel system linking Nashville International Airport to downtown.
After eight months of negotiations, MNAA board members voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to move forward with the project. Under the terms, The Boring Company will pay the airport authority an annual $300,000 licensing fee for the use of roughly 933,000 square feet of airport property, with a 3% annual increase.
Over 40 years, that totals to approximately $34 million, with two optional five-year extensions that could extend the term to 50 years, as per a report from The Tennesean.
The Boring Company celebrated the Music City Loop’s approval in a post on its official X account. “The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority has unanimously (7-0) approved a Music City Loop connection/station. Thanks so much to @Fly_Nashville for the great partnership,” the tunneling startup wrote in its post.
Once operational, the Music City Loop is expected to generate a $5 fee per airport pickup and drop-off, similar to rideshare charges. Airport officials estimate more than $300 million in operational revenue over the agreement’s duration, though this projection is deemed conservative.
“This is a significant benefit to the airport authority because we’re receiving a new way for our passengers to arrive downtown at zero capital investment from us. We don’t have to fund the operations and maintenance of that. TBC, The Boring Co., will do that for us,” MNAA President and CEO Doug Kreulen said.
The project has drawn both backing and criticism. Business leaders cited economic benefits and improved mobility between downtown and the airport. “Hospitality isn’t just an amenity. It’s an economic engine,” Strategic Hospitality’s Max Goldberg said.
Opponents, including state lawmakers, raised questions about environmental impacts, worker safety, and long-term risks. Sen. Heidi Campbell said, “Safety depends on rules applied evenly without exception… You’re not just evaluating a tunnel. You’re evaluating a risk, structural risk, legal risk, reputational risk and financial risk.”
Elon Musk
Tesla announces crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone
The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.
Tesla has announced a crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone, as it has officially confirmed drivers have surpassed over 8 billion miles traveled using the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite for semi-autonomous travel.
The FSD (Supervised) suite is one of the most robust on the market, and is among the safest from a data perspective available to the public.
On Wednesday, Tesla confirmed in a post on X that it has officially surpassed the 8 billion-mile mark, just a few months after reaching 7 billion cumulative miles, which was announced on December 27, 2025.
Tesla owners have now driven >8 billion miles on FSD Supervisedhttps://t.co/0d66ihRQTa pic.twitter.com/TXz9DqOQ8q
— Tesla (@Tesla) February 18, 2026
The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.
The milestone itself is significant, especially considering Tesla has continued to gain valuable data from every mile traveled. However, the pace at which it is gathering these miles is getting faster.
Secondly, in January, Musk said the company would need “roughly 10 billion miles of training data” to achieve safe and unsupervised self-driving. “Reality has a super long tail of complexity,” Musk said.
Training data primarily means the fleet’s accumulated real-world miles that Tesla uses to train and improve its end-to-end AI models. This data captures the “long tail” — extremely rare, complex, or unpredictable situations that simulations alone cannot fully replicate at scale.
This is not the same as the total miles driven on Full Self-Driving, which is the 8 billion miles milestone that is being celebrated here.
The FSD-supervised miles contribute heavily to the training data, but the 10 billion figure is an estimate of the cumulative real-world exposure needed overall to push the system to human-level reliability.
Tesla owners surpass 8 billion miles driven on FSD Supervised
The Boring Company’s Music City Loop gains unanimous approval
