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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says major Starship engine bug is fixed as Raptor testing continues
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has revealed the latest official photo of the company’s Raptor engine in action and indicated that a major technical issue with vibration appears to have been solved, hopefully paving the way for Starhopper’s first untethered flights.
Partly due to Musk’s own involvement in the program, SpaceX’s propulsion development team have struggled to get any single Raptor engine to survive more than 50-100 seconds of cumulative test fires. According to information from sources familiar with the program, Musk has enforced an exceptionally hardware-rich development program for the first full-scale Raptor engines to such an extent that several have been destroyed so completely that they could barely be used to inform design optimization work. Although likely more strenuous and inefficient than it needed to be, the exceptionally hardware-rich test program appears to have begun to show fruit, with the sixth engine built (SN06) passing its first tests without exhibiting signs of a problem that has plagued most of the five Raptors that came before it.
Resonance: not even once
In his tweet, Musk cryptically noted that a “600 Hz Raptor vibration problem” appears to have been fixed as of SN06’s first few static fire tests since arriving in McGregor, Texas. More likely than not, the self-taught SpaceX executive is referring to the hell that is mechanical resonance in complex machines and structures. Shown below, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge’s 1940 collapse – quite possibly the single most famous civil engineering failure of all time – is an iconic example of the unintuitive power of resonance in complex systems.
When it was inaugurated, the first Tacoma Narrows Bridge was one of the longest suspension bridges ever built and implemented new techniques and technologies that had never been tried at such a large scale. As Grady (Practical Engineer) aptly notes, mechanical resonance – in this case, triggered by consistent winds running through the Puget Sound – simply wasn’t something that period engineers knew they had to worry about. When rapidly pushing the envelope of engineering and construction, the chances of discovering entirely novel failure modes also increases – it’s simply one of the costs of extreme innovation.
Luckily for SpaceX, the company doesn’t have to clash with the immense challenge of testing something as large, complex, and expensive as a suspension bridge. Raptor, Starship, and Super Heavy need not necessarily be perfect on SpaceX’s first try, whereas civil bridges must essentially be flawless on the first try, despite being one of a kind. This is why SpaceX has been chewing through an average of one Raptor engine per month since February 2019 – by testing engines to destruction and aggressively comparing engineering expectations with observed behavior and post-test hardware conditions, rapid progress can (theoretically) be made.
Instead of spending another year or more analyzing models and testing subscale engines and components, SpaceX dove into integrated testing of a sort of minimum-viable-product Raptor design, accepting that the path to a flightworthy, finalized design would likely be paved with one or several dozen destroyed engines. According to Musk, the biggest pressing design deficiency involved a mode of mechanical resonance that may or may not have been predicted over the course of the design process. Dealing with unprecedented conditions, it’s not particularly surprising that some sort of new resonance mode was discovered in Raptor.
For the time being, SpaceX continues to work around the clock to build its first two orbital Starship prototypes (one in Texas, one in Florida), while also outfitting Starhopper and completing any possible engine-less tests in anticipation of the first flightworthy Raptor’s arrival. If Musk’s early analysis proves correct and Raptor SN06 makes it through lengthier static fire tests unscathed over the next week or so, the engine could potentially be delivered to Boca Chica as early as mid-July.
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Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
Tesla is expanding its Robotaxi service hours by pushing the time back by one hour, keeping the ride-hailing service operational until 11 p.m., one hour later than previously.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed the change and offered a specific reason the expansion has been gradual: the system still needs to reliably avoid small pets that are difficult to see after dark, as they commonly blend into the color of the road, especially when they’re grey.
The latest adjustment restores only a fraction of the operating window the service once held. When paid Robotaxi rides began in Austin on June 22, 2025, vehicles ran from 6 a.m. to midnight.
In September 2025, Tesla lengthened the day to a 2 a.m. close, producing a 20-hour window that stayed in place for most of the following year. By early August of this year, the cutoff had already been pulled back; an August 26 update formalized hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. across Austin and several other markets.
The October move to 11 p.m. therefore leaves the Austin day one hour shorter than the original launch schedule and three hours shorter than the 2025 peak.
Musk addressed the constraint directly after the announcement. “The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night,” he wrote. “Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.”
Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm.
The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The example points to a low-contrast perception problem in which a small animal can blend into the road surface under limited lighting.
Tesla’s vehicles rely on cameras and neural-network processing rather than lidar; Musk has previously argued that advanced vision software can extract useful information even in low light by analyzing photon counts, but the pet-detection case remains the stated limiter in later hours.
The modest schedule change arrives alongside faster growth in the purpose-built Cybercab fleet. Texas registration data tracked by observers showed the Austin Cybercab count rising sharply in recent weeks, reaching 169 vehicles after more than 100 were added in a short span.
Tesla has indicated that a broader shift toward 24-hour operation is tied to the upcoming FSD v15 software release expected this month on Robotaxi vehicles. Until that capability is validated for the edge cases Musk described, the company continues to add service time incrementally rather than jumping straight to overnight coverage.
The one-hour extension gives Austin riders a later option for evening trips while the underlying detection work continues.
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Tesla reveals early Robotaxi charging strategy, showing scrappy DNA
