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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk & Raptor engine make surprise visit to Florida Starship
While on the East Coast for Falcon Heavy’s third launch, also described as SpaceX’s most difficult launch yet, CEO Elon Musk dropped by the company’s Florida Starship campus and recorded a small acceptance speech for his 2019 Stephen Hawking Medal.
On the very same day, at the very same site, a lone Raptor was effectively displayed for all to see to such an extent that unaffiliated photographers were able to capture impressively detailed photos. Almost the certainly the first time a full-scale Raptor has traveled east of Texas, the engine’s presence at SpaceX’s Florida Starship site is truly surprising in light of the fact that the East Coast campus is solely focused on building orbital-class prototypes. Why, then, is one of SpaceX’s small handful of completed Raptors in Florida?
About a month ago, Elon Musk was announced as the recipient of 2019’s Stephen Hawking Medal of Science Communication. Meant to be awarded in person at a ceremony in Switzerland, Musk was unable to attend the event due to a schedule conflict with Falcon Heavy’s third launch, but the infamously busy CEO managed to film a brief thank you message that was then broadcast in Switzerland.
In what seems to be a coincidence, Musk’s message – either recorded or streamed – was filmed on SpaceX’s Florida Starship development campus, a surprisingly large facility uncovered less than two months ago. The CEO was standing in the sun directly in front of two large segments of the second orbital-class Starship prototype, part of a parallel development process featuring a second Starship prototype (and separate Starhopper) in Texas. Musk’s appearance at Starship Florida is not particularly surprising; if he flew all the way to Florida for Falcon Heavy, might as well tour SpaceX’s newest Florida facilities on the same trip.
Raptor Mystery: Episode II
What is surprising, however, is the presence of what looks like a finished Raptor engine in Florida. Looks can certainly be deceiving but SpaceX’s Florida Starship prototype – while undeniably flying through preliminary assembly – does not appear to be anywhere near flight-readiness. In Boca Chica, a partially separate SpaceX team is working to prepare Starhopper – a partial-fidelity, suborbital prototype – for low-altitude, low-velocity hop tests
Back in May, a mystery Raptor engine – believed to be serial number 04 (SN04 – appeared in South Texas and was soon installed on Starhopper for fit-checks and tests of the engine’s thrust vectoring capabilities. SN04 was soon uninstalled and shipped elsewhere; perhaps to SpaceX’s rapidly-progressing Florida Starship. If the surprise Florida Raptor is, in fact, SN04, then it’s safe to assume that it will remain inert for the time being, serving as a fit-check article and opportunity for training and familiarizing technicians and build engineers. At the moment, Florida’s Starship lies in several large segments, including what appears to be the early stages of its first propellant tank bulkhead(s).
Nevertheless, as partially demonstrated above, SpaceX’s Florida team is wasting no time at all. By all appearances, they are rapidly catching up with Texas, at least as long as Boca Chica’s Starhopper work is excluded. Given the benefit of the doubt, SpaceX Texas would likely be at a similar stage of Starship develop after a similar amount of time (~2-3 months), but much of the Boca Chica workforce has been focused intently on building, upgrading, and testing Starhopper, essentially a flying testbed for Raptor and BFR development.
To an extent, Florida’s orbital Starship prototype looks even more refined than its relatively rugged Texas cousin. Given an additional 1-2 months of nonstop work and a rate of progress similar to the last two months, it’s not out of the question that the Florida prototype will begin to seriously resemble a finished Starship. By all realistic accounts, some of the most difficult work will be found inside and around Starship’s finished aeroshell, though, and the process of outfitting avionics, plumbing the propellant/propulsion sections, and implementing hydraulic/actuation systems will be a huge amount of work.
Even after Starship East is effectively complete, SpaceX will still face the seemingly immense challenge of transporting a massive spacecraft that weighs several dozen tons and measures 9m (30 ft) in diameter and 60m (200 ft) tall from Cocoa to Pad 39A, a full 20-30 miles of public roads and highways. In fact, the easiest method of transporting may involve getting Starship onto a barge in the nearby Indian River and towing it 100+ miles by water to the beach adjacent to Pad 39A. Regardless, neither method is going to be quick or easy and both will put on quite a show for local observers.
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
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Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s release in Europe is set to be delayed by at least a few months.
The European Union will not vote on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on October 6. The draft agenda for the 119th meeting of the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Netherlands’ Article 39 request, not a decision. The next scheduled TCMV session is in December, which is now the earliest date a bloc-wide vote could occur.
Tesla Europe had pointed to October 6 as a possible EU-wide vote after the Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted the first European type approval on April 10.
That approval, under UN Regulation 171 plus an Article 39 exemption in EU Regulation 2018/858, is the legal file other member states have been recognizing one by one. The same committee has already discussed the request twice without voting.
Elon Musk’s reply to the delay was a single word: “Sigh.”
Sigh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2026
Seven EU countries have now cleared FSD Supervised on their own roads: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. Those seven states represent about 53 million people, or roughly 12 percent of the EU population. An EU-wide authorization still needs a qualified majority: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population, about 292 million people.
Germany, France, Italy, and Spain remain the decisive markets. France has already rejected the current system; several other governments have flagged speed-limit compliance as the main sticking point.
The safety case Tesla is putting in front of those governments is now public. On September 1, Tesla Europe said FSD Supervised was in use by more than 70,000 customers, covering over 1 million kilometers a day, and was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU public roads.
An earlier mid-year cut of the same fleet data, covering 65 million kilometers in five approved countries, put the collision advantage at 5.2 times, with zero highway collisions over 41.9 million kilometers. Tesla also reported far fewer automatic emergency braking events, harsh accelerations, and hard swerves than in comparable manual Tesla driving. Those figures are company-reported, not independently audited.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
The public-health backdrop is harder to dispute. European countries recorded about 19,400 road deaths in 2025, or roughly 53 a day, most of them attributed to human error. FSD Supervised is not unsupervised autonomy; the driver remains legally responsible. But the software is already legal and in daily use across seven member states.
Until TCMV votes, the rest of the EU remains a patchwork: available in Prague and Amsterdam, locked behind review in Paris and Berlin. December is now the next chance to close that gap.
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
