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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says first orbital Starship prototype flight debut is just weeks away

Digitally combining SpaceX's South Texas Starship segments produces a prototype that is just 10-15% shorter than full height. (NASASpaceflight - bocachicagal, Teslarati)

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According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, one or both of the company’s two orbital Starship prototypes could be “ready to fly” – or nearly so – by the end of August. Even if Musk is off by one or several months, it would still make for a spectacular achievement.

The focus of the conversation that led Musk to the classic Musk-time prediction was the topic of a long-promised presentation on SpaceX’s Starship program. Although just a few weeks shy of the usual schedule, 2019’s presentation – set for August 24th in Boca Chica, Texas – more or less follows an annual September update tradition that Musk has consistently followed since 2016. Each year, Musk has given the public a glimpse into the constantly evolving process of designing SpaceX’s next-generation Mars-bound rocket. Despite the tradition’s consistency, 2019 is simply different.

Towers of steel, pillars of flame

Setting 2019 apart from its 2016-2018 predecessors are several profound realities. First and foremost, SpaceX is building and testing full-scale Raptor engines and completed what is technically the engine’s first flight as part of Starhopper’s untethered hop debut on July 25th. In fact, Starhopper’s second flight – a significantly more ambitious 200-meter (660 ft) flight is expected to occur as early as Monday, August 12th.

Just a few hours after Starhopper completed its first untethered flight test, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk posted two videos showing the rocket’s flight debut from liftoff to landing. (SpaceX/Elon Musk/Teslarati)

Starhopper, however, is just a low-fidelity testbed. This leads to the second significant difference between 2019 and previous ITS/BFR/Starship updates: described by Musk as the first orbital Starship prototypes (Starship Mk 1), SpaceX has made some truly spectacular progress building two orbital-class prototypes simultaneously, one in Boca Chica and the other in Cocoa, Florida.

Having effectively demonstrated that the sheer insanity of building rocket-grade hardware out in the open in a less-than-pleasant climate (i.e. Texas/Florida) can technically produce flight hardware (Starhopper), SpaceX engineers and technicians have designed, built, stacked, and welded hundreds of feet of stainless steel. The two Starship prototypes currently sit in four separate pieces (two barrel sections and two pointed nose sections) and would each stand roughly 45-50m (145-165 ft) tall if stacked today. Based on official September 2018 specs, this translates to just 10-20% shy of their full height.

https://twitter.com/therealjonvh/status/1157808886168150016

In short, 2019 stands apart because SpaceX is unequivocally building and testing multiple flight vehicles and multiple full-scale Raptor engines in a highly visible fashion, allowing just about anyone with a camera and/or eyes to capture and watch the progress being made. Elon Musk appears to be more optimistic than ever and has – along with other SpaceX executives – begun to hint that Starship could reach orbit as early as this year or early 2020.

Stay tuned, as there is an excellent chance that Musk’s 2019 SpaceX presentation is going to best yet.

Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.

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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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Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming

Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.

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Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.

In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”

The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”

Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.

Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.

The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.

It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”

The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.

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Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.

Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.

Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.

The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.

A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.

Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.

Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.

Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.

The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.

Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration

Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.

The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.

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Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update

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Credit: @jojje167 on X

Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.

Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.

The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.

Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.

When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.

Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.

The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.

Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.

For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.

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