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SpaceX's Elon Musk works through holidays on Starship's "most difficult part"
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says he has been working through the holidays at the company’s Boca Chica facilities to get Starship’s “most difficult part” ready for the next-generation spacecraft’s next prototype and flight tests.
Known as tank domes or bulkheads, Musk says that the hardware is the most difficult part of building and assembly Starship’s primary structure, referring to the steel engine section, tanks, and pointed nose that comprise most of the spaceship’s body. Starship’s primary structure must stand up to the rigors of all aspects of flight, including highly-pressurized propellant tanks, extreme G-forces during launches, orbital reentry, and more.
It was never officially determined whether the failure was intentional or not but during the first Starship prototype’s (Mk1) last test campaign, the vehicle experience an overpressure event while being filled with liquid oxygen or nitrogen. Localized to the weld connecting the upper tank dome to Starship’s cylindrical tank section, the dome essentially sheared off at the weld and launched hundreds of feet into the air, sending a shockwave through the vehicle that crumpled many of its steel structures as if they were aluminum foil.
It’s likely that Starship Mk1’s failure was an intentional overpressure event, meaning that SpaceX may have purposely pressed the vehicle’s tanks beyond their design limits to determine how structurally sound they were. What is less clear is whether the rocket burst before or after reaching its theoretical design limit.
For reference, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket operates with its fuel and oxygen tanks pressurized to about 50 psi (3.5 atm) with localized pressures likely doubling or tripling near the bottom of both tanks during the first minute or two of launch. Some amateur back-of-the-envelope calculations from videos of Starship Mk1’s burst event suggest that it was pressurized to at least 60-75 psi (4-5 atm) at its upper tank dome, meaning that the pressure on its two lower domes and tank walls would have been even higher. If correct, those unofficial figures mean that Mk1 actually performed quite well considering the ramshackle facilities and unprecedentedly spartan methods used to fabricate and assemble it.
As such, Musk likely considers Starship’s tank domes the “most difficult part of [its] primary structure” in large part because of how difficult it is to make giant propellant tank domes simultaneously light and strong. Musk has previously implied that Starship Mk1 was more 200 tons (450,000 lb) empty while the ultimate goal for the spacecraft’s empty weight is closer to 120 tons, and a large portion of that weight savings will likely have to come from making its tank domes as light as possible.
In line with that educated speculation, the last month or so of SpaceX’s Starship work in Boca Chica, Texas has been marked by a distinct focus on building tank domes. In fact, Musk himself tweeted that he had worked all night with SpaceX engineers in Boca Chica in a bid to get dome production ready for Starship’s Mk3 prototype, the first Super Heavy hardware, and many more rockets to come.
Prior to Musk’s tweet, a Starship tank dome was actually shipped all the way from Florida to Texas and arrived earlier this month. Meanwhile, technicians have been briskly building up an additional dome using what appears to be a different method of integration involving new parts. SpaceX is currently attempting to weld Starship’s tank domes together from several dozen pre-formed sheets of stainless steel.
The sheets of steel assembled into the dome Musk showed on December 27th likely arrived in Boca Chica on December 13th, implying that SpaceX has managed to complete the majority of the first dome prototype – using a new process – in barely two weeks.
After SpaceX lifted the partially-completed dome off one of its custom assembly jigs, workers almost instantly began staging new sections of steel, beginning the process of integrating yet another tank dome – now likely the fourth on-site in Boca Chica. Meanwhile, at a nearby section of SpaceX’s Boca Chica production facilities, yet another dome was visible on the 28th. In short, SpaceX should soon have more than enough tank domes to complete the next Starship prototype – said to be a significantly improved and refined design compared to Mk1.
Known as Starship Mk3 (or Starship SN01), Musk says that the rocket – currently just a miscellaneous collection of separate parts – could (“hopefully”) be ready for its first flight as soon as February or March 2020.
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Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Elon Musk
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.
Tesla is planning to roll out some pretty significant safety and accident avoidance features with Full Self-Driving version 15, which will be the next major FSD deployment from the company.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy used a near-miss this week to preview what the company says is the next leap in Full Self-Driving.
In response to a driver whose car had swerved away from another vehicle pulling out of a parking lot, Elluswamy wrote that he was glad the owner was safe and that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” would arrive with FSD v15.
Glad you are safe. Even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance coming as part of the next big upgrade (v15).
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 11, 2026
The comment landed as Tesla continues to treat software as the primary safety upgrade path. v15 is described internally as a larger architectural step, with a much bigger neural network and tighter coupling between prediction and control.
The company has already begun using early v15 software in some robotaxi operations while rolling out safety features such as Automatic Collision Evasion into current customer cars, allowing the driving stack to intervene even when the driver is in manual control.
Tesla is rolling out a new FSD version with a massive safety addition
Tesla’s published telemetry is the backbone of its safety argument. In recent North American Vehicle Safety Report data, vehicles with FSD (Supervised) engaged traveled roughly 5.1 million to 5.7 million miles between major collisions, defined as airbag-deployment events.
Tesla’s estimate of the U.S. average over the same period is about 699,000 miles per comparable crash. That is the comparison Tesla often frames as roughly seven times fewer major collisions.
A tighter comparison uses the same Tesla fleet. Cars driven manually with active safety features such as automatic emergency braking still recorded a major collision about every 2.1 million miles. Against that baseline, FSD’s advantage shrinks to roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times fewer severe crashes, which independent researchers argue is the more apples-to-apples figure.
European data released in 2026 pointed in the same direction: Tesla reported FSD as 3.5 times safer than manual driving in the Netherlands and 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas with active safety across more than 100 million kilometers in five approved countries.
Those numbers do not settle every debate. NHTSA’s Standing General Order still shows Tesla accounting for the large majority of U.S. Level 2 driver-assist crash reports, in part because the fleet logs far more assisted miles than rivals. Critics also note that Tesla’s “U.S. average” mixes crash definitions and driving mix.
Even so, Tesla’s own same-car comparisons, plus lower rates of automatic emergency braking and harsh maneuvers when FSD is engaged, are the evidence Elluswamy is pointing to when he says v15 will push prediction and collision avoidance further. The claim is not that software already eliminates risk. It is that each major version is meant to widen the gap between the system and an unaided human driver.
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
