News
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk to present first Starship update since 2019 [webcast]
Barring surprises, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk remains on track to present the first major update on Starship’s development since September 2019 – almost two and a half years ago.
While it’s no longer clear that SpaceX will be able to stack Starship on top of Super Heavy in time for the fully-stacked rocket to serve as an imposing backdrop for the media event, Musk seemingly remains on track to update the world on the status of Starship development as early as 8pm CT (6pm PT, 9pm ET) on Thursday, February 10th (02:00 UTC 11 Feb). Assuming the event is similar to the SpaceX CEO’s first four major Starship presentations, it will be broadcast live to the world on the company’s YouTube channel.
Musk first revealed SpaceX’s detailed plans for a massive, fully-reusable Mars rocket in September 2016. At that point, the rocket – known as the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) – was to be 12 meters (39 ft) in diameter, 122 meters (400 ft) tall, and made almost entirely out of carbon-fiber composites. In theory, it would have been able to launch up to 300 tons (660,000 lb) to low Earth orbit (LEO) – twice the payload of Saturn V, the next most capable rocket.
In 2017, SpaceX slightly pared back its ambition with a vehicle known as BFR, measuring 9m wide and 106m tall with about a third fewer Raptor engines and estimated performance of ~130 tons (285,000 lb) to LEO. In 2018, on top of announcing Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa’s circumlunar DearMoon mission and BFR’s first real launch contract, SpaceX updated BFR’s design, stretching the booster 12 meters for a total height of 118m (390 ft) and hedging its performance figures with an estimate of 100 tons to LEO in a fully-reusable configuration.
Around the same time as Musk’s 2018 BFR presentation, though, the SpaceX CEO made the decision to entirely scrap the rocket’s composites-heavy design, renaming the rocket ‘Starship’ and replacing the material with stainless steel – effectively reverting structures development to the drawing board. The principles of the rocket, its general shape and layout, and the Raptor engine powering it remained the same. Thanks to steel’s extreme affordability relative to cutting-edge composites, SpaceX was able to make rapid progress and ultimately flew Starhopper – a steel water-tower-esque rocket powered by Raptor – less than a year later in July and August 2019.
Less than a year after Starhopper’s 150m (~500 ft) hop, SpaceX successfully hopped a far more mature Starship prototype known as SN5, which relied on far thinner steel and effectively amounted to a full prototype of the tank section of an orbital-class ship. Just a month later, in September 2020, SpaceX repeated the feat with an entirely different Starship prototype, demonstrating repeatability both in production and flight. Three months later, Starship SN8 – featuring flaps, a nosecone, header tanks, and two more Raptor engines – nearly aced its launch debut. In May 2021, after three more failed test flights, Starship SN15 stuck the landing and survived a 10 km launch, more or less fully demonstrating the rocket’s exotic skydiver-style descent and last-second flip for a vertical landing.
Visible progress has slowed and flight testing has halted since SpaceX began pushing for the first orbital Starship test flight in mid-2021. The company decided against reusing Starship SN15 and also chose not to attempt to replicate the ship’s successful landing with Starship SN16, which was ready for testing a matter of days after. Instead, SpaceX has focused on constructing the orbital launch site and slowly finished Starship S20 and Super Heavy B4 – a pair once expected to support the first orbital test flight. While slow compared to all previous Starship prototypes, Ship 20 has nonetheless made excellent progress and is effectively fully ready for a serious flight test. Booster 4, on the other hand, has barely completed cryogenic proof testing and has yet to perform even a partial wet dress rehearsal (with live propellant) or attempt a single static fire test in last five months.
In short, the status of Starship development – and, especially, Booster 4, Ship 20, and the first orbital test flight – has gotten quite a bit murkier over the last several months. February 9th and 10th marked a welcome change of pace, with SpaceX sailing through the very first attempt at stacking Starship hardware with Starbase’s ‘orbital integration tower’ (launch tower) and a trio of giant, robotic arms. Just a handful of hours after the first ‘arm lift’ began, Starship S20 was safely stacked atop Super Heavy Booster 4, assembling the largest rocket in the world for the second time this year.
With any luck, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s first presentation in two and a half years – scheduled no earlier than 8pm CST (02:00 UTC) – will shed further light on the company’s progress towards orbital test flights.
News
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.
During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.
While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.
Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.
He said:
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”
NEWS: Elon Musk says FSD Unsupervised is “pretty much solved at this point” and that @Tesla will be launching Robotaxis with no safety monitors in about 3 weeks in Austin, Texas. He also teased a new FSD model is coming in about 1-2 months.
“We’re just going through validation… https://t.co/Msne72cgMB pic.twitter.com/i3wfKX3Z0r
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2025
It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”
With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.
This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.
Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.
But it is close.
That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.
All we can say is, we’ll see.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.
Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.
It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.
Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.
He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.
Musk replied, basically confirming it:
As usual, Eric is accurate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.
AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.
It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.
The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.
But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.
Tesla has added the 15th automaker to the growing list of companies whose EVs can utilize the Supercharger Network this year, as BMW is the latest company to gain access to the largest charging infrastructure in the world.
BMW became the 15th company in 2025 to gain Tesla Supercharger access, after the company confirmed to its EV owners that they could use any of the more than 25,000 Supercharging stalls in North America.
Welcome @BMW owners.
Download the Tesla app to charge → https://t.co/vnu0NHA7Ab
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) December 10, 2025
Newer BMW all-electric cars, like the i4, i5, i7, and iX, are able to utilize Tesla’s V3 and V4 Superchargers. These are the exact model years, via the BMW Blog:
- i4: 2022-2026 model years
- i5: 2024-2025 model years
- 2026 i5 (eDrive40 and xDrive40) after software update in Spring 2026
- i7: 2023-2026 model years
- iX: 2022-2025 model years
- 2026 iX (all versions) after software update in Spring 2026
With the expansion of the companies that gained access in 2025 to the Tesla Supercharger Network, a vast majority of non-Tesla EVs are able to use the charging stalls to gain range in their cars.
So far in 2025, Tesla has enabled Supercharger access to:
- Audi
- BMW
- Genesis
- Honda
- Hyundai
- Jaguar Land Rover
- Kia
- Lucid
- Mercedes-Benz
- Nissan
- Polestar
- Subaru
- Toyota
- Volkswagen
- Volvo
Drivers with BMW EVs who wish to charge at Tesla Superchargers must use an NACS-to-CCS1 adapter. In Q2 2026, BMW plans to release its official adapter, but there are third-party options available in the meantime.
They will also have to use the Tesla App to enable Supercharging access to determine rates and availability. It is a relatively seamless process.
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
