News
SpaceX fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven’s owner abruptly files for bankruptcy
The legal owners of SpaceX’s sole fairing recovery vessel are in dire financial straits, signaled by business owner Steven Miguez’s decision to file for bankruptcy as a last chance of protecting Seatran Marine, a company which owns and leases eight utility vessels known as crew boats.
Mr. Steven, leased by SpaceX in late 2017, is one of those crew boats, although he has since been dramatically modified to support a series of consecutively larger arms, nets, and other various components in hopes of eventually catching Falcon 9 payload fairings out of the air. While there is most likely no serious risk of SpaceX actually losing access to Mr. Steven, this development still raises the question of what will happen to the ship in the near and more distant future.
The bankruptcy paperwork filed is chapter 11 – "proposing a plan of reorganisation to keep a business alive." The paperwork protects Mr Steven from foreclosure for now so there is no immediate change to anything.
— Gav Cornwell (@SpaceOffshore) November 21, 2018
As indicated in the tweet above, the ultimate outcome – at least for the time being – is simple uncertainty, as Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings will prevent Miguez from having to foreclose on Mr. Steven in the short term. If the Miguez family can rapidly find a solution for its money troubles, all could proceed unchanged. However, with all due respect to the owners and to Seatran Marine’s employees, Chapter 11 bankruptcy simply is not easily undone and is generally a last resort to be used only after all alternative solutions have been exhausted. Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings can take anywhere from a few months to several years to complete, tending to take longer as the scale and complexity of the filing party grows.
Making the best of a bad situation
Leased by Seatran to operator Guice Offshore (GO), SpaceX’s primary fleet manager on both coasts, GO (and thus SpaceX) had contracted to pay at least $3300 a day to use Mr. Steven, although that contract expired in October 2018. The new terms are unclear and it’s unknown if a replacement contract has yet to be signed.
Given the situation at hand and despite the sad financial circumstances facing the vessel’s owners, SpaceX may be in the best position yet to purchase Mr. Steven outright, assuming the company expects to continue attempting Falcon fairing recoveries for the indefinite future. In 2015, namesake Steven Miguez took out a $22.5M loan to cover Mr. Steven’s construction costs, offering a rough price ceiling for the modern, high-performance Fast Supply Vessel (FSV). While the most obvious interested buyer would be GO itself, it’s unlikely that the company has a sum of that size to offer, meaning that GO would need to take out its own loan to acquire the ship.
-
- Mr. Steven took to sea to test out a new recovery-related appendage – purpose unknown – on November 12. (Pauline Acalin)
-
- After an afternoon attempting to catch Falcon fairings dropped by a helicopter, Mr. Steven returned to port on Nov. 14. (Pauline Acalin)
-
- (Pauline Acalin)
-
- One half of SpaceX’s Iridium-6/GRACE-FO just moments before touchdown on the Pacific Ocean. (SpaceX)
-
SpaceX, on the other hand, quite literally just closed a debt funding round of $250M, terms unknown, leaving the company more than enough liquid capital to enable a cash transaction assuming there is some interest in becoming Mr. Steven’s legal owner. SpaceX already owns its two operational autonomous spaceport drone ships (ASDS) outright and has extensively modified Mr. Steven to support fairing recovery, quite literally building its prototype recovery apparatus around the rented vessel. As the vessel’s new owner, SpaceX could likely keep contracting to GO for general operations and support, perhaps even continuing to lease Mr. Steven to GO to create as few waves as possible.
By selling Mr. Steven outright, Miguez could likely acquire more than enough funds to preserve Seatran Marine and its subsidiaries long enough to recover his financial footing and return his companies to a stable state.
Business as usual?
In the meantime, it does not appear that these unfortunate legal issues have had a tangible impact on GO and SpaceX’s near-term ability to operate Mr. Steven. Around November 20th, SpaceX and GO crew performed the most recent of a series of Falcon fairing recovery tests, dropping a half from a helicopter to provide Mr. Steven a comparatively controlled environment to practice catches. Earlier this month, CEO Elon Musk appeared to imply that Mr. Steven would not attempt to catch Falcon 9’s fairing halves following the West Coast launch of SSO-A, at the time scheduled for November 19th.
Since then, SSO-A’s flight-proven Falcon 9 launch has slipped a full two weeks thanks to a combination of additional inspections and bad weather, now targeting launch NET December 2. It’s a stretch, but there is at least a slight chance that SSO-A’s excessive launch slips could mean that Mr. Steven will be able to attempt fairing recovery after all, at least per Musk’s suggestion that SpaceX would “try again next month”.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqtGWFxADOk/
Elon Musk
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
Tesla owner David Moss just pushed his intervention free FSD streak past 20,000 miles total.
Tesla Model 3 owner David Moss has spent the better part of eight months turning his vehicle into a rolling stress test for Full Self-Driving, and this week he pushed his single, continuous FSD streak past 20,000 miles without a human intervening.
Moss, a Tacoma, Washington resident who sells LiDAR scanning equipment for a living, first drew wide attention in December 2025 when he logged 10,000 consecutive miles on FSD v14.2. Days later he drove from the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, covering 2,732 miles in two days and 20 hours with zero disengagements, the first verified coast to coast autonomous drive in Tesla’s history. Tesla even featured the trip as an official customer story in March. That original streak eventually reached 12,961 miles across 30 states before ending in rural Wisconsin in January, when snow and single digit temperatures forced Moss to take over.
Tesla FSD successfully completes full coast-to-coast drive with zero interventions
He started over, and this run has gone further. In late May, Moss drove 3,760 miles across Canada with two companions, from Horseshoe Bay in Vancouver to a Tesla showroom in Halifax, again without a single intervention, a trip Tesla AI software VP Ashok Elluswamy publicly congratulated him for on X. In June, he pushed the same unbroken streak south, aiming to link the Canadian border to the Mexican border, and crossed 10,000 miles on Tesla’s newly added in car streak counter along the way, the first driver to do so since Tesla began showing confetti animations for the feature.
20,000 Mile Tesla FSD Screen Streak!
Special thank you to @DevinOlsenn, @scotsrule08, & @OwenSparks for helping co drive during all these fun adventures these last couple of months
Also thank you to @wholemars for always tracking me along the journey verifying it all with his… pic.twitter.com/CZ2yO6Ev0X
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) July 27, 2026
-
It’s worth noting that every mile is logged through the FSD Database, a community run tracker built by Tesla influencer Omar Qazi, well known as @WholeMars on X, that pulls telemetry straight from the car and records disengagements down to a tenth of a mile. That verification is what separates Moss’s numbers from casual claims on social media.
The streak itself is a fairly recent addition to Tesla’s software. FSD v14.2 introduced a Self Driving Stats panel tracking the ratio of autonomous to manual miles, and v14.3.4 added the live streak counter in June, which resets the moment a driver brakes, wrenches the wheel or cancels navigation. Reaching 20,000 miles on that counter means a single Tesla drove itself through countless highways, city grids, construction zones and Supercharger stalls without a single reset.
Moss has said the goal was never to set a record for its own sake, but to show, mile by verified mile, what the software can already do.
Elon Musk told The Economist that artificial intelligence will likely surpass the combined intelligence of every human on Earth within about five years, and that humans may not remain in charge once that happens. In a wide-ranging interview with editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, recorded at Giga Texas for the outlet’s Insider series, Musk compared the widening gap between AI and human intelligence to the gap between humans and chimpanzees.
“It’s hard to imagine that the chimpanzee would be in charge,” he said, addressing what happens to human authority once AI moves far beyond us.
Elon Musk reiterates his most optimistic prediction yet with “UHI” forecast
Musk’s timeline stretches out from there. Five years for AI to out-think humanity combined, ten years before humans lose meaningful control, and by 2036, he says, money itself may stop mattering.
Musk notes that if robots and AI produce more goods and services than people could ever consume, currency loses its purpose. He told Beddoes that governments could respond with direct payments, what he called “universal high income,” a term he first used in an X post last August describing a future where “everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.”
There will be universal high income (not merely basic income).
Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.
Sustainable abundance.
-— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2025
He also floated a more surprising prediction that deflation, and not inflation, would become the bigger economic problem, since expanding the supply of goods and services faster than the money supply grows would push prices down rather than up.
None of this is new territory for Musk, who has spent years describing an “age of abundance” built on Optimus and autonomous vehicles. What’s notable is the timing. The interview landed the same week Tesla shares dropped roughly 19 percent following a second quarter earnings report that beat on revenue but missed badly on profit, and as SpaceX stock continues to slide from its post-IPO peak.
Musk’s own net worth has fallen close to $700 billion since mid-June, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, even as he describes a future where personal wealth stops being the point.
Musk did not dodge the risk side of the equation either. He put the odds of AI contributing to human extinction somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range, then arrived at what he called his “philosophical conclusion” since the technology cannot realistically be stopped and the arguably better response is to keep building it and hope the outcome leans toward abundance rather than catastrophe. “I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI,” he told Beddoes, “even intraday.”
Tesla is adding a new “Traction Control Modes” feature to its cars for better handling in any conditions. These features will roll out to the Model 3 and Model Y, the two vehicles in Tesla’s lineup that typically do not have drive modes for various conditions.
Tesla did include this in the Model S and Model X, as well as the Cybertruck.
The new feature will roll out with the 2026 Summer Update, which Tesla announced last week and subsequently started rolling out to some owners today. The Summer Update is the latest iteration of the usual four seasonal releases the company rolls out throughout the year. These releases typically feature some owner-requested features, as well as improvements to things like the Full Self-Driving suite.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
This release is no different. Among the changes are improvements to Navigation, new customization options with wraps and how they can be shared and stored, more functionality with the Tesla smartphone app, and new gamification with self-driving.
However, Tesla announced today that it was adding another feature to the Summer Update. Traction Control Modes will now be available with the release
Tesla describes them:
-
“Choose from three updated Traction Control Modes: Auto for normal driving conditions, Slippery Surface for icy or wet roads, Stuck Assist when stuck in snow, mud, or sand. The mode resets to Auto at the start of each drive. To select, go to Controls > Dynamics > Traction Control Mode.”
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update also includes new Traction Control Modes
📸: @PatchesHQ https://t.co/N9cD2lGP14 pic.twitter.com/ogLC5ROIgc
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 26, 2026
The use of these modes will help improve a Tesla’s overall performance in less-than-ideal conditions. Typically, these traction control modes monitor wheel speed through sensors and track engine power to adjust responsiveness in various conditions.
These drive modes are not an ultimate solution to all driving conditions; just because there is a “Stuck Assist,” doesn’t mean your Tesla will dig itself out of a foot-and-a-half trench during a blizzard. It is important to remember that some of these scenarios also require some assistance from the driver. For example, driving in sand requires tires to be aired down significantly to increase traction and control.
However, this will be a welcome addition for those who use the Full Self-Driving suite and might not be convinced of its performance in adverse conditions. Some of us prefer to be in control in rain, snow, or ice, which is totally understandable. However, adjusting the Traction Control Mode while utilizing FSD in snow, rain, or ice could increase confidence and overall experience.
-
Tesla’s Summer Update is already rolling out to some owners, so it should be making its way to most of the fleet over the next several weeks. The Spring Update rolled out at a very conservative pace, so if you don’t have it by the end of August, don’t be too upset. It might just be Tesla’s method.
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
Elon Musk explains what happens when AI outsmarts all of us
