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SpaceX restores a Falcon 1 rocket for 10th anniversary of first launch success
With plans to give the historic rocket its own place on display inside the company’s Hawthorne factory, SpaceX has refurbished the last remaining Falcon 1 rocket booster and an old Merlin 1C engine to create a model representative of the same Falcon 1 that saved SpaceX and made history on September 28th, 2008, becoming the first privately-developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit.
In the process of celebrating the tenth anniversary of that crowning achievement, one is reminded just how meteoric SpaceX’s rise has been over the course of that decade, marked by relentless progress with Falcon 1, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Cargo Dragon, Crew Dragon, and even the early phases of BFR construction.
https://twitter.com/SpaceXJobs/status/1045832573471969281
On that September afternoon ten years ago, SpaceX may well have saved itself from extinction. Running on funding fumes, CEO and founder Elon Musk has long held that the company would have been forced to effectively cease activity and disband after six years of work and three consecutive Falcon 1 failures had drained almost all of the $100 million he had dedicated in 2002.
Reaching orbit is undoubtedly one of the most technologically challenging feats there is and SpaceX’s merciless failures drove that reality home, ranging from a burst propellant line on the first stage Merlin, liquid propellant sloshing problems on the second stage, and overperformance on the first stage engine causing the two stages to impact after separation, among myriad other problems faced outside of actual launch attempts. Thankfully, thanks to the extraordinary group of several hundred early employees that fixed those problems and pushed onwards, Falcon 1’s fourth attempt was almost flawless and successfully placed a boilerplate mass simulator into a roughly circular ~650km orbit.
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- Falcon 1 Flight 4 seen shortly after liftoff from SpaceX’s Kwaj Atoll island pad. (SpaceX)
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- Earlier this summer, /r/SpaceX member MarsOrBust101 was lucky enough to spot an old Falcon 1 – long sat at one of SpaceX’s several junkyards – being transferred to its Hawthorne factory. (Reddit /u/MarsOrBust101)
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- It’s impossible to know for sure, but that hardware was almost certainly SpaceX’s first Falcon 1 recovery test article in a previous life. (SpaceX)
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- SpaceX has restored the last remaining Falcon 1 structures into a display model. The small, unassuming rocket was showcased in front of the company’s Hawthorne factory on September 28th. (Pauline Acalin)
A bit more than nine months later, SpaceX completed the first and last operational launch of Falcon 1, retired to allow the company to focus fully on Falcon 5 (cancelled a few years later), Falcon 9, and Cargo Dragon. Eleven months after that July 2009 mission, SpaceX successfully launched Falcon 9 for the first time and followed it up with the first launch of a functioning Cargo Dragon spacecraft, which spent several hours testing systems in orbit before reentering Earth’s atmosphere and landing in the Pacific Ocean. Two years later in 2012, SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft in history to dock with the International Space Station, with operational NASA Commercial Resupply Services launches beginning just six months after.
With three years and five successful launches under its belt, Falcon 9 v1.0 was retired and made way for the first of many upgraded Falcon 9 variants, known as Falcon 9 v1.1, featuring 60% greater thrust and mass at liftoff, a new octaweb layout for its nine new Merlin 1D engines, and a range of structural changes that set the stage for future attempts at booster recovery. Two and a half years after Falcon 9 v1.1’s debut and a little over five years since the first successful launch of Falcon 1, SpaceX accomplished the first successful landing of a Falcon 9’s first stage, and that booster now stands proudly outside of the company’s Hawthorne, CA headquarters.
To mark that 10th anniversary, SpaceX apparently decided to salvage a mothballed Falcon 1 stored in a junkyard, refurbishing it into something closer to its former self. Although just the first stage and a Merlin 1C engine were present, the company stationed the refurbished Falcon 1 in front the first recovered Falcon 9 booster and gave all employees an opportunity to see the duo over the course of September 28th.
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- Roughly a third of the SpaceX employees present for the company’s Falcon 1 Flight 4 success still remain. (SpaceX)
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- Falcon 9 and Falcon 1. (Pauline Acalin)
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- SpaceX’s first successful Falcon 9 landing. Booster B1019 now stands in front of SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory. (SpaceX)
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- Falcon Heavy successfully clears the tower after its maiden launch, February 6, 2018. (Tom Cross)
The sheer size differential is undeniably impressive. However, a more gobsmacking statistic can be found still. Falcon 1 stands roughly 22 meters tall and would weigh around 39,000 kilograms with a full load of liquid oxygen and kerosene. While the Falcon family’s current payload fairing isn’t nearly tall enough to squeeze in a full Falcon 1 first stage, Falcon Heavy could easily place a fully-loaded Falcon 1 into Low Earth Orbit and still recovery all three of its first stage boosters.
In other words, SpaceX went from launching the first commercial liquid-fuel rocket to reach orbit to launching a super-heavy rocket that could put that entire first rocket into orbit in less than ten years. Not too shabby.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX just got pulled into the biggest Weapons Program in U.S. history
SpaceX joins the Golden Dome software group, deepening its role in America’s most expensive defense program.
SpaceX has joined a nine-company group developing the core operating software for the Golden Dome, America’s next-generation missile defense system. According to a Bloomberg report, SpaceX is focused on integrating satellite communications for military operations and is working alongside eight other defense and artificial intelligence companies, including Anduril Industries, Palantir Technologies, and Aalyria Technologies, to build software connecting missile defense capabilities.
The Golden Dome concept dates back to President Trump’s 2024 campaign, and on January 27, 2025, he signed an executive order directing the U.S. Armed Forces to construct the system before the end of his term. The system is planned to employ a constellation of thousands of satellites equipped with interceptors, with data centers in space providing automated control through an AI network.
FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan
Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, director of the Golden Dome initiative, has described the software layer as a “glue layer” that would enable officers to manage and control radars, sensors, and missile batteries across services. The consortium is aiming to test the platform this summer.
Trump selected a design in May 2025 with a $175 billion price tag, expected to be operational by the end of his term in 2029, though the Congressional Budget Office projected the cost could reach $831 billion over two decades.
The Golden Dome role is only the latest in a string of military wins for SpaceX. As Teslarati reported, the U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $178.5 million task order on April 1, 2026 to launch missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency, covering two Falcon 9 launches beginning in Q3 2027. That came on top of more than $22 billion in government contracts held by SpaceX as of 2024, per CEO Gwynne Shotwell, spanning NASA resupply missions, classified intelligence satellites through its Starshield program, and military broadband.
The accumulation of defense contracts, now including a seat at the table on the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history, positions SpaceX as the dominant infrastructure provider for American national security in space. With a SpaceX IPO still on the horizon, each new contract adds weight to what is already one of the most consequential companies in aerospace history, raising real questions about how much of America’s defense architecture will depend on a single private operator before it ever trades publicly.
News
Tesla pulls back the curtain on Cybercab mass production
Tesla’s Cybercab drives itself off the Gigafactory Texas line in a striking new production video.
Tesla has provided a first look from inside a production Cybercab as it drove itself off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. The video footage, posted on X, opens on the factory floor with robotic arms and assembly equipment visible through the Cybercab windshield, and follows the car through a branded tunnel marked “Cybercab”, before autonomously navigating itself to a holding lot.
The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas production line on February 17, 2026, with Musk writing on X, “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.” April marked the official shift to volume production. The Giga Texas line is being prepared to produce hundreds of units per week, with 60 units already spotted on the Gigafactory campus earlier this month.
Purpose-built for autonomy
Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/Y9qG3KyWBa
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 23, 2026
The Cybercab was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk said he believed the average operating cost would be around $0.20 per mile, and that buyers would be able to purchase one for under $30,000. The two-seat design is deliberate. Musk noted that 90 percent of miles driven involve one or two people, making a compact two-passenger vehicle the most efficient configuration for a fleet-scale robotaxi. Eliminating rear seats also removes complexity and cost, supporting that sub-$30,000 target.
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once several factories reach full design capacity. The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and relies entirely on Tesla’s vision-based FSD system. What the video shows is the first evidence of that system working not as a demo, but as a production reality, driving itself off the line and into the world.
🚗 Our first ride in Tesla Cybercab last October: pic.twitter.com/kGqIqgJPRn https://t.co/BITCXFhbVd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2025
Elon Musk
Elon Musk talks Tesla Roadster’s future
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
SpaceX just got pulled into the biggest Weapons Program in U.S. history
Tesla pulls back the curtain on Cybercab mass production
