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SpaceX transports Falcon 9 to launch site ahead of Block 5’s second expendable launch ever

Customer Spacecom posted photos of Falcon 9 on its way from Pad 39A to LC-40, sans legs or grid fins. (SpaceX/Spacecom)

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Photos published on July 28th by customer Spacecom show a sooty SpaceX Falcon 9 booster and fresh upper stage on their way to LC-40 for the launch of the AMOS-17 communications satellite, scheduled to lift off no earlier than 6:51 pm EDT (22:51 UTC), August 3rd.

Sadly, the booster will reportedly be expended during the launch. According to Spacecom, AMOS-17 – built by Boeing – is an undeniably large satellite, weighing more than 6500 kg (14,300 lb) and featuring a solar array wingspan of ~35m (115 ft). SpaceX has certainly launched larger satellites than AMOS-17 and still recovered their Falcon 9 boosters, but this mission is somewhat unique and SpaceX is obviously willing to go the extra mile in this case.

In a surprise development, Spacecom officially confirmed that AMOS-17 will be SpaceX’s second expendable Falcon 9 Block 5 launch in the rocket’s ~15 months of operations, following in the footsteps of its expendable December 2018 launch debut. This is more than a little disappointing, thanks in large part to the fact that SpaceX has developed Falcon 9 (and Heavy) reusability to such a level of maturity that fully expendable Falcon launches just feel wrong.

In fact, just a month ago, SpaceX reached a major milestone of reusability when it recovered two flight-proven Falcon Heavy boosters and became the first company in history to launch and land more orbital-class rocket boosters than it has expended (as of June 2019: 81 launched, 43 landed). SpaceX followed this up with landing #44 after Falcon 9 B1056.2 successfully completed its second launch on July 25th.

While expending a Block 5 booster that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has stated could launch upwards of 20-30 times is certainly disappointing, the sting of Block 5’s second expendable mission is at least soothed by the knowledge that it will be this booster’s third and final launch. The first expendable Block 5 launch – the US Air Force’s GPS III SV01 mission – made use of a brand new booster (B1054).

A (hopefully) worthy sacrifice

In a small way, Falcon 9 B1047’s premature demise could easily be viewed as a sort of symbolic eye-for-an-eye sacrifice. Although not a literal 1:1 replacement, AMOS-17 is still essentially a follow-on to Amos-6, destroyed on September 1st, 2016 when Falcon 9 suffered an exotic COPV failure that led to a massive explosion (Musk called it a ‘fast fire’).

Installed on top of the rocket during what was meant to be a pre-launch static fire test, the ~$200M+ Amos-6 satellite was not spared from the destruction and owner Spacecom ultimately received an insurance settlement it then used (in part) to purchase AMOS-17. Additionally, instead of accepting a cash payout from SpaceX, Spacecom chose the contractual alternative: a free Falcon 9 launch of their choice.

Is it a coincidence that a Block 5 booster is going to be expended as part of that replacement launch? Almost certainly, yes. At a minimum, SpaceX – essentially launching for free per a contractual agreement with Spacecom – has clearly decided along with Spacecom that putting all of Falcon 9’s energy into AMOS-17 is preferable to withholding margin for a landing.

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Spacecom posted an extensive series of photos documenting the process of encapsulating AMOS-17 in its Falcon 9 fairing. (SpaceX/Spacecom/Teslarati)

With Falcon 9 B1047.2 in an expendable configuration, SpaceX can take a no-holds-barred approach towards delivering Spacecom’s AMOS-17 to the highest orbit possible. The higher the geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) Falcon 9 can launch AMOS-17 to, the faster the satellite can begin serving customers and thus generating revenue for Spacecom. Combined with the fact that more than half of AMOS-17’s massive 6.5-ton mass is chemical propellant, the spacecraft – pending a healthy launch and on-orbit commissioning – could be ready to start serving customers just a month or two after lift-off.

Falcon 9 B1047 will be missed, but the booster’s demise is an understandable cost of SpaceX prioritizing customer Spacecom’s launch experience above the company’s own best interests.

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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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Tesla is releasing a modified version of FSD v14 for Hardware 3 owners: here’s when

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Tesla is releasing a modified version of the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) version 14 suite for Hardware 3 owners, the company announced during the Q3 Earnings Call earlier this week.

Perhaps one of the most pertinent issues for Tesla owners right now is that those owners who have purchased vehicles before 2024 have been stuck with an older version of the company’s self-driving chip, known as Hardware 3 or AI3.

Owners with Hardware 3 vehicles have been stuck in a strange limbo for some time, wondering whether they should wait for the company’s official plans to upgrade them to the newer AI4 or even the to-be-released AI5 chip, or if they should purchase a new vehicle altogether. The upgrade would give them access to the latest Full Self-Driving suite releases, but it would likely cost a good bit of money.

Tesla (TSLA) Q3 2025 earnings: Wall Street’s reactions

For a while, these owners have been waiting for Tesla to give some sort of update on its plans, as the company has, in a way, danced around the issue by stating it would “take care” of those owners. The problem is, the definition of “take care” is subjective, and nobody knows if that means an upgrade or a free Tesla t-shirt.

Nevertheless, many owners finally got a tad bit more color earlier this week during the Earnings Call, when company executives finally outlined the beginning of a concrete plan to “take care” of HW3 vehicles.

Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja gave the first bit of the answer, as it is a personal issue to him. He also said that the vehicle he drives is a HW3 car, so it is impacted by the lack of upgrades.

He said:

“We have not completely given up on HW3. These customers are very important. They are early adopters. We will definitely take care of you guys.”

However, Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, gave some additional color, revealing that Tesla plans to launch v14 Lite for HW3 cars, and it will be released in Q2 of next year, tentatively:

“Once the v14 release series is fully done, we are planning on working on a v14 Lite version for hardware three. Probably expected in Q2 next year.”

This is somewhat of an answer, but some owners have already voiced discontent with this solution because HW3 will more than likely not be capable of what will be the “feature complete” version of FSD.

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Jim Cramer chimes in on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s pay package

“Don’t be small-minded: Tesla is about robots, Full Self-Driving, the future. Give him his package.”

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Credit: The Street

Investor and host of Mad Money on MSNBC , Jim Cramer, has chimed in on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s pay package and whether it should be rewarded to the frontman or not.

Cramer has drawn a lot of attention regarding his sentiments on Tesla, as investors have routinely given him a pretty hard time over what he’s said about the company.

For the past few years, we have covered his comments on Tesla when he has something to say, mostly because his opinion on the stock seems to change pretty frequently; at a minimum, he has something different to say about it every few months.

However, Cramer knows Musk’s value to Tesla, and said on Thursday that he believes the CEO deserves his pay package:

“Don’t be small-minded: Tesla is about robots, Full Self-Driving, the future. Give him his package.”

Cramer’s comments come just one day after Tesla’s Q3 2025 Earnings Call, where Musk took several opportunities to call out the importance of the pay package and how it could impact the company’s future — with or without him.

Musk said at one point that he would not feel comfortable continuing to develop the company’s massive fleet of Optimus bots without having appropriate control of the company from a voting perspective.

He said he does not want so much power that if he “were to lose his mind,” he could not be removed. However, he does feel he needs to be protected from “activist shareholders,” or “corporate terrorists” like proxy groups Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis:

“My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future? …It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army, not current control, but a strong influence? That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”

At the end of the call, Musk said:

“Like I said, I just don’t feel comfortable building a robot army here and then being ousted because of some asinine recommendations from ISS and Glass Lewis, who have no freaking clue. I mean, those guys are corporate terrorists.”

Cramer is one of many who realize Musk’s importance to Tesla, and how the company would likely lack the guidance and prowess it does without his planning and drive. However, Tesla shareholders will have the ultimate say on November 6 when they vote on Musk’s compensation plan.

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Tesla is stumped on how to engineer this Optimus part, but they’re close

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has been stumped on how to engineer one crucial part of the Optimus bot, but CEO Elon Musk says the company is “on the cusp” of achieving something great with the project.

During the Q3 2025 Earnings Call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the company is moving closer to a major breakthrough with the Optimus project, and said they are “on the cusp of something really tremendous.”

However, it seems there is one specific portion of the robot that has truly stumped engineers at the company: the hand, fingers, and forearm.

Musk went into great detail about how incredibly complex and amazing the human hand is, highlighting its dexterity and capability, as its ability to perform a wide variety of tasks is especially impressive:

“I don’t want to downplay the difficulty, but it’s an incredibly difficult thing, especially to create a hand that is as dexterous and capable as the human hand, which is incredible. The human hand is an incredible thing. The more you study the human hand, the more incredible you realize it is, and why you need four fingers and a thumb, why the fingers have certain degrees of freedom, why the various muscles are of different strengths, and fingers are of different lengths. It turns out that those are all there for a reason.”

It’s been pretty apparent that Tesla has made massive strides in the Optimus project, especially considering it has been able to walk down hills, learn things like Kung Fu, and even perform service tasks like serving food and drinks.

However, a recent look at a Gen 2.5 version of Optimus posted by Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, showed that Tesla was likely using mannequin hands until it developed something that was both useful and aesthetically pleasing:

Musk continued on the call last night that the Tesla team was confronted with an “incredibly difficult” challenge from an engineering perspective, and the hands and actuators for that specific part were tough to figure out:

“Making the hand and forearm, because most of the actuators, just like the human hand, the muscles that control your hand are actually primarily in your forearm. The Optimus hand and forearm is an incredibly difficult engineering challenge. I’d say it’s more difficult than the rest of the robot from an electromechanical standpoint. The forearm and hand are more difficult than the entire rest of the robot. But really, in order to have a useful generalized robot, you do need an incredible hand.”

The CEO continued that developing a useful and effective robot was “crucial to the future of the company,” and that he works with Optimus’s design team each Friday night.

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