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SpaceX Falcon 9 booster spotted in Southern California on journey to Florida
On August 20th, a member of a local California Facebook group happened to spot a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster in transit, an exceedingly rare sight as of late. Moving east, the booster is almost certainly heading to Florida to support a major cluster of 6-8 launches in Q4 2019.
This marks the first time in nearly four months that a flight-proven Falcon 9 booster has been spotted in transit, excluding a lone (unflown) booster captured on its way to McGregor, Texas last month. This also serves as an opportunity to reexamine the status of SpaceX’s expansive fleet of reusable Falcon 9 Block 5 rockets as the company prepares for a busy end of 2019 in the midst of a rare multi-month lull in launch activities.
Based on the timing, its location (Southern California), and the direction it was headed (Eastbound), the rocket spotted on August 20th is almost certainly twice-flown Falcon 9 booster B1051. The booster was likely departing SpaceX’s Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) launch facilities after some two months post-launch inspections and refurbishment, having completed its second launch and landing on June 12th, 2019 in support of the Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM).
Prior to its successful launch of RCM, B1051 had the historic privilege of supporting the inaugural orbital launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, putting the next-gen crew capsule through its paces before a crewed launch debut expected to occur absolutely no earlier than (NET) December 2019. Known as DM-1 (Demo-1), B1051 was subjected to an exceptionally strenuous suite of inspections, analysis, and testing for the mission – from the very first welding sparks to the booster’s McGregor, TX and Florida static fires and launch debut.
Said debut occurred on March 2nd, 2019, after which B1051 landed at sea aboard drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY).
SpaceX production experienced an exceptionally frenetic period from early-2018 to mid-2019, in which the company averaged the completion of almost an entire Falcon 9 or Heavy rocket every 1-2 months, building, delivering, launching, and relaunching Falcon boosters B1046 through B1057 from ~January 2018 to April 2019. In the last 3-4 months, the (publicly visible) rate of rocket production has dramatically slowed, presumably an intentional slow-down triggered by SpaceX’s rapidly growing fleet of flight-proven boosters.
In the last four or so months, unaffiliated observers have spotted a grand total of one new Falcon 9 booster on its way from SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA factory to its McGregor, TX testing facilities. That booster – likely either B1058 for Crew Dragon’s crewed launch debut (Demo-2) or B1059 for SpaceX’s next USAF GPS III launch – was spotted twice headed east in Arizona on July 29th. Prior to that, the next most recent ‘core spottings’ occurred in mid-to-late April, while the most recent since July 29th’s instance is B1051.2’s August 20th appearance. In short, things are unusually quiet on the SpaceX booster transport front.
Rocket fleet logistics
This apparent slowdown in production can be relatively easily explained by the nature of SpaceX’s fleet of boosters, as well as the company’s growing confidence in the extreme reusability nominally permitted by Falcon 9’s Block 5 upgrade. Just a few days ago, SpaceX Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability Hans Koenigsmann reiterated the belief that Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters will be more than capable of safely performing 10 or more launches apiece.
At the moment, SpaceX’s fleet of flightworthy Block 5 boosters is seven strong, composed of B1046.3, B1048.3, B1049.3, B1051.2, B1052.2, B1053.2, B1056.2. Altogether, they have supported a full 17 launches in 15 months, averaging 2.4 launches apiece with a maximum of three launches achieved by three separate boosters. Under the extremely conservative assumption that 60-90 days are needed for post-flight inspections and refurbishment, anywhere from 2-6 of those boosters are already ready for their next launches.
In simple terms, it appears that even a fleet as small as seven Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters may be capable of supporting a vast majority of SpaceX’s commercial launch contracts, while even NASA has come to support launching uncrewed Cargo Dragon missions on flight-proven boosters. In fact, Koenigsmann revealed that a number of customers had nearly come a full 180 degrees in the less than three years that SpaceX has been reflying boosters. Many now actively prefer a flight-proven booster and have come to view them as a more known quantity relative to unproven (i.e. new) hardware.
Aside from a handful of customers – primarily the US military – that explicitly demand new hardware, the rare need for entirely expendable Falcon 9 launches, and the equally rare loss of boosters during unsuccessful landings, SpaceX just doesn’t need nearly as high of a Falcon 9 or Heavy booster production rate to support the same (or even greater) launch cadences.
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Tesla gets new insurance program from firm that offered ‘almost free’ FSD rates
Tesla recently was offered “almost free” coverage for Full Self-Driving by Lemonade’s Shai Wininger, President and Co-founder, who said it would be “happy to explore insuring Tesla FSD miles for (almost) free.”
Tesla owners in California, Oregon, and Arizona can now use Lemonade Insurance, the firm that recently said it could cover Full Self-Driving miles for “almost free.”
Lemonade, which offered the new service through its app, has three distinct advantages, it says:
- Direct Connection for no telematics device needed
- Better customer service
- Smarter pricing
The company is known for offering unique, fee-based insurance rates through AI, and instead of keeping unclaimed premiums, it offers coverage through a flat free upfront. The leftover funds are donated to charities by its policyholders.
On Thursday, it announced that cars in three states would be able to be connected directly to the car through its smartphone app, enabling easier access to insurance factors through telematics:
Lemonade customers who own @Tesla vehicles in California, Oregon, and Arizona can now connect their cars directly to the Lemonade app! ⚡🚘
Direct connection = no telematics device needed 📵
Better customer experience 💃
Smarter pricing with Lemonade 🧠This is a game-changer… pic.twitter.com/jbabxZWT4t
— Lemonade (@Lemonade_Inc) December 11, 2025
Tesla recently was offered “almost free” coverage for Full Self-Driving by Lemonade’s Shai Wininger, President and Co-founder, who said it would be “happy to explore insuring Tesla FSD miles for (almost) free.”
The strategy would be one of the most unique, as it would provide Tesla drivers with stable, accurate, and consistent insurance rates, while also incentivizing owners to utilize Full Self-Driving for their travel miles.
Tesla Full Self-Driving gets an offer to be insured for ‘almost free’
This would make FSD more cost-effective for owners and contribute to the company’s data collection efforts.
Data also backs Tesla Full Self-Driving’s advantages as a safety net for drivers. Recent figures indicate it was nine times less likely to be in an accident compared to the national average, registering an accident every 6.36 million miles. The NHTSA says a crash occurs approximately every 702,000 miles.
Tesla also offers its own in-house insurance program, which is currently offered in twelve states so far. The company is attempting to enter more areas of the U.S., with recent filings indicating the company wants to enter Florida and offer insurance to drivers in that state.
Tesla Model Y configurations are getting hefty discounts and more benefits as the company is in the phase of its final sales push for the year.
Tesla is offering up to $1,500 off new Model Y Standard trims that are available in inventory in the United States. Additionally, Tesla is giving up to $2,000 off the Premium trims of the Model Y. There is also one free upgrade included, such as a paint color or interior color, at no additional charge.
NEWS: Tesla is now offering discounts of up to $1,500 off new Model Y Standard vehicles in U.S. inventory. Discounts of up to $2,000 are also being offered on Model Y Premiums.
These discounts are in addition to the one free upgrade you get (such as Diamond Black paint) on… pic.twitter.com/L0RMtjmtK0
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2025
Tesla is hoping to bolster a relatively strong performance through the first three quarters of the year, with over 1.2 million cars delivered through the first three quarters.
This is about four percent under what the company reported through the same time period last year, as it was about 75,000 vehicles ahead in 2024.
However, Q3 was the company’s best quarterly performance of all time, and it surged because of the loss of the $7,500 EV tax credit, which was eliminated in September. The imminent removal of the credit led to many buyers flocking to Tesla showrooms to take advantage of the discount, which led to a strong quarter for the company.
2024 was the first year in the 2020s when Tesla did not experience a year-over-year delivery growth, as it saw a 1 percent slide from 2023. The previous years saw huge growth, with the biggest coming from 2020 to 2021, when Tesla had an 87 percent delivery growth.
This year, it is expected to be a second consecutive slide, with a drop of potentially 8 percent, if it manages to deliver 1.65 million cars, which is where Grok projects the automaker to end up.
Tesla will likely return to its annual growth rate in the coming years, but the focus is becoming less about delivery figures and more about autonomy, a major contributor to the company’s valuation. As AI continues to become more refined, Tesla will apply these principles to its Full Self-Driving efforts, as well as the Optimus humanoid robot project.
Will Tesla thrive without the EV tax credit? Five reasons why they might
These discounts should help incentivize some buyers to pull the trigger on a vehicle before the year ends. It will also be interesting to see if the adjusted EV tax credit rules, which allowed deliveries to occur after the September 30 cutoff date, along with these discounts, will have a positive impact.
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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.
Tesla gets new insurance program from firm that offered ‘almost free’ FSD rates
Tesla Model Y gets hefty discounts and more in final sales push
