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SpaceX Falcon 9’s next Starlink launch will reuse a Falcon Heavy fairing for the first time
SpaceX has announced that a thrice-flown Falcon 9 booster successfully completed a static fire test ahead of the company’s first launch in three months, set to be Starlink’s ‘v1.0’ launch debut. In a twist, SpaceX says that the mission will be the first to reuse a full payload fairing, recovered after Falcon Heavy Block 5’s April 2019 launch debut.
Neither of the two fairing halves recovered after Falcon Heavy Block 5’s Arabsat 6A mission were actually caught by fairing recovery ship Ms. Tree (formerly Mr. Steven). Instead, both halves gently landed in the Atlantic Ocean – more than 1000 km (620 mi) off the coast of Florida – and were carefully lifted onto different recovery ships.
As it turns out, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk actually revealed that this fairing reuse was planned shortly after both halves were successfully lifted out of the water, indicating that both halves would fly again on an unspecified 2019 Starlink launch. Things haven’t gone quite as planned with said Starlink launch, which has suffered approximately 1-2 months of delays for unknown reasons, but whatever the source of those delays was, it appears to have been successfully dealt with.
After a successful wet dress rehearsal and static fire on November 5th, SpaceX says that the 60-satellite Starlink-1 mission – the first flight of the finalized ‘v1.0’ satellite design – is on track to lift off on November 11th, likely around 10 am Eastern Time (15:00 UTC). Starlink-1 will be SpaceX’s second Starlink launch of 2019, following the largely successful May 2019 launch debut of 60 Starlink v0.9 satellites. Although several satellites suffered anomalies (as expected), SpaceX remains in contact with all 60, while 50 successfully reached their final ~550 km (340 mi) orbits and have been operating ever since.
Since that launch, SpaceX has successfully demonstrated a range of capabilities, including streaming high-quality videos, playing video games, and more. CEO Elon Musk recently claimed to have tweeted over internet service provided by Starlink satellites, likely signifying the first public test of SpaceX’s self-built user terminals, ground antennas that customers will use to connect to the Starlink network. Finally, SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell recently revealed that the US Air Force has begun to carefully test Starlink’s capabilities, part of a ~$29M contract it awarded SpaceX last year. The USAF is testing connectivity to high-performance aircraft and has sustained speeds of more than 600 Mbps (75 MBps or 1 GB every ~13 seconds) over air-to-satellite Starlink links, impressive but still only ~3% of a single satellite’s full bandwidth.
Unintuitively, although SpaceX’s first Falcon fairing reuse is not going to involve fairing halves caught with one of its iconic recovery ships, that fact is actually more encouraging for Starlink as a whole. If Starlink satellites are robust enough to shrug some minor contaminants from sea spray and tolerate the launch environment without acoustic insulation panels, SpaceX will theoretically be able to recover and reuse fairings even if net catches don’t work every time.
Of course, as illustrated by the recent arrival and outfitting of brand new fairing recovery ship GO Ms. Chief, SpaceX’s goal clearly continues to be catching every fairing half it launches. The ability to reuse water-landed fairings just means that even fairings that miss their catch will likely still be reusable – even if only on internal Starlink launches.
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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.
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
