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SpaceX to shift Falcon 9’s next West Coast launch to Florida, the first of its kind in decades
According to NASASpaceflight spaceflight reporter Michael Baylor and an Argentinian government website, SpaceX appears to have decided to move its next West Coast launch from California to Florida, signifying the first East Coast polar launch in half a century could be just four months away.
Initially expected to launch out of SpaceX’s Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) SLC-4E pad on a Falcon 9 rocket, the Argentinian space agency’s (CONAE) SAOCOM-1B Earth observation satellite was scheduled to lift off no earlier than February 2020. That launch window remains the same but Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) has somehow arranged approval to reopen the United States’ Eastern polar launch corridor. The story behind the corridor’s closure is a bizarre one.
Having earned itself a bit of notoriety and fame over the years, the story of the closure of the Eastern polar launch corridor is simple on the outset. In November 1960, a Thor Able-Star rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral for what was hoped to be a routine military launch. This particular mission carried GRAB II, a covert signals intelligence spacecraft designed to spy on radio communications around the globe.
Long story short: that Thor rocket suffered a failure that caused the booster to prematurely shut down and divert from its planned trajectory, forcing the range safety officer to manually trigger the rocket’s self-destruct mechanisms. Broken apart by explosives, one unlucky cow – standing in a Cuban field some 400 miles (650 km) downrange – was struck by rocket debris, killing the farm animal. Indeed, this might initially seem like an absurd reason to entirely end the practice of polar orbital launches from Cape Canaveral, but Cold War tensions were extremely high and President Fidel Castro leaped on the opportunity to hound the US.
An article published in a 2008 issue of the US Naval History Magazine covers this minor debacle in greater detail, shedding some much-needed light on why things played out how they did.
“In what somewhat inaccurately became known as “the herd shot around the world,” some of the falling rocket debris apparently splattered on a Cuban farm and killed a cow. “This is a Yankee provocation,” accused Revolucion, an official Cuban publication, insisting that the rocket was deliberately exploded over the country. Government radio stations cited the incident as further proof that the United States was trying to destroy the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro. One cow was even paraded in front of the U.S. Embassy in Havana wearing a placard reading “Eisenhower, you murdered one of my sisters.”
Castro filed a complaint at the United Nations, and Washington sheepishly conceded the possibility that “fragments from the rocket booster” could have landed in Cuba. CIA Director George Tenet later quipped somewhat tastelessly that it was “the first, and last, time that a satellite had been used in the production of ground beef.” Further launches overflying Cuba were postponed, and improvements were made to the Cape Canaveral range-safety system. In any case, it was a dejected NRL group that returned to Washington.”
Naval History Magazine – April 2008
That overflight postponement was never withdrawn and VAFB – located on the coast of California – has supported all US polar launch** activity since late-1960. Public word of the possible reopening of the Eastern polar launch corridor came 57 years later when Wayne Monteith, commander of the 45th Space Wing, revealed that he had tasked analysts to determine whether the corridor could be reopened in light of wildfire troubles that closed VAFB’s Western Range in 2016. They concluded that there were no obvious technical showstoppers.
**There is a report that a Thor Delta C rocket performed two sun synchronous orbit (SSO; ‘nearly polar’) launches in the mid-1960s, overflying Cuba in the process, but it’s unclear if the trajectory used was the same as those used before Thor’s 1960 GRAB II failure.
A reporter who was present at the press conference said that SpaceX’s SAOCOM 1B launch hadn’t officially been put on on the Eastern Range’s planning schedule, indicating that some work remains before it can truly be said that the Eastern polar launch corridor has been reopened. Nevertheless, Douglas Schiess, the current commander of the 45th Space Wing, was obviously confident that those final steps are more technicalities than potential showstoppers and that 21st-century Eastern polar launches are now a question of “when”, not “if”.
In Monteith’s 2017 statement, it was stated that there is one major condition on the reopening: all launch vehicles intending to fly it must feature autonomous flight termination systems (AFTS). This is due to the risk that the rocket’s plume might prevent the reliable reception of radio telemetry at Florida-based tracking stations. SpaceX is currently the only launch provider in the world to have implemented AFTS and is thus the only provider currently capable of launching polar missions from Florida.
Time will tell just how extensive Florida’s polar launch capabilities are and how dramatically the new capability will impact Vandenberg’s commercial launch ecosystem. Speaking in 2017, Monteith was fairly blunt in his assessment that California was not only tepid on the subject of expanding VAFB’s commercial launch manifest, but was actively hostile at points. His point: if Vandenberg isn’t going to put effort into stimulating a commercial polar launch ecosystem, Cape Canaveral might as well try.
VAFB is currently in the throes of a four-month launch lull previously expected to last until SpaceX’s Feb. 2020 SAOCOM 1B launch. Depending on how things play out for startup Firefly Aerospace and how readily CCAFS can take to its new polar launch role, Vandenberg’s lull could easily stretch into the second half of 2020, perhaps more than a year between launches.
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Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”
The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.
The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”
The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.
Using TBC tunnels to transport freight.
The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20’ shipping container.
Fits like a glove! https://t.co/VV0phWK4fc
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) October 19, 2026
Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.
Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.
The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.
The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.
Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.
Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.
The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.
The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel
The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.
Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.
@cybrtrkguy Permits were impossible to get
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.
A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.
The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.
Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.
Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.
There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.
The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.
The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”
Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027
Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened
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