News
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy tests continue in Texas, possible launch date revealed
After being tracked from Florida to Texas, a local observer near SpaceX’s McGregor, TX facilities spotted Falcon Heavy’s second side booster vertical on one of the area’s static fire test stands.
Posted to Facebook’s SpaceX group by Keith Wallace, a photo clearly shows the core’s distinctive nose cone, which takes the place of the interstage and improves the aerodynamic profile of the side boosters. The booster now on the stand in Texas is believed to be Core 1025, previously flown during the CRS-9 mission. The core has been modified significantly for its new role as a Falcon Heavy booster, largely in the form of strengthening structures, as well as the addition of the iconic nose cone and a connection interface that will allow it to attach to the center core.
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- Falcon Heavy’s refurbished side core, spotted 8/21/17 in Louisiana by an observant fan. (reddit /u/neauxgeaux)
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- Core 1025 spotted at SpaceX’s McGregor, TX facilities. (Facebook/Keith Wallace)
The other side booster, Core 1023, previously launched the Thaicom-8 geostationary communications satellite in 2016 and has since been refurbished, modified, and conducted two full duration static fires at the same facilities as 1025. The center core of Falcon Heavy was manufactured as a new vehicle in SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA factory due to wide-ranging differences between its structure and the average Falcon 9 first stage.
Elon Musk made headlines when he put a significant damper on expectations for the Falcon Heavy’s inaugural launch, directly stating that he would deem the launch a success if it failed without destroying the launch pad. However, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and Hans Koenigsmann, Vice President of Mission Assurance, both have made statements in the months since the conference indicating that SpaceX has considerably more confidence in the vehicle than Musk’s statements might suggest.
Musk talking about Falcon heavy at the ISS R&D conference (Teslarati/Eric Ralph)
Coincidentally, a day before side booster #2 was spotted in Texas, a member of the Facebook group toured Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex and noticed a launch calendar that suggested an inaugural launch date of November 28, 2017 for Falcon Heavy. The Visitor Complex is not run by NASA, so this date ought to be taken with many, many grains of salt. Regardless, with the final side booster now actively undergoing static fire testing ahead of being shipped back to Florida, Falcon Heavy is closer than it has ever been to being truly ready for launch. Several other big tasks lie ahead of SpaceX in order to prepare for the inaugural launch, mainly involving the reactivation of the launch pad LC-40 and subsequent modifications to LC-39A. Time will tell if the 28th of November is to become a historic day for the company.
Meanwhile, SpaceX continues to tackle its launch manifest at a seemingly routine pace of one launch every 14 or so days. Ahead of a launch currently scheduled for next Thursday, September 7, SpaceX has conducted static fire of the Falcon 9 first stage, this time the company’s East Coast launch pad, LC-39A. If all goes well, SpaceX will have the honor of sending a reusable spaceplane into orbit aboard its partially reusable Falcon 9, making for a truly appropriate pairing of payload and launch vehicle.
Static fire test complete—targeting Falcon 9 launch of OTV-5 from Pad 39A at @NASAKennedy on Thursday, September 7.
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 31, 2017
News
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
