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SpaceX Falcon Heavy spied on the move ahead of test fire
While touring Florida’s Kennedy Space Center by bus earlier this morning (January 8), several spaceflight fans captured SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rolling out to Pad 39A for the second time ever. Following a basic fit check and photo opportunity at the launch pad in the last week of 2017, the launch vehicle now appears to be prepped and ready for its first wet dress rehearsal (WDR) and static fire test.
If all goes well during the wet dress rehearsal’s propellant loading tests, an admittedly less than guaranteed outcome, then the WDR will likely translate into a momentous occasion for the massive rocket: the first-ever simultaneous ignition of all three of its integrated first stages and their 27 Merlin 1D engines. While relatively unique to SpaceX, the company has made a habit of testing each and every new Falcon 9 first stage with two full-up static fire ignitions, one at McGregor, Texas and the other at the vehicle’s given launch pad. Following the destructive failure of Falcon 9 during a September 2016 static fire test, SpaceX further upped their cautious procedures by removing the payload for all future static fires, lest the customer request that it remain integrated for the sake of time savings.
Unsurprisingly, no customers have since chosen to bypass SpaceX’s new risk-reducing procedures. Falcon Heavy will clearly be a return to older methods, delineated by the clear presence of the second stage and Tesla Roadster payload at its top, although this decision was almost undoubtedly driven by the fact that the payload is in no real way valuable or even important for the “customer,” SpaceX itself. The Tesla Roadster is more or less a stand-in for the traditional boilerplate satellite (read: hunk of dead metal) often launched during the inaugural flights of new rockets. The best recent example is the 2004 inaugural launch of Boeing’s Delta IV Heavy rocket, similar to Falcon Heavy in the sense that it also features a triple-core first stage. Its first launch carried a payload that was quite literally a 6000 kg (13500 lb) piece of metal paired with a number of sensors used to gather vibrational data.
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- A GIF of Delta IV Heavy’s inaugural 2004 launch. The mission was a partial failure. (ULA)
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- The mission’s DemoSat, a 6100kg hunk of metal (and two DoD nanosats). (ULA)
Somewhat fittingly, Delta IV Heavy is aiming to conduct its own launch within the next week or so, providing the East Coast with back to back launches of the world’s two largest operational rockets. Still, as SpaceX and Elon Musk have repeatedly mentioned, Falcon Heavy is far more capable than even Delta IV Heavy: while Falcon Heavy is noticeably shorter, narrower, and thinner than Delta, it weighs almost twice as much and will sport nearly 2.5 times the thrust at liftoff.
Delta IV Heavy’s launches are undoubtedly spectacles to behold, particularly given explosive launch procedures, but the vehicle is entirely expendable, whereas Falcon Heavy will attempt recovery of all three of its first stages, and may eventually allow SpaceX to test technology that will enable second stage recovery, as well.
Falcon Heavy will launch a somewhat livelier version of Delta IV Heavy’s boilerplate mass-simulator with the Tesla Roadster, and the main goal is quite clearly to test the vehicle’s ability to send a payload into a trans-Martian injection (TMI) orbit, albeit likely without an actual injection into orbit around Mars at the other end. Even if the payload is somewhat silly, a successful launch to TMI would be the most literal step yet made by the commercial space company along its path to Mars. If this week’s propellant loading and static fire go as planned, launch will likely follow within a week or so – maybe two weeks given the new and unpredictable nature of testing what is more or less a prototype rocket.
Falcon Heavy goes vertical pic.twitter.com/uG1k0WISv1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 5, 2018
Falcon Heavy can be expected to go vertical at the pad within the next 12-24 hours at most, and static fire will follow soon after. After a highly successful evening photographing the January 7 launch of Falcon 9 with Zuma, Teslarati’s launch photographer Tom Cross will be attempting to photograph the momentous test fire as it happens, and you can follow along live on Teslarati’s Instagram.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
SpaceX targets September 22 for Starship Flight 14, its first attempt to reach real orbit.
SpaceX has set September 22 as the target date for Starship’s 14th test flight, and this one carries a different goal than any of the 13 that came before it. Every previous Starship mission has intentionally flown a suborbital arc, reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launched. Flight 14 is designed to send the craft into a genuine orbit around Earth for the first time.
The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central time at Starbase in South Texas and runs for 75 minutes, pending regulatory approval, according to SpaceX’s mission description published Tuesday. If the flight goes as planned, Starship will circle the planet roughly six times at an altitude near 275 kilometers over about ten hours before a deorbit burn sends it toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a departure from the Indian Ocean recoveries used on the last several flights.
The mission also marks the first attempt to put a working batch of Starlink V3 satellites into actual service. Flight 13 carried 20 of the new satellites in July, but because that mission never left a suborbital trajectory, the payload reentered along with the ship instead of separating into orbit.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Each V3 satellite is rated for roughly one terabit per second of downlink capacity, so a successful deployment on Flight 14 would be SpaceX’s largest single jump in network bandwidth since Starlink began flying on Falcon 9.
Flight 13 still did the heavier lifting on the technical side. That July mission flew a deliberately more stressful reentry profile to test Starship’s heat shield, and the ship survived its softest splashdown yet, intact enough for drone inspections shortly after landing. Elon Musk said the flight delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some,” a result Teslarati covered in detail when he later said SpaceX had solved the vehicle’s biggest reusability challenge. Flight 14 is where SpaceX starts spending that confidence on an actual orbital insertion rather than another controlled fall back to Earth.
One thing Flight 14 will not attempt is a tower catch of the ship. Musk floated the idea right after Flight 13, but walked the timeline back in August, saying a catch attempt was more likely “in a few months.” The Super Heavy booster will still aim for its own recovery, targeting an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America, the same approach used on recent flights.
September 22 is SpaceX’s own target, not a locked date. Starship’s schedule has slipped before over hardware readiness and FAA sign off, and the company has said as much in its own mission notes. But the plan itself represents the clearest marker yet that Starship is moving from a suborbital test program into something meant to carry paying payloads and, eventually, people.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.
Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.
Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.
He said:
“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:
It’s out of this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Excitement guaranteed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.
Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.
However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
