News
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.
-
- A GIF of Delta IV Heavy’s inaugural 2004 launch. The mission was a partial failure. (ULA)
-
- 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 President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is now the centerpiece of the company’s newly revised Referral Program, which launched on October 29.
Instead of referring people to purchase vehicles and the referrer receiving $250 in Tesla Credit, the new program now incentivizes Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
If a Tesla owner is on an FSD trial and uses a referral code to subscribe to Full Self-Driving, the person whose Referral Link was used will receive one month of FSD (Supervised). Their code can be utilized 12 times per year, with January 1 marking the reset date.
Realistically, this means that if your Referral Code is used by 12 Tesla owners on an FSD trial, you will receive a full year of FSD for free.
🚨 Here is Tesla’s new Referral Program for Full Self-Driving (Supervised):
When someone subscribes to FSD using your link, you’ll get a month free. Up to a year of FSD is available to you for free!
If you’d like to use my link: https://t.co/g00IX9OCE3 https://t.co/GFBzEO2jjS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The previous program made it pretty difficult to get referrals; buying a vehicle is obviously a much larger financial strain than subscribing to Full Self-Driving for a month.
Of course, the previous Referral Program also offered a tangible benefit: $250 in credits you could use on Service, Supercharging, or anything in the Tesla Shop. It truly could pay for someone’s travel for a year. It recently bought me a new backpack and a T-shirt.
However, this new program is much more attainable for those who do not have a massive online presence of a slew of friends in the Tesla community who will use the code and max out subscriptions for vehicle purchases.
Woke up to maxed out Referrals! Thank you guys, that’s awesome!
Share your referral link below so others can use it! https://t.co/kesbwTcoTV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The Full Self-Driving suite will now be the keystone of the Referral Program, which makes it more inclusive and more fun for everyone with an awesome benefit.
It also gives the impression that Tesla is truly focused on FSD subscriptions, something that saw a tremendous increase in volume in Q3, as 75 percent of deliveries for the quarter came with an FSD subscription attached.
Full Self-Driving data is so instrumental to the suite’s improvement that this kind of program benefits Tesla as much as it does the consumer.
Elon Musk
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
Tesla’s quiet mode reaches Model Y Robotaxis, blacking out the screen for riders wanting rest.
Tesla’s quiet mode, the setting that blacks out the screen for riders who want to rest, has moved beyond the Cybercab. A video posted Thursday by Spencer (@scotsrule08) shows the feature running in a Model Y Robotaxi on a night ride that appears to be in Dallas.
New quiet mode now on @Robotaxi https://t.co/2cM2eM9NeN — Spencer (@scotsrule08) October 29, 2026
The rider taps a small crescent moon icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. The map, media player, app shortcuts and Grok prompt disappear, leaving a dark display with “Arriving soon,” the destination and a line reading “Tap display to exit quiet mode.” Controls a passenger may still need, including Pull Over, cabin temperature, volume and Support, stay visible. One tap anywhere brings the full map back.
Quiet mode first showed up in the Cybercab last week, which Teslarati reported alongside a new rear camera view. Tesla has been trimming cabin noise in other ways too. On October 25, Spencer reported that Robotaxi turn signals now chime for the first four blinks and then go silent. Tesla has not published release notes for either change.
Elon Musk has been pitching this use for more than a decade. In October 2014, he said that “maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,”
By 2017 he was setting a higher bar. Speaking at TED, Musk said the hard part was not making self-driving work 99.9 percent of the time, “because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.”
Owners asked for something similar in their own cars. In December 2019, a Tesla owner requested a Nap Mode that would keep the climate running and wake the occupant with an alarm, and Musk answered “Ok,” as Teslarati covered at the time.
The line returned when the Cybercab was unveiled at the We, Robot event in October 2024. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. On Tesla’s first quarter earnings call in April 2025, he called it the deciding measure: “The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year,”
Tesla has run driverless Model Y rides in Dallas and Houston since April, so a passenger dozing off on the way home is now a realistic use of the button. Tesla is also offering new riders a free first trip in both cities, according to an in-app screen shared by tracker Ethan McKanna, and said on its third quarter call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas next month.
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Tesla Full Self-Driving becomes main pillar of new Referral Program
