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SpaceX on track for first four-launch month ever

Falcon 9 lifted off on June 3rd for SpaceX's first launch of the month. (Richard Angle)

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With the first mission under its belt, SpaceX is on track to complete four orbital-class launches in a single month for the first time ever, an encouraging sign as it seeks to rapidly deploy its Starlink constellation.

A June 3rd launch of 60 Starlink v1.0 satellites – the seventh such mission – kicked off SpaceX’s potentially record-breaking month while also marking the first time a Falcon 9 booster has successfully launched and landed five times. Itself coming just a week after SpaceX successfully launched NASA astronauts to the International Space Station for the first time ever, the company has done the exact opposite of resting on its laurels after that historic achievement.

Aside from Starlink V1 L7, SpaceX has another two Starlink missions scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) June 12th and 24th, as well as a critical US military GPS satellite launch NET June 30th. While the margins are exceptionally thin, there’s still a decent chance that June 2020 could wind up being SpaceX’s first four-launch month.

In support of SpaceX’s first June 2020 launch, Falcon 9 B1049 became the first booster to successfully complete five launches. (Richard Angle)

Of course, there are many, many reasons that that might not happen. SpaceX has completed more than two-thirds of its 88 successful launches in the last three and a half years, a little more than a third of the time Falcon 9 has been operational. In those 3.5 years, the company has managed to achieve three launches in a single month on four separate occasions – most recently in January 2020, while the closest SpaceX has come was four launches in 32 days in 2017. As such, a four-launch month wouldn’t exactly be game-changing relative to SpaceX’s past achievements, but it would leave the company on pace for 2020 to be its most productive year yet.

As of now, SpaceX has completed nine launches in a little over five months, pacing towards a tie with 2018, when it completed a record 21 missions. If SpaceX manages four – or even three – launches this month, its moving average for the year will jump to 22 or 24.

Five launches, one booster. (SpaceX, SpaceX, SpaceX, Richard Angle, Richard Angle)

Regardless, a four-launch month is only possible this June because of SpaceX’s recent success upgrading a second drone ship – Just Read The Instructions (JRTI) for East Coast recovery operations. With Starlink V1 L9 and GPS III SV03 scheduled on June 24th and 30th, there would be no way for drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) to head out to sea, return after Starlink V1 L9, and return to its landing zone in the Atlantic in time for another booster recovery.

Drone ship JRTI supported its first rocket landing in almost 18 months on June 3rd. (SpaceX)

By completing its June 3rd East Coast debut and June 7th return to port, drone ship JRTI can now be considered operational and should offer a new level of flexibility to SpaceX, potentially enabling more than four drone ship landings in a single month. Add in SpaceX’s twin Cape Canaveral Landing Zones (LZ-1/2) and the company should soon have the ability to perform dozens of Falcon 9 launches annually in a repeatable, reliable fashion. At least for the next year or two, SpaceX should have no shortage of payloads – both commercial and internal – to launch as it gradually improves its launch cadence.

SpaceX has 14 commercial launches scheduled in the second half of 2020, while an additional 20-24 Starlink launches were planned around the start of the year. If the company can pull off three Starlink launches this month, it will be on track to complete ~18 this year – more than enough to begin a limited service roll-out to customers around the world. For now, Starlink V1 L8 is scheduled to launch no earlier than (NET) ~5:30 am EDT (09:30 UTC) on Friday, June 12th. Falcon 9 booster B1059, an expendable upper stage, and 60 new Starlink satellites could roll out for their prelaunch static fire anytime within the next few days.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla Semi lands the biggest electric truck deal in U.S. history

Tesla leads a record 2,500 truck order, but not every truck will be a Semi.

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Tesla has landed the largest electric truck order in U.S. history. ZET SCALE, a new alliance of shippers and carriers, named Tesla its primary manufacturer on Tuesday for an initial order of 2,500 electric Class 8 trucks. The deal alone would nearly double the number of electric heavy trucks operating in the country.

According to the press release from Catalyst Mobility, the nonprofit formerly known as CALSTART, Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo were also selected as secondary manufacturers that carriers can pick if their operations call for it. No split between the four brands has been published, so the exact number of Semis in the order is not yet known.

Tesla won the top slot through a competitive request for proposals. The alliance, which Catalyst Mobility runs with the Smart Freight Centre, scored bidders on price, range, charging capability and production capacity. Pooling freight demand from founding shippers, including Microsoft and PepsiCo, let every truck maker bid lower than it would for a single fleet. “The Tesla Semi is designed for lower cost per mile operations than diesel,” said Dan Priestley, director of the Tesla Semi program, as noted in the press release.

The financing is built to pull in carriers who have avoided electric trucks. ZET Financial is issuing the purchase order for all 2,500 units and will place them with fleets through a fair market value lease. The trucks will be deployed over the next few years across 10 freight hubs in Los Angeles, Stockton, Bakersfield, Seattle and Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Atlanta, and the Newark and New York area. ZET SCALE says the first order is only the opening round, with a longer term goal of 10,000 trucks or more.

Even if Tesla ends up with only a majority share, it would still be the biggest Semi deal to date. Einride’s 500 unit order in August was the previous record, and WattEV’s 370 truck order in May was the largest California deal at the time. Einride’s CEO has since said he expects all 500 trucks delivered by the end of 2027.

The announcement lands two days before Tesla formally inaugurates its Semi factory in Nevada on September 24. The 1.7 million square foot plant sits next to Gigafactory Nevada’s 4680 cell lines and is designed for 50,000 trucks a year.

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Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant

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Credit: Grok

Tesla has expanded Grok from an in-car chatbot into a hands-free work assistant. On September 22, Tesla officially launched Grok Bot capability, confirming that drivers can now manage email, calendars, files, chats, and tasks by voice and then hand more ambitious errands to the AI-fueled productivity cheat code.

Grok itself is built by xAI. The new car features split into two layers: Connectors link Grok to outside accounts. Grok Bot, currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, can complete multi-step tasks such as placing a usual coffee order, booking a reservation, or scheduling an appointment. It truly puts the driver in a nearly complete hands-free driving and productivity setting, with ironically the only task truly requiring your hands being to touch the “Start Self-Driving” button.

We were granted access to Grok Bot’s Tesla integration a few weeks back, and we’ve been able to do a handful of things with it. On a handful of occasions, we’ve used it to order food and have it ready for pickup slightly later into the evening; we’ve managed to pick up groceries after a day of errands with Grok Bot, and outside of the car, it’s helped with budgeting and even my fantasy football draft.

Tesla shows another way to utilize it: in their demo, a driver says “Hey Grok,” asks the assistant to check an inbox, and hears that a message concerns a weekend reservation. Grok then scans the calendar, reports no conflicts, and confirms the Tahoe trip is clear. It can also add check-in details to a road-trip itinerary. The point is not novelty chat. It is keeping eyes on the road, or on Full Self-Driving, while the car handles the paperwork of a trip:

This Grok rollout is not a gadget add-on as much as it is Tesla’s thesis in software form: the car should stop being a machine you operate and start being a room you occupy.

Connectors and Grok Bot treat the cabin as an office that happens to move, and that has truly been Tesla’s intention for years now. The car has slowly become an extension of a home more than a vehicle. Inbox, calendar, groceries, takeout, and reservations become voice work, not dashboard chores that you need to do before you get in your car.

Responsibility shifts from the driver to the stack, and as many Tesla owners rely on FSD for travel, Grok Bot now handles the monotony of dinner reservations or appointments.

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X changed how everyone gets paid, and this lawsuit shows why

X sued a Bitcoin account network over fake payouts as its creator pay model shifts

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Elon Musk’s X has taken a Bitcoin-focused engagement ring to court, and the case doubles as a receipt for how differently the platform pays creators today. The company filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, alleging the pair ran six accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy and @TrendingBitcoin, as one coordinated operation to fake the kind of engagement that used to translate directly into money.

According to the filing, first reported by Gizmodo, the accounts posted near identical “BREAKING” crypto headlines seconds apart, in one case 11 seconds, then had three more handles like, reply to and repost the material to manufacture what X called “a false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.” X says the scheme pulled in at least £207,384, about $278,000, and pegs its own investigation and remediation costs at another £75,000. The accounts were suspended August 18. X general counsel James Burnham announced the case on X last weekend, writing that the company “will act forcefully to protect our platform and the earnings of genuine creators.” Musk’s own reaction, posted shortly after, was three words: “Don’t mess with 𝕏.”

The timing lines up with a a recent update to how X pays its creators. The program these accounts allegedly gamed, Creator Revenue Sharing, launched in mid 2023 and paid out based on how much a post got engaged with. Originality was never part of the formula, which is exactly how the platform ended up flooded with recycled clips, copy pasted “BREAKING” posts and replies engineered purely to farm reactions from paying subscribers.

X tried patching the model more than once, including an April cut to aggregator payouts and a March regional weighting change that Musk personally paused hours after it was announced. X retired Creator Revenue Sharing for good on September 7 and opened its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the next day.

The new math is stricter. Payouts now come only from qualified impressions, meaning unique Home Timeline views from Premium subscribers where at least half the post is visible, and replies no longer count toward eligibility at all. Copied posts, reuploaded media and reposts without meaningful changes are explicitly excluded. Allegra Jacchia, senior product manager for Creators at SpaceXAI, which now runs X’s product and AI work following xAI’s acquisition of the platform, put it bluntly, saying the goal is to reward creators who bring original ideas and perspective, “not those who have become best at gaming the system.”

Read that way, the lawsuit isn’t really about six crypto accounts. It’s X putting a dollar figure on what the old incentive structure cost, then suing to collect it right as the new one goes live. For live updates on how the case and the new rewards program shake out, follow @Teslarati on X.

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