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SpaceX set to launch NASA astronauts first after Boeing narrowly avoids catastrophe in space
SpaceX is set to become the first private company to launch NASA astronauts as few as three months from now, all but guaranteed after Boeing’s competing Starliner spacecraft narrowly avoided a catastrophe in space on its orbital launch debut.
The ultimate purpose of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) is to ensure that the US is once again able to launch its own astronauts into orbit and to the International Space Station (ISS) – a capability the country has not possessed since it prematurely canceled the Space Shuttle in 2011. In a logical step, NASA decided to fund two independent companies to ensure that astronaut launch capabilities would be insulated against any single failure, ultimately awarding contracts to Boeing and SpaceX in 2014. Boeing did actually try to have Congress snub SpaceX back in 2014 and solely award the contract to Starliner, but the company thankfully failed.
As a result, SpaceX beating Boeing on the (not-a-) race to launch NASA astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) would represent an immense and deeply embarrassing upset in the traditional aerospace industry – essentially a case of David and Goliath. For the better part of a decade, Congress, most industry officials, and Boeing itself have argued ad nauseum the Starliner spacecraft was clearly a far safer bet than anything built by SpaceX – Boeing, obviously, has far more experience (“heritage”) in the spaceflight industry. However, multiple “catastrophic” failures during Boeing’s recent Starliner ‘Orbital Flight Test’ (OFT) paint a far uglier picture.
As its PR team and executives will constantly remind anyone within earshot, Boeing helped build the first stage of the Saturn V rocket, while a company it bought years after the fact (Rockwell) did technically buy the company (North American) that built the spacecraft (Apollo CSM) that carried NASA astronauts from the Earth to the Moon (and back). Rockwell (acquired by Boeing) also built all five of NASA’s Space Shuttle orbiters.
In the 1990s, Boeing – set to lose a competition to build an expendable rocket for the US military – acquired McDonnell Douglas at the last second, slapping a Boeing sticker on the Delta IV rocket – designed and built by MD. Boeing then conspired to steal trade secrets from Lockheed Martin (bidding Atlas V) and used that stolen info to mislead the USAF about the real cost of Delta IV, thus securing the more lucrative of two possible contracts. This is all to point out the simple fact that Boeing has far less real experience designing spacecraft than it tends to act like it does.
As such, it’s substantially less surprising than it might otherwise be that Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has had such a rocky orbital launch debut. Preceded just a matter of weeks by a quality assurance failure that prevented one of Starliner’s four parachutes from deploying after an otherwise-successful pad abort test, a second Starliner spacecraft launched atop an Atlas V rocket on its orbital launch debut (OFT) on December 20th, 2019. Atlas V performed flawlessly but immediately after Starliner separated from the rocket, things went very wrong.
Bad software ultimately caused the spacecraft to perform thousands of uncommanded maneuvering thruster burns, depleting a majority of its propellant before Boeing was able to intervene. Starliner managed to place itself in low Earth orbit (LEO), but by then it had nowhere near enough propellant left to rendezvous and dock with the ISS – one of the most crucial purposes of the uncrewed flight test. Unable to complete that part of the mission, Boeing instead did a few small tests over the course of 48 hours in orbit before commanding the spacecraft’s reentry and landing on December 22nd.
But wait, there’s more!
As it turns out, although both NASA and Boeing inexplicably withheld the information from the public for more than two months, Boeing’s OFT Starliner spacecraft reportedly almost suffered a second major software failure just hours before reentry. According to NASA and Boeing comments in a press conference held only after news of that second failure broke after an advisory panel broached the issue in February 2020, a second Starliner software bug – caught only because the first failure forced Boeing to double-check its code – could have had far more catastrophic consequences.
NASA officials stated that had the second bug not been caught, some of Starliner’s thruster valves would have been frozen, either entirely preventing or severely hampering the spacecraft’s detached trunk from properly maneuvering in orbit. Apparently, that service module (carrying fuel, abort engines, a solar array, and more) could have crashed into the crew module shortly after detaching from it. Unsurprisingly, that ‘recontact’ could have severely damaged the Starliner crew capsule, potentially making reentry impossible (or even fatal) if its relatively fragile heat shield bore the brunt of that impact.
SpaceX has undeniably suffered its own significant failures, most notably when flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule C201 exploded moments before a static fire test, but the company has already proven that it fixed the source of the failure with the spacecraft’s second successful launch on a Falcon 9 rocket. Ultimately, it’s becoming nearly impossible to rationally argue that Boeing’s Starliner will be safer than SpaceX’s Crew Dragon – let alone worth the 40% premium Boeing is charging NASA and the US taxpayer.
According to Ars Technica’s Eric Berger, Crew Dragon’s inaugural astronaut launch is now tentatively scheduled as early as late-April to late-May 2020. Paperwork – not technical hurdles – is currently the source of that uncertainty, and all Demo-2 mission hardware (Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon) is either already in Florida or days away from arriving.
Due to the combination of similar software failures Starliner suffered during its first and only launch, Boeing now has to review the entirety of the spacecraft’s software – more than a million lines of code – before NASA will allow the company to launch again. There’s also a very good chance that Boeing will now have to repeat the Orbital Flight Test, potentially incurring major delays. In short, it would take nothing less than a miracle – or NASA making a public mockery of itself for Boeing’s benefit – for Starliner to launch astronauts before SpaceX.
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Tesla intertwines FSD with in-house Insurance for attractive incentive
Every mile logged under FSD now carries a documented financial value—lower risk, lower cost—based on Tesla’s internal driving data rather than external crash statistics alone.
Tesla intertwined its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite with its in-house Insurance initiative in an effort to offer an attractive incentive to drivers.
Tesla announced that its new Safety Score 3.0 will automatically have a perfect score of 100 with every mile driven with Full Self-Driving (Supervised) enabled.
The change is designed to boost customers’ average safety scores and deliver noticeably lower monthly premiums.
The move marks the clearest link yet between Tesla’s autonomous driving technology and its proprietary insurance product. Tesla Insurance already relies on real-time vehicle data—such as acceleration, braking, following distance, and speed—to calculate a Safety Score between 0 and 100. Higher scores have long translated into cheaper rates.
Under the previous system, however, even brief manual interventions could drag down the average, frustrating owners who rely heavily on FSD. Version 3.0 eliminates that penalty for supervised autonomous miles, effectively treating FSD-driven segments as the safest possible driving behavior.
The incentive is immediate and financial. Drivers who keep FSD engaged for the majority of their trips will see their overall score rise, potentially shaving hundreds of dollars off annual premiums.
Tesla framed the update as a direct response to customer feedback, many of whom had complained that the old scoring model punished the very behavior it was meant to encourage.
For now, the program applies only to new policies in six states: Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Virginia, and Illinois.
Existing policyholders are not yet included, a point that drew swift questions from the Tesla community. Many owners in other states, including California and Georgia, expressed hope that the benefit would expand nationwide soon.
The announcement arrives as Tesla continues to roll out FSD Supervised updates and push for regulatory approval of more advanced autonomy. By tying insurance savings directly to FSD usage, the company is putting its own actuarial weight behind the technology’s safety claims.
Every mile logged under FSD now carries a documented financial value—lower risk, lower cost—based on Tesla’s internal driving data rather than external crash statistics alone.
Tesla has not disclosed exact premium reductions or the full rollout timeline beyond the six launch states.
Still, the message is clear: the more drivers trust FSD Supervised, the more Tesla Insurance will reward them. In an era when legacy insurers remain cautious about autonomous tech, Tesla is betting that its own data will prove the safest miles are the ones driven hands-free.
Elon Musk
Tesla finalizes AI5 chip design, Elon Musk makes bold claim on capability
The Tesla CEO’s words mark a strategic shift. Tesla has long emphasized software-hardware co-design, squeezing maximum performance from every transistor. Musk previously described AI5 as optimized for edge inference in both Robotaxi and Optimus.
Tesla has finalized its chip design for AI5, as Elon Musk confirmed today that the new chip has reached the tape-out stage, the final step before mass production.
But in a brief reply on X, Musk clarified Tesla’s AI hardware roadmap, essentially confirming that the new chip will not be utilized for being “enough to achieve much better than human safety for FSD.”
He said that AI4 is enough to do that.
Instead, the AI5 chip will be focused on Tesla’s big-time projects for the future: Optimus and supercomputer clusters.
Musk thanked TSMC and Samsung for production support, noting that AI5 could become “one of the most produced AI chips ever.” Yet, the key pivot came in his direct answer: vehicles no longer need the bleeding-edge silicon.
And thank you to @TaiwanSemi_TSC and @Samsung for your support in bringing this chip to production! It will be one of most produced AI chips ever.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2026
Existing AI4 hardware, which is already deployed in hundreds of thousands of HW4-equipped Teslas, delivers safety metrics superior to human drivers for Full Self-Driving. AI5 will instead accelerate Optimus robot development and massive Dojo-style training clusters.
The Tesla CEO’s words mark a strategic shift. Tesla has long emphasized software-hardware co-design, squeezing maximum performance from every transistor. Musk previously described AI5 as optimized for edge inference in both Robotaxi and Optimus.
Now, with AI4 proving sufficient, the company avoids costly retrofits across its fleet while redirecting next-generation compute toward higher-value applications: dexterous robots and exponential training scale.
But is it reasonable to assume AI4 enables unsupervised self-driving? Yes, but with important caveats.
On the hardware side, the claim is credible. Tesla’s FSD stack runs end-to-end neural networks trained on billions of miles of real-world data. Internal safety data reportedly shows AI4-equipped vehicles already outperforming average human drivers by a significant margin in controlled metrics (collision avoidance, reaction time, edge-case handling).
Dual-redundant AI4 chips provide ample headroom for the driving task, leaving bandwidth for future model improvements without new silicon. Musk’s assertion aligns with Tesla’s pattern of over-provisioning compute early, then optimizing ruthlessly, exactly as HW3 once sufficed before HW4 scaled further.
Optimus and our supercomputer clusters.
AI4 is enough to achieve much better than human safety for FSD.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2026
Unsupervised autonomy, meaning Level 4 or higher, is not solely a compute problem. Regulatory approval remains the primary gate.
Even if AI4 achieves “much better than human” safety statistically, agencies like the NHTSA demand exhaustive validation, liability frameworks, and public trust.
Tesla’s supervised FSD has shown rapid gains in recent versions, yet real-world edge cases, like construction zones, emergency vehicles, and adverse weather, still require driver intervention in many jurisdictions. Competitors like Waymo operate limited unsupervised fleets, but only in geofenced areas with extensive mapping. Tesla’s vision-only, fleet-scale approach is more ambitious—and harder to certify globally.
In short, Musk’s post is both pragmatic and bullish. AI4 is likely capable of unsupervised FSD from a technical standpoint. Whether regulators and consumers agree, and how quickly, will determine if Tesla’s bet pays off.
The company’s capital-efficient path keeps existing cars relevant while pouring future compute into robots. If the safety data holds, unsupervised autonomy could arrive sooner than many expect.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk signals expansion of Tesla’s unique side business
Long envisioning the Tesla Diner as more than a charging stop, Musk has clearly adopted the idea that the Supercharger and Restaurant combo is a good thing for the company to have. It’s a blend of classic American drive-in culture with futuristic Tesla flair, complete with a 1950s-inspired design, movie screens, and on-site dining.
Elon Musk has signaled an expansion of Tesla’s unique side business, something that really has nothing to do with cars or spaceships, but fans of the company have truly adopted it as just another one of its awesome ventures.
Musk confirmed on Wednesday that Tesla would build a new Diner location in Palo Alto, Northern California. After hinting last October that it “probably makes sense to open one near our Giga Texas HQ in Austin and engineering HQ in Palo Alto,” it seems one of those locations is being set into motion.
Sure
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2026
Long envisioning the Tesla Diner as more than a charging stop, Musk has clearly adopted the idea that the Supercharger and Restaurant combo is a good thing for the company to have. It’s a blend of classic American drive-in culture with futuristic Tesla flair, complete with a 1950s-inspired design, movie screens, and on-site dining.
He first floated broader expansion plans shortly after the LA opening in July 2025, noting that if the prototype succeeded, Tesla would roll out similar venues in major cities worldwide and along long-distance Supercharger routes.
Earlier hints included a confirmed second site at Starbase in Texas, tied to SpaceX operations, underscoring the Diner’s role in enhancing Tesla’s ecosystem behind vehicles.
The Los Angeles location on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood has served as a high-profile test case. Opened in July 2025 at 7001 Santa Monica Blvd., it features the world’s largest urban Supercharging station with 80 V4 stalls open to all NACS-compatible EVs, over 250 dining seats, rooftop views, and 24/7 service.
The retro-futuristic building replaced a former Shakey’s and quickly became a destination. Tesla reported selling 50,000 burgers in the first 72 days—an average of over 700 daily—drawing crowds with Cybertruck-shaped packaging, breakfast extensions until 2 p.m., and movie screenings.
Palo Alto stands out as a logical next step for several reasons. As Tesla’s longstanding engineering headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley, the city is home to thousands of Tesla employees, engineers, and executives who could benefit from a convenient, branded gathering spot.
The area boasts high EV adoption rates, dense tech talent, and heavy traffic along key corridors, making a large Supercharger-diner an ideal fit for both daily commuters and long-haul travelers.
Proximity to Stanford University and the innovation ecosystem would amplify its appeal, potentially serving as a showcase for Tesla’s vision of integrated mobility and lifestyle experiences. It could be a great way for Tesla to recruit new talent from one of the country’s best universities.
If Tesla and Musk decide to move forward with a Palo Alto diner, it would build directly on the LA prototype’s momentum while addressing Musk’s earlier calls for expansion near core Tesla hubs.
Whether it materializes as a full confirmation or evolves from these hints remains to be seen, but the pattern is clear: Tesla is testing ways to make charging stops memorable. For EV drivers and enthusiasts alike, a Silicon Valley outpost could blend cutting-edge tech with nostalgic comfort, further embedding Tesla into everyday culture. As Musk’s comments suggest, the future of the Diner looks promising.
Tesla intertwines FSD with in-house Insurance for attractive incentive
Tesla finalizes AI5 chip design, Elon Musk makes bold claim on capability
