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SpaceX Falcon 9 booster sails into port after historic third launch and landing
Although a sister rocket did not fare nearly as well during a separate landing attempt 48 hours later, SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 booster B1046 nailed its third successful launch and landing on December 3rd and arrived in Port of Los Angeles a bit less than 48 hours later.
Greeting the rocket after its milestone third reuse was a rare Los Angeles rainstorm, lending a lovely reflective sheen to all uncovered surfaces as low clouds and an obscured sun bathed everything in a stark and uniform off-white light.
That’s one scorched booster, still standing on JRTI at the moment, in the rain. B1046.3 arrived back at port earlier this morning after launching and landing for the 3rd time during the SSO-A mission. What. A. Sight. #spacex pic.twitter.com/EhHY9HK9cD
— Pauline Acalin (@w00ki33) December 5, 2018
It is difficult to conceive of a set of conditions that might serve to better emphasize the well-worn patina of soot and charring now fully covering the once-shiny white exterior of B1046’s fuel and oxidizer tanks, a sort of literal badge of honor for the three orbital-class launches the booster has now supported in the last six months. Functionally speaking, cleaning a Falcon 9 booster from top to bottom would be an unbelievably tedious, time-consuming, and largely pointless task, requiring careful spot-cleaning of something like 400 square meters (4300 square feet).
While SpaceX did repaint recovered Falcon 9 boosters a handful of times around the start of commercial reflights, it always served more of an aesthetic purpose over anything seriously utilitarian. Furthermore, aerospace-grade paint like that used by SpaceX is quite heavy potentially weighing several hundred kilograms per booster and requiring a week at minimum to fully apply a new coat. Some followers like to point out the lost benefits of Falcon 9’s reflective white paint, serving as a mild thermal insulator for Falcon 9’s tanks when filled with supercool propellant. While it certainly exists, the additional heating induced by soot coatings is completely negligible for Falcon 9, which is constantly topped off with chilled propellant prior to launch.
As such, sooty boosters will be around as long as the kerolox-power Falcon family remains in operation. Not too long from now, shiny new Falcon rockets will likely be as rare as the expendable rocket launches they partially represent – the launch vehicles of the future will be rugged workhorses more comparable to the 737s that fill the ranks of airliner fleets than to single-use works of art. Nevertheless, soot is by no means an innate feature of rockets, reusable or otherwise, instead deriving from Falcon 9’s pragmatic choice of kerosene as fuel – soot is simply an inevitable byproduct of kerosene combustion.
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- Falcon 9 B1049 lifts off for the first time at SpaceX’s LC-40 pad in September 2018. (Teslarati)
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- B1048 bares its sooty skin the morning before launch. (Pauline Acalin)
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- A gif of Raptor throttling over the course of a 90+ second static-fire test in McGregor, Texas. (SpaceX)
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- SpaceX’s subscale Raptor engine has completed more than 1200 seconds of testing in less than two years. (SpaceX)
A long and sooty future
Whenever it begins flying, the sole byproducts of the combustion of BFR/Starlink/Super Heavy’s methane-oxygen (methalox) propellant are water vapor and carbon dioxide, although true methane supplies will inevitably have slight impurities and thus cause the negligible production of some less pleasant byproducts. Raptor, the methalox rocket engine that will power BFR, has been performing hot-fire tests for more than two years, and the sheer differences between the exhaust of Merlin and Raptor are a striking example of the different chemistries at work. As a result of much cleaner combustion, BFR may produce no soot byproducts whatsoever – enjoy it while it lasts!
In the meantime, Falcon 9 will continue to fly and refly for the foreseeable future. B1046’s third successful launch and recovery is a huge step in that direction and the very fact that the most noticeable difference is a new coating of soot at least partially hints at the efficacy of Block 5’s reusability-minded upgrades. Even when twice-flown Block 5 octaweb heat shields are glimpsed, it’s all but impossible to tell the difference between an unflown or twice-flown example, while the new jet-black thermal protection on Block 5 interstages and octawebs only exhibit subtle scarring after reentry heating.
It almost goes without saying that the real killer in multi-use aerospace products – fatigue – is rarely visible to the naked eye, so the external appearance of Falcon boosters is more of a swoon-worthy placebo than anything else. Still, Falcon 9 Block 5 continues to demonstrate that its external appearance is almost equally indicative of truly robust reusability engineering.
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- B1046. (Pauline Acalin)
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- . . . (Pauline Acalin)
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- ENHANCE! (Pauline Acalin)
For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
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NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
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Tesla AI team burns the Christmas midnight oil by releasing FSD v14.2.2.1
The update was released just a day after FSD v14.2.2 started rolling out to customers.
Tesla is burning the midnight oil this Christmas, with the Tesla AI team quietly rolling out Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.2.2.1 just a day after FSD v14.2.2 started rolling out to customers.
Tesla owner shares insights on FSD v14.2.2.1
Longtime Tesla owner and FSD tester @BLKMDL3 shared some insights following several drives with FSD v14.2.2.1 in rainy Los Angeles conditions with standing water and faded lane lines. He reported zero steering hesitation or stutter, confident lane changes, and maneuvers executed with precision that evoked the performance of Tesla’s driverless Robotaxis in Austin.
Parking performance impressed, with most spots nailed perfectly, including tight, sharp turns, in single attempts without shaky steering. One minor offset happened only due to another vehicle that was parked over the line, which FSD accommodated by a few extra inches. In rain that typically erases road markings, FSD visualized lanes and turn lines better than humans, positioning itself flawlessly when entering new streets as well.
“Took it up a dark, wet, and twisty canyon road up and down the hill tonight and it went very well as to be expected. Stayed centered in the lane, kept speed well and gives a confidence inspiring steering feel where it handles these curvy roads better than the majority of human drivers,” the Tesla owner wrote in a post on X.
Tesla’s FSD v14.2.2 update
Just a day before FSD v14.2.2.1’s release, Tesla rolled out FSD v14.2.2, which was focused on smoother real-world performance, better obstacle awareness, and precise end-of-trip routing. According to the update’s release notes, FSD v14.2.2 upgrades the vision encoder neural network with higher resolution features, enhancing detection of emergency vehicles, road obstacles, and human gestures.
New Arrival Options also allowed users to select preferred drop-off styles, such as Parking Lot, Street, Driveway, Parking Garage, or Curbside, with the navigation pin automatically adjusting to the ideal spot. Other refinements include pulling over for emergency vehicles, real-time vision-based detours for blocked roads, improved gate and debris handling, and Speed Profiles for customized driving styles.
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
