News
SpaceX schedules first West Coast Starlink launch after a quiet July
Spaceflight Now reports that SpaceX has scheduled Starlink’s West Coast launch debut no earlier than August 10th, a mission that will also mark the company’s first launch in almost six weeks.
SpaceX completed its latest Falcon 9 launch – and 20th launch of 2021 – on June 30th, successfully deploying dozens of customer small satellites and three Starlink spacecraft as part of its second dedicated Smallsat Program ‘Transporter’ mission. Since then, the United States’ Eastern Range has been eerily quiet – as if in the eye of the storm that is SpaceX’s 2021 launch manifest. While there has been no official word one way or another, it’s been speculated that the range entered a period of routine – if inconvenient – maintenance that can often last weeks and during which no launches are possible.
Scheduled to launch no earlier than July 30th, Boeing’s second attempt at an uncrewed Orbital Flight Test (OFT-2) of its Starliner crew capsule will apparently punctuate the end of that maintenance period and a return to regular operations for SpaceX. In the meantime, Spaceflight Now’s sources suggest that the company has been making the most of its downtime.
In the last two months, SpaceX has shipped two record-breaking Falcon 9 boosters – collectively responsible for 19 orbital-class launches in the last three years – from Florida to its Vandenberg Air/Space Force Base (VAFB), California launch facilities. Drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) wrapped up an 8000 kilometer (~5000 mi) journey from its Florida home to California’s Port of Long Beach, while brand new drone ship A Shortfall of Gravitas (ASOG) arrived at Port Canaveral to take OCISLY’s place after months of assembly.
All are part of an effort to prepare for an even busier second half of 2021. According to Spaceflight Now, H2 will begin no earlier than August 10th for SpaceX with Starlink’s first dedicated polar launch (known as “Starlink 2-1”) and the first Falcon 9 mission out of Vandenberg in nine months. Combined, Falcon 9 boosters B1049 and B1051 and drone ship OCISLY should be more than capable of pushing SpaceX’s SLC-4E pad to its limits, maxing out around one launch per month for the foreseeable future.
Last month, SpaceX FCC filings also revealed plans for a number of new dedicated Starlink launches from its Cape Canaveral LC-40 pad – unexceptional if it weren’t for the fact that details in the documents implied that those upcoming missions will also be targeting polar orbits. In other words, after successfully launching more than 1600 operational Starlink satellites into mid-inclination equatorial orbits, SpaceX now appears to be laser-focused on building out the constellation’s polar ‘shell.’
Comprised of ~1100 satellites, that polar shell will ultimately give Starlink the ability to deliver internet to aircraft and ships virtually anywhere on Earth – two established connectivity markets that are ripe for disruption. To do so, however, most or all polar Starlink satellites will need optical interlinks – lasers that allow spacecraft to route communications in space and serve customers beyond the reach of land-based ground stations. Thus far, excluding two early 2018 prototypes, SpaceX has launched 13 Starlink satellites with prototype laser links.
CEO Elon Musk has stated that Starlink V2 satellites are set to debut in 2022 and will all have optical interlinks. However, the upcoming “Starlink 2-1” mission’s internal name does raise the question of whether it’s referring to the start of a new constellation ‘shell,’ the first batch of V2 satellites, or both. SpaceX job postings have also hinted at “Starlink V1.5” satellites, which could potentially be as simple as existing V1 satellites outfitted with laser links.
Ultimately, only time, SpaceX, or Elon Musk will tell and the company’s first dedicated Starlink launch is scheduled as few as two weeks from now.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
News
NHTSA just escalated its Tesla Cybercab investigation in a big way
NHTSA escalated its Cybercab audit into a sworn Special Order with a September 30 deadline.
Federal regulators have moved from asking Tesla questions about its Cybercab to demanding sworn answers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a Special Order that requires a Tesla officer to sign an affidavit attesting to the completeness of the company’s responses, with a deadline of September 30.
The order builds on Audit Query AQ26002, which NHTSA opened on September 3, the same day Tesla began commercial Cybercab service in Austin. Teslarati covered that initial inquiry when it surfaced, noting the agency wanted to understand how Tesla certified a vehicle with no permanently attached steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors as compliant with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. A Special Order is a different tool and converts a fact finding review into a legally enforceable demand, the same mechanism NHTSA used against Tesla in 2023 during its Autopilot investigation.
Several of the 21 requests target a specific gap in Cybercab’s design. One asks whether Tesla used temporarily attached human controls at any point to help certify the vehicle, and if so, which standards depended on that equipment being present. Another quotes an existing rule directly: “The service brakes shall be activated by means of a foot control.” Cybercab has no foot pedal. NHTSA wants a detailed explanation of how the vehicle satisfies that requirement, and how it complies without the kind of exemption granted to Zoox in July under Part 555, the regulatory pathway built for steering wheel free vehicles.
The order does not claim Cybercab is unsafe or that Tesla broke a rule. It requires Tesla to explain, under oath, the reasoning behind decisions the company already made when it self-certified the vehicle. That distinction matters, but so does the exposure. Motor1’s reporting, summarized here, put potential civil penalty exposure as high as $139 million if NHTSA later finds the certification was flawed, on top of whatever criminal risk comes with a false sworn statement.
Tesla has not said publicly how it plans to respond. Cybercab is still carrying passengers in Austin through the Robotaxi app while the September 30 deadline approaches, and the company has continued expanding the vehicle’s footprint even as the regulatory question remains open. The Special Order does not pause any of that and just sets a date by which Tesla has to put its certification logic on the record, with a company officer’s name attached to it.
In a new interview on Wednesday, Tesla uber bull Ron Baron said that anyone looking to buy the company’s stock should do so as soon as they can.
Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital and one of Tesla’s most persistent institutional bulls, used a CNBC Squawk Box appearance on Wednesday to deliver a familiar message with fresh urgency: In his opinion, Tesla stock is a buy:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.”
The Baron Capital frontman’s case is built around Full Self-Driving. Tesla reported 1.48 million active FSD subscriptions in the second quarter, up 56 percent year over year, and company officials have said roughly 55 percent of new North American deliveries left with a subscription enabled.
Baron framed that attach rate as proof the product is moving from enthusiast extra to default expectation, and as a reason software, not just vehicle volume, should drive the next phase of value.
His conviction on Tesla shares is not theoretical, as Baron Capital made its first Tesla investment in 2014, after years of meetings that began around the 2010 IPO roadshow. The firm later built a large SpaceX position starting in 2017.
Ron Baron today in new interview on Tesla:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.” pic.twitter.com/Rv5PB0bVZ2
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 16, 2026
Baron said those Musk-led bets have generated about $30 billion of the $71 billion in profits Baron Capital has produced for clients. He put the firm’s current exposure at roughly $25 billion in SpaceX and $5 billion in Tesla. Personally, he described SpaceX as his largest holding, at about $5 billion, with about $1.5 billion in Tesla and additional Tesla exposure through the firm’s funds.
That concentration is also a statement of loyalty. Asked about talk of a SpaceX-Tesla combination, Baron said he had already walked Elon Musk through arguments for and against a deal, then declined to repeat them on air. His public position was simpler: “Whatever you decide is better is what I’m going to support,” he said to Musk.
Baron also said that he picked up the farewell edition of the Model S after Tesla decided to sunset the vehicle earlier this year, calling it his favorite car he’s ever driven.
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
NHTSA just escalated its Tesla Cybercab investigation in a big way
