Over the last few weeks, SpaceX’s Florida Starship launch pad construction has made some major progress and the structure that will one day support the first East Coast Starship and Super Heavy flight tests have grown several stories tall and show no signs of slowing down.
In a bid to make what could otherwise be an extremely expensive and time-consuming ordeal much faster and cheaper, SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy launch pads will be quite a bit different from the company’s several existing launch pads. This includes Kennedy Space Center’s LC-39A pad, leased and operated by SpaceX for Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon missions and formerly used for dozens of Space Shuttle launches and all Saturn V Apollo Moon missions.
In a very on-brand move, SpaceX has decided to build Starship’s East Coast orbital pad within the bounds of Pad 39A but without using the pad’s existing launch mount or concrete flame trench. Instead, SpaceX is building a separate steel mount and water-cooled thruster diverter designed to stand up to the fury of a Super Heavy booster without allowing the rocket’s plume to dig a crater in the ground after ever ignition.
While choosing to pursue a dramatically different launch pad design for Starship may at first glance seem risky, SpaceX actually has more than a decade of experience building and operating similar mount and flame diverter setups at its McGregor, Texas rocket development and test facilities. A step further, NASA itself once heavily relied on similar technologies and strategies to rapidly build, test, and fly rockets larger than anything that came before them.
Most notably, the Saturn I rocket that preceded the massive Saturn V used a launch mount and flame diverter that looks quite similar to a conceptual setup SpaceX recently showed off in an updated Starship launch render.
SpaceX’s Starship mount is substantially taller, has gone with steel instead of reinforced concrete, and will have a fixed flame deflector, but the similarities are otherwise significant. Conceptually, both mounts are topped with a flat surface with numerous support arms and a large cutout for the rocket to sit atop and its exhaust to exit through. Similar to Falcon 9, the single-core Super Heavy booster mount shown in SpaceX renders will likely have four hold-down clamps and two tail service masts (TSMs), umbilical connections that supply the rocket with propellant, electricity, connectivity, and any other required fluids.
As described and pictured above, Starship’s Pad 39A launch mount has rapidly grown from a few metal beams into a major structure in just the last few weeks. By rough estimate, the existing mount is already 20 or so meters (70+ ft) tall and has large mounts for the installation of additional structures on top of it, while the conceptual mount shown in SpaceX renders appears to be about 25-30 m (80-100 ft) tall.
In the last few days, technicians have begun installing the first framework of the flame diverter SpaceX will use to prevent Starship from damaging itself or its surroundings during static fires and launches. Given the fact that Starship’s Super Heavy booster – as currently described – will be the single most powerful launch vehicle in history, such a vast amount of energy is not easy to dissipate. To accomplish that task, SpaceX revealed in August 2019 planning documents that the 39A diverter would be water-cooled.
The largest thrust diverter SpaceX has built supports the company’s McGregor, Texas booster test stand and has supported dozens upon dozens of integrated static fire tests. Originally designed to enable integrated triple-booster Falcon Heavy testing, SpaceX ultimately decided not to use that capability but the diverter is still immense, likely measuring at least 15m (50 ft) tall and 10m (33 ft) wide. By building dozens of pipes into the surface and structure of the diverter and filling those pipes with recirculating water, it can survive several minutes of hot rocket exhaust without suffering catastrophic erosion or outright melting.
It’s safe to say that Super Heavy will require a diverter that is far larger still to survive thrust equivalent to more than three Falcon Heavy rockets, but that very diverter and launch mount are already well on their way to completion at SpaceX’s Kennedy Space Center launch pad.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
X’s updates to its updates
As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks.
“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.
The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.
xAI and X
X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award.
As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards.
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close.
MotorTrend reverses course
MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.
According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.
Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.
High cost and high capability
MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.
Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.
Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.
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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles.
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.
Grokipedia’s rapid growth
xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias.
At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.
Elon Musk’s ambitious plans
With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2.
Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos.
“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
