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.
Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
