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SpaceX prioritizes Starship test flights, pauses plans for floating launch pads

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President and COO Gwynne Shotwell says that SpaceX has temporarily abandoned plans for floating Starship launch platforms to ensure it’s fully focused on gaining flight experience with the next-generation rocket.

On February 13th, a NASASpaceflight.com forum member reported that a pair of oil rigs were scheduled to leave a Mississippi port for an unknown destination. At one point, those oil rigs – christened Deimos and Phobos after Mars’ moons – were owned by SpaceX. In mid-2020, SpaceX bought the former half-billion-dollar oil rigs for just $7 million. Around the same time, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that SpaceX was “building floating, superheavy-class spaceports for Mars, moon & hypersonic travel around Earth.”

SpaceX’s oil rig purchase was publicly uncovered in January 2021. Since then, however, the company has done very little to Phobos or Deimos. Phobos’ deck was half-cleared in fitful bursts of work, but Deimos was left almost untouched. Now, according to SpaceNews, SpaceX’s second in command says the company sold Phobos and Deimos and has paused work on offshore Starship launch platforms.

In August 2021, Musk added some additional insight, revealing that the platforms were not a priority and that the only visible work done was the result of SpaceX hiring third parties to clear Phobos’ deck. Ultimately, the project may have been a false start. Speaking in February 2023, Shotwell told reporters that while SpaceX had sold the rigs, she was still confident that “sea-based [launch] platforms” would become a crucial asset in the future.

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Perhaps even exceeding CEO Elon Musk’s infamously lofty ambitions, Shotwell said that SpaceX has “designed Starship to be as much like aircraft operations as we possibly can get” in the hopes of enabling “dozens of launches a day, if not hundreds of launches a day.” No rocket family in history has launched more than 61 times in one calendar year, making Shotwell’s Starship cadence target hundreds or even thousands of times more ambitious than a 1980s rocket record that’s still standing four decades later.

It’s unclear if the FAA’s stringent environmental reviews would ever allow SpaceX to get close to that kind of launch cadence using pads built on US soil. SpaceX fought long and hard to receive approval for up to five orbital Starship launches per year out of Boca Chica, Texas. SpaceX has also received approval [PDF] for up to 24 Starship launches per year out of a NASA Kennedy Space Center pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida. And SpaceX is permitted to launch [PDF] up to 70 much smaller Falcon rockets per year from its two existing Cape Canaveral pads.

SpaceX’s Falcon rocket family has launched 61 times in one year. (NASA)
SpaceX wants to launch Starship, a rocket almost ten times larger than Falcon 9, thousands of times per year. (SpaceX)
Giant, floating launch pads may be the only way that cadence is possible. (SpaceX)

“Dozens” to “hundreds” of Starship launches per day would be two or three orders of magnitude beyond the highest cadences the FAA has ever permitted. Shotwell’s continued interest in floating platforms is thus unsurprising, as they may be the only way SpaceX can realistically achieve airline-like Starship operations while still coexisting with US regulators.

According to SpaceNews, Shotwell said that SpaceX “really need[s] to fly [Starship] to understand it – to get to know this machine – and then we’ll figure out how we’re going to launch it.” That disciplined focus could be just the thing the Starship program needs. More than eighteen months after SpaceX first fully stacked a two-stage Starship, the rocket still hasn’t attempted an orbital launch. SpaceX has, nonetheless, put a vast amount of money and effort into building, expanding, and optimizing factories and launch facilities for Starship, an orbital rocket that has yet to even partially demonstrate itself.

In essence, SpaceX has made huge gambles on the assumption that a version of Starship mostly resembling what the company is building today will be highly successful, reusable, and reliable. SpaceX’s success with Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Dragon, and suborbital Starship testing suggests that it will ultimately be successful, in time. Nonetheless, Shotwell’s apparent desire to conduct orbital Starship launches and gather data before making major investments in new infrastructure (and, hopefully, big design changes and “optimizations”) is a welcome change of pace. Shotwell reportedly assumed oversight of Starbase and Starship in late 2022.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

Tesla’s folding V4 Supercharger ships 33% more per truck, cuts deployment time and cost significantly.

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Tesla V4 Supercharger installation ramping in Europe

Tesla is rolling out a folding V4 Supercharger design, an engineering change that allows 33% more units to fit on a single delivery truck, cuts deployment time in half, and reduces overall installation cost by roughly 20%.

The folding mechanism addresses one of the least glamorous but most consequential bottlenecks in charging infrastructure: getting hardware from factory floor to job site efficiently. By collapsing the form factor for transit and unfolding into an operational configuration on arrival, the new design dramatically reduces the logistics overhead that has historically slowed Supercharger rollouts, particularly at large or remote sites where multiple units are needed simultaneously.

The timing aligns with a broader acceleration in Tesla’s network strategy. In March 2026, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet after more than seven years and 15,000 units, pivoting entirely to V4 cabinet production. The V4 cabinet itself is already a generational leap, delivering up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, while supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. The folding transport innovation layers logistical efficiency on top of that technical foundation.

Tesla launches first ‘true’ East Coast V4 Supercharger: here’s what that means

Tesla Charging’s Director Max de Zegher, commenting on the V4 cabinet when it launched, captured the operational philosophy behind these changes: “Posts can peak up to 500kW for cars, but we need less than 1MW across 8 posts to deliver maximum power to cars 99% of the time.” The design philosophy has always been about maximizing real-world throughput, not just peak specs, and the folding transport upgrade extends that thinking into the supply chain itself.

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The Boring Company clears final Nashville hurdle: Music City loop is full speed ahead

The Boring Company has cleared its final Nashville hurdles, putting the Music City Loop on track for 2026.

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The Boring Company has cleared one of its most significant regulatory milestones yet, securing a key easement from the Music City Center in Nashville just days ago, the latest in a series of approvals that have pushed the Music City Loop project firmly into construction reality.

On March 24, 2026, the Convention Center Authority voted to grant The Boring Company access to an easement along the west side of the Music City Center property, allowing tunneling beneath the privately owned venue. The move follows a unanimous 7-0 vote by the Metro Nashville Airport Authority on February 18, and a joint state and federal approval from the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration on February 25. Together, these green lights have cleared the path for a roughly 10-mile underground tunnel connecting downtown Nashville to Nashville International Airport, with potential extensions into midtown along West End Avenue.

Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption

Nashville was selected by The Boring Company largely because of its rapid population growth and the strain that growth has placed on surface infrastructure. Traffic has become a persistent problem for residents, convention visitors, and airport travelers alike. The Music City Loop promises an approximately 8-minute underground transit time between downtown and the Nashville International Airport (BNA), removing thousands of vehicles from surface roads daily while operating as a fully electric, zero-emissions system at no cost to taxpayers.

The project fits squarely within a broader vision Musk has championed for years. In responding to a breakdown of the Loop’s construction costs, Musk posted on X: “Tunnels are so underrated.” The comment reflected a longstanding belief that underground transit represents one of the most cost-effective and scalable infrastructure solutions available. The Boring Company has claimed it can build 13 miles of twin tunnels in Nashville for between $240 million and $300 million total, a fraction of what comparable projects cost elsewhere in the country.

The Las Vegas Loop, The Boring Company’s first operational system, has served as a proof of concept. During the CONEXPO trade show in March 2026, the Vegas Loop transported approximately 82,000 passengers over five days at the Las Vegas Convention Center, demonstrating the system’s capacity during large-scale events. Nashville draws millions of convention visitors and tourists each year, and local business leaders have pointed to that same capacity as a major draw for supporting the project.

The Music City Loop was first announced in July 2025. Construction began within hours of the February 25 state approval, with The Boring Company’s Prufrock tunneling machine already in the ground the same evening. The first operational segment is targeted for late 2026, with the full route expected to be complete by 2029. The project represents one of the largest privately funded infrastructure efforts currently underway in the United States.

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Elon Musk demands Delaware Judge recuse herself after ‘support’ post celebrating $2B court loss

A banner on the post read “Katie McCormick supports this,” using LinkedIn’s heart-in-hand “support” icon, an endorsement stronger than a simple “like.” Musk’s lawyers argue the action creates “a perception of bias against Mr. Musk,” warranting immediate recusal to preserve judicial impartiality.

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Ministério Das Comunicações, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s legal team has filed a motion demanding that Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick disqualify herself from an ongoing high-stakes Tesla shareholder lawsuit.

The filing, submitted March 25, cites an apparent LinkedIn “support” reaction from McCormick’s account to a post celebrating a $2 billion jury verdict against Musk in a separate California securities-fraud case.

The move escalates long-simmering tensions between Musk, Tesla, and the Delaware judiciary, where McCormick previously presided over the landmark challenge to Musk’s record $56 billion 2018 compensation package.

Delaware Supreme Court reinstates Elon Musk’s 2018 Tesla CEO pay package

The LinkedIn post was written by Harry Plotkin, a Southern California jury consultant who assisted the plaintiffs who sued Musk over 2022 tweets about his Twitter acquisition. Plotkin praised the trial team for “standing up for the little guy against the richest man in the world.”

The New York Post initially reported the story.

A banner on the post read “Katie McCormick supports this,” using LinkedIn’s heart-in-hand “support” icon, an endorsement stronger than a simple “like.” Musk’s lawyers argue the action creates “a perception of bias against Mr. Musk,” warranting immediate recusal to preserve judicial impartiality.

McCormick swiftly denied intentional endorsement. In a letter to attorneys, she stated she was unaware of the interaction until LinkedIn notified her. She wrote:

“I either did not click the ‘support’ icon at all, or I did so accidentally. I do not believe that I did it accidentally.”

The chancellor maintains the reaction was inadvertent, but critics, including Musk allies, call the explanation implausible given the platform’s deliberate interface.

McCormick’s central role in the Tesla pay-package litigation underscores the stakes. In Tornetta v. Musk, in January 2024, she ruled the 2018 performance-based stock-option grant, potentially worth $56 billion at the time and now valued far higher, was invalid.

The package consisted of 12 tranches of options, each vesting only after Tesla achieved ambitious market-cap and operational milestones. McCormick found Musk exercised “transaction-specific control” over Tesla as a controlling stockholder, the board lacked sufficient independence, and proxy disclosures to shareholders were materially deficient.

Applying the entire-fairness standard, she concluded defendants failed to prove the deal was fair in process or price and ordered full rescission, an “unfathomable” remedy she described as necessary to deter fiduciary breaches.

After the ruling, Tesla shareholders ratified the package a second time in June 2024. McCormick rejected that ratification in December 2024, holding that post-trial votes could not cure defects.

Tesla appealed. On December 19 of last year, the Delaware Supreme Court unanimously reversed the rescission remedy while largely leaving McCormick’s liability findings intact. The high court deemed total unwinding inequitable and impractical, restoring the package but awarding the plaintiff only nominal $1 damages plus reduced attorneys’ fees. Musk ultimately received the full award.

The current recusal motion arises in yet another Tesla derivative suit before McCormick. Legal observers say granting it could signal heightened scrutiny of judicial social-media activity; denial might reinforce perceptions of an insular Delaware bench.

Broader fallout includes accelerated corporate migration out of Delaware, Musk himself moved Tesla’s incorporation to Texas after the first ruling, and renewed debate over whether the state’s specialized courts remain the gold standard for corporate governance disputes.

A decision is expected soon; whichever way it lands, the episode highlights the fragile balance between judicial independence and public confidence in high-profile litigation.

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