SpaceX has confirmed that the two large propellant tanks now present at its Boca Chica, Texas facilities will likely to be the last major ground tanks needed to enable the first test flights of the upper stage of its next-gen BFR rocket, known as the Big Falcon Spaceship (BFS).
Expected to begin as soon as late 2019, SpaceX executives have recently reiterated plans for a campaign of hop tests for the first full-scale spaceship prototype, in which the ship will follow in the footsteps of its Falcon 9-based Grasshopper and F9R predecessors.
https://twitter.com/krgv_mike/status/1055748966619537408
In a comment provided to a number of local outlets, SpaceX Communications Specialist Sean Pitt stated this about the recent arrival of a second large propellant storage tank at the company’s prospective South Texas test and launch facilities.
“The ongoing construction of our launch pad in South Texas is proceeding well. SpaceX has now received the final major ground system tank needed to support initial test flights of the Big Falcon Spaceship.” – Sean Pitt, SpaceX
While there may have been some slight uncertainty before, this official statement confirms beyond the shadow of a doubt that SpaceX is actively and rapidly preparing its South Texas property for a future of BFR-related tests, spaceship hops, and perhaps even launches.
Same dance, different hops
Unlike Falcon 9’s Grasshopper and F9R reusability development programs, SpaceX’s BFS hop test campaign is likely going to be much more aggressive in order to gather real flight-test data on new technologies ranging from unfamiliar aerodynamic control surfaces (wings & fins vs. grid fins), all-composite propellant tanks (Falcon uses aluminum-lithium), a 9m-diameter vehicle versus Falcon’s 3.7m, a massive tiled heat-shield likely to require new forms of thermal protection, and entirely new regimes of flight (falling like a skydiver rather than Falcon 9’s javelin-style attitude) – to name just a handful.
To fully prove out or at least demonstrate those new technologies, BFS hop testing is likely to be better described as “flight testing”, whereby the spaceship launches vertically but focused primarily on regimes where horizontal velocity is far more important than vertical velocity.
“But by ‘hopper test,’ I mean it’ll go up several miles and then come down. The ship will – the ship is capable of a single stage to orbit if you fully load the tanks. So we’ll do flights of increasing complexity. We really want to test the heat shield material. So I think we’ll fly out, turn around, accelerate back real hard and come in hot to test the heat shield because we want to have a highly reusable heat shield that’s capable of absorbing the heat from interplanetary entry velocities, which is really tricky.” – CEO Elon Musk, October 2017
Focusing on the important things (for fully-reusable rockets)
SpaceX does has significant familiarity with the general style of testing expected to be used to prove out its next-gen spaceship, a major department from anything the company has yet built or flown. Updated in September 2018 by CEO Elon Musk, the craft’s most recent design iteration is reportedly quite close to being finalized. That near-final design prominently features a trio of new aft fins (two able to actuate as control surfaces), two forward canards, and an updated layout of seven Raptor engines.
Critically, SpaceX has decided to commonize BFR’s main propulsion, choosing to skip the performance benefits of a vacuum-optimized Raptor variant for the simplicity and expediency of exclusively using sea level Raptors on both the booster and spaceship. This decision is ultimately strategic and well-placed: rather than concerning early-stage development with the inclusion of a second major branch of onboard propulsion, the company’s engineers and technicians can place their focus almost entirely on a one-size-fits-all version of BFR with plenty of room for upgrades down the road.
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- BFS seen standing vertically on the pads of its tripod fins. (SpaceX)
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- (SpaceX)
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- A better view. (SpaceX)
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- BFR’s booster and spaceship separate a few minutes after launch. (SpaceX)
With a rocket as large as BFR and a sea level engine already as efficient as Raptor, the performance downgrade wrought by the initial removal of Raptor Vacuum (RVac) is scarcely more than a theoretical diversion. The specific performance numbers remain to be seen but will likely be greater than 100 metric tons (~220,000 lbs) to low Earth orbit (LEO). Past a certain point, however, the actual performance to LEO and beyond is almost irrelevant, at least from a perspective of individual launches. The paradigm SpaceX is clearly already interrogating is one where the cost of individual launches is so low relative to today’s expendable launch pricing ($5,000-20,000/kg to LEO) that it will almost be anachronistic to design or work with a single-launch-limit in mind, a limit that is just shy of a natural law in the spaceflight industries of today.
Because SpaceX has already demonstrated expertise in vertically launching, landing, and generally controlling large rockets, the main challenges faced with BFR are more operational than purely technical. To be clear, the technical challenges are still immense, but successfully solving those challenges by no means guarantees that the aircraft-like operational efficiency needed for BFR to succeed can or will be fully realized.
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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)
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- A closeup of BFS’ nose section, featuring impressively varied tile-sizes, joining methods, and extremely precise curves on the interface between canard wings and the hull. (SpaceX)
In 2016, Musk pegged SpaceX’s cost goals for a BFR-style fully-reusable rocket at less than $1M per launch for booster and spaceship maintenance alone, or $3.3M per launch with amortization (paying for the debt/investment incurred to fund BFR’s development) and propellant estimates included. To realize those ambitious costs, SpaceX will effectively have to beat the expendable but similarly-sized Saturn V’s per-launch costs (~$700M) by a factor of 100 to 200 – more than two orders of magnitude – and SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 and Heavy launch costs (~$55M to $130M) by 20-50X.
To even approach those targets, SpaceX will need to learn how to launch Falcon and BFR near-autonomously with near-total and refurbishment-free reusability, while also developing and demonstrating orbital refueling capabilities that do not currently exist and rapidly maturing large-scale composite tankage and structures. None of those things require Raptor Vacuum.
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
Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab
Musk says Tesla and SpaceX will build and run Terafab, with TSMC limited to renting.
Elon Musk has drawn a firm line around who will be in charge of Terafab, the giant chip factory Tesla and SpaceX are planning in Texas.
Musk replied to a post on X arguing that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would most likely end up owning and operating the plant. “No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that,” Musk wrote. “Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.”
In plain terms, a sublease means TSMC could rent a section of the complex to make chips, similar to a tenant renting one floor of an office tower. The building, the equipment decisions and the daily operation would stay with Tesla and SpaceX.
@herbertong @thejefflutz No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that.
Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 7, 2026
The comment shuts down speculation that started last week. On October 2, tech journalist Tim Culpan reported that TSMC was exploring ways to help run Terafab’s factories. Musk responded the next day that it was “just discussions, but something may come of it,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That left room for a scenario where the world’s largest contract chipmaker took the wheel. Musk’s latest post closes that door.
Some background helps explain why this matters. Tesla designs its own AI chips today but pays outside companies like TSMC and Samsung to manufacture them. Musk unveiled Terafab in March as a joint project between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, arguing that existing suppliers cannot expand fast enough to meet his companies’ future demand. The goal is to produce enough chips each year to supply one terawatt of computing power, roughly 50 times what the entire global AI chip industry produces now.
Those chips are meant for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, the Cybercab and Full Self-Driving computers, along with chips for SpaceX’s planned data centers in orbit. Owning the factory means Musk’s companies would not have to compete with every other chip customer for time on someone else’s production lines.
Intel is still part of the picture. The company signed on in April to help design, build and package chips for the project, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg this week that Intel will keep working on Terafab despite the TSMC chatter.
The project moved from concept to construction planning over the summer. In August, SpaceX confirmed the Grimes County site about an hour from Houston, sent the county a $10 million payment under its tax abatement deal and said civil work would begin shortly. The first phase carries a $16.8 billion price tag, and total spending across all phases could reach as much as $119 billion.
TSMC chairman C.C. Wei has said a new fab typically takes two to three years to build and another one to two years to reach full output. Tesla and SpaceX have never run one, which is why TSMC’s expertise drew so much attention. Musk’s answer suggests he would rather learn that process in house than hand control of a project this central to Tesla’s robotics and autonomy plans to an outside company.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. https://t.co/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Elon Musk
Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK
Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at Thursday’s White House summit.
Elon Musk is set to receive the highest honor the U.S. government gives to scientists and engineers.
President Donald Trump will present Musk with the National Medal of Science on Thursday at the White House’s Science: A New Golden Age Summit, Fox News Digital first reported on Wednesday. Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su will receive the same medal, while Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. A White House official later confirmed the list to Reuters.
“The Trump administration is grateful for the contributions of these incredible leaders in science and technology. These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News.
FIRST ON FOX: Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at the White House Thursday.
Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su will also receive the science medal, while Michael Dell and Satya Nadella will receive the technology medal.
It marks Trump’s first time presenting the awards across either administration.
Full story here https://t.co/omnrLV0EwS
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) October 7, 2026
It will be the first time Trump has presented either medal in his two terms. Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959, and the National Science Foundation, which administers it, says 529 scientists and engineers have received it since. A presidential committee reviews nominees, but the president makes the final call.
Thursday’s group of medalists run or founded companies, and three of them sit at the center of the Super Intelligence hardware race that Musk competes in. Huang’s Nvidia supplies the GB300 chips filling SpaceX’s Colossus 2 cluster, while Su’s AMD is Nvidia’s biggest rival in data center GPUs.
Worth noting that Trump’s uncle, MIT physicist John G. Trump, received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan for his work on ionizing radiation and its uses in medicine and industry.
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
For Musk, the medal is the latest sign of how far his relationship with Trump has come since their 2025 split over the “Big Beautiful Bill” and his exit from DOGE. Last week, he sat at Trump’s left during a White House lunch where AI executives signed a voluntary safety accord, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named him to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare. Musk has also adopted the administration’s new vocabulary, saying on Sunday that SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI after Trump ordered federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence.”
Musk has collected science honors before, including the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2019.
Lifestyle
Tesla FSD changed its mind mid-intersection, and it may have saved a life
Tesla shares dashcam footage of FSD Supervised stopping mid intersection to avoid a T-bone crash.
Tesla is putting another Full Self-Driving save in front of its 24.8 million followers on X.
On Tuesday morning, Tesla’s main account shared a dashcam clip with the caption “FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash.” The footage came from an owner posting as TheNewGrid, who described what happened at a stop sign: “I looked at the car coming to the stop sign figured they would stop, my car went, then came to a stop mid intersection as they flew by. Had I been manually driving this would have resulted in a crash.”
The sequence is the notable part. FSD had already started crossing when the other driver ran the stop sign. Instead of pressing on, the car braked hard in the middle of the intersection and let the crossing vehicle pass in front of it. By the owner’s own account, they had made the same assumption the software initially made, that the other car would stop, and would not have corrected in time.
FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 6, 2026
The clip is the latest in a run of safety posts Tesla has amplified over the past several days. On Saturday, the company shared a video from Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim, who sold his Bentley for a Model Y and said he was buying Teslas with FSD for 10 of his employees. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla AI, followed up by writing that Tesla self-driving “reacts to other people cutting into your path with super-human response times.” On Monday, a Cybertruck owner posted footage of FSD moving across three lanes from a red light to clear a path for an ambulance approaching from behind.
This recent clip also lands a few weeks after Tesla began shipping Automatic Collision Evasion with FSD v14.3.9, a feature that can activate FSD on the driver’s behalf when a frontal collision is imminent or the driver appears distracted. Elluswamy said in September that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” are coming with v15, the release Tesla has tied to round the clock Robotaxi operation.
The safety messaging matters beyond social media. Tesla has said FSD Supervised was 4.1 times less likely to crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on European roads, and it has been putting those figures in front of regulators. Eight EU countries have now approved FSD Supervised, with Croatia the most recent, but the EU’s bloc-wide vote originally set for October 6 has been pushed to December at the earliest.
FSD Supervised is still a Level 2 system, and the driver remains responsible at all times. Even heavy users find reasons to step in. Teslarati’s Joey Klender, who uses FSD for about 76 percent of his driving, laid out five recurring issues on Tuesday that still prompt him to intervene. Clips like this one show the other column of that ledger: moments where the software caught a mistake a human was about to make.
Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab
Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK
