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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- 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!
Tesla Full Self-Driving is now the centerpiece of the company’s newly revised Referral Program, which launched on October 29.
Instead of referring people to purchase vehicles and the referrer receiving $250 in Tesla Credit, the new program now incentivizes Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
If a Tesla owner is on an FSD trial and uses a referral code to subscribe to Full Self-Driving, the person whose Referral Link was used will receive one month of FSD (Supervised). Their code can be utilized 12 times per year, with January 1 marking the reset date.
Realistically, this means that if your Referral Code is used by 12 Tesla owners on an FSD trial, you will receive a full year of FSD for free.
🚨 Here is Tesla’s new Referral Program for Full Self-Driving (Supervised):
When someone subscribes to FSD using your link, you’ll get a month free. Up to a year of FSD is available to you for free!
If you’d like to use my link: https://t.co/g00IX9OCE3 https://t.co/GFBzEO2jjS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The previous program made it pretty difficult to get referrals; buying a vehicle is obviously a much larger financial strain than subscribing to Full Self-Driving for a month.
Of course, the previous Referral Program also offered a tangible benefit: $250 in credits you could use on Service, Supercharging, or anything in the Tesla Shop. It truly could pay for someone’s travel for a year. It recently bought me a new backpack and a T-shirt.
However, this new program is much more attainable for those who do not have a massive online presence of a slew of friends in the Tesla community who will use the code and max out subscriptions for vehicle purchases.
Woke up to maxed out Referrals! Thank you guys, that’s awesome!
Share your referral link below so others can use it! https://t.co/kesbwTcoTV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The Full Self-Driving suite will now be the keystone of the Referral Program, which makes it more inclusive and more fun for everyone with an awesome benefit.
It also gives the impression that Tesla is truly focused on FSD subscriptions, something that saw a tremendous increase in volume in Q3, as 75 percent of deliveries for the quarter came with an FSD subscription attached.
Full Self-Driving data is so instrumental to the suite’s improvement that this kind of program benefits Tesla as much as it does the consumer.
Elon Musk
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
Tesla’s quiet mode reaches Model Y Robotaxis, blacking out the screen for riders wanting rest.
Tesla’s quiet mode, the setting that blacks out the screen for riders who want to rest, has moved beyond the Cybercab. A video posted Thursday by Spencer (@scotsrule08) shows the feature running in a Model Y Robotaxi on a night ride that appears to be in Dallas.
New quiet mode now on @Robotaxi https://t.co/2cM2eM9NeN — Spencer (@scotsrule08) October 29, 2026
The rider taps a small crescent moon icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. The map, media player, app shortcuts and Grok prompt disappear, leaving a dark display with “Arriving soon,” the destination and a line reading “Tap display to exit quiet mode.” Controls a passenger may still need, including Pull Over, cabin temperature, volume and Support, stay visible. One tap anywhere brings the full map back.
Quiet mode first showed up in the Cybercab last week, which Teslarati reported alongside a new rear camera view. Tesla has been trimming cabin noise in other ways too. On October 25, Spencer reported that Robotaxi turn signals now chime for the first four blinks and then go silent. Tesla has not published release notes for either change.
Elon Musk has been pitching this use for more than a decade. In October 2014, he said that “maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,”
By 2017 he was setting a higher bar. Speaking at TED, Musk said the hard part was not making self-driving work 99.9 percent of the time, “because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.”
Owners asked for something similar in their own cars. In December 2019, a Tesla owner requested a Nap Mode that would keep the climate running and wake the occupant with an alarm, and Musk answered “Ok,” as Teslarati covered at the time.
The line returned when the Cybercab was unveiled at the We, Robot event in October 2024. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. On Tesla’s first quarter earnings call in April 2025, he called it the deciding measure: “The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year,”
Tesla has run driverless Model Y rides in Dallas and Houston since April, so a passenger dozing off on the way home is now a realistic use of the button. Tesla is also offering new riders a free first trip in both cities, according to an in-app screen shared by tracker Ethan McKanna, and said on its third quarter call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas next month.
News
FCC green lights SpaceX’s move to a showdown with Verizon and AT&T
The FCC advanced plans opening 482 MHz to satellite phone service, boosting SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile.
The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to move forward with a proposal that would open an additional 482 MHz of spectrum to satellite service beamed directly to ordinary phones, a step that could widen the road for SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile to compete with the country’s largest wireless carriers.
The commission adopted the notice of proposed rulemaking at its October open meeting in Washington, Reuters reported. The proposal would raise the number of bands eligible for Supplemental Coverage from Space from five to 13, according to the FCC fact sheet. Commissioners also advanced a companion item proposing an auction of 25 MHz in the 1675 to 1695 MHz and 2020 to 2025 MHz bands, which could be used for terrestrial service, direct to device service or both.
Thursday’s vote does not hand any spectrum to SpaceX. It opens a public comment period, and final rules will come later. Under the draft, comments would be due 60 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register. The FCC had not released the adopted text at the time of writing, so it is not yet clear whether any bands were changed before the vote.
That question is where the fight now moves. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, through industry group CTIA, asked the FCC to drop the 2.5 GHz and 3.45 GHz bands, which make up 290 MHz of the 482 MHz on the table, as Teslarati reported ahead of the vote. T-Mobile argued satellite interference could wipe out up to 96% of a cell site’s uplink coverage area. SpaceX asked the commission to go the other way and add the 902 to 928 MHz band.
The rule change that matters most to SpaceX may be a structural one. Today, a satellite operator must lease spectrum from every carrier holding co-channel licenses across an entire region such as the contiguous United States. The proposal would replace that with a certification that the operator has coexistence agreements covering only the areas it plans to serve, or that it holds the terrestrial licenses itself.
SpaceX has spent this year building that second path. It bought EchoStar’s AWS-4 and H-block licenses in a deal worth roughly $17 billion, and earlier this month agreed to acquire Grain Management’s nationwide 800 MHz portfolio, which the company said would pave the way for Starlink to become a major US mobile carrier. The FCC approved SpaceX’s purchase of three unused AWS-3 licenses from Tristar on October 21, and cleared its plan for 15,000 next generation direct to cell satellites on October 6.
The regulator has not always sided with SpaceX. In April, the FCC dismissed a SpaceX petition seeking access to Mobile Satellite Service spectrum held by incumbents, and it rejected 2.5 GHz for satellite coverage when it first adopted the framework in 2024.
The carriers are also building their own defenses. In May, the three companies agreed in principle to form a joint venture pooling spectrum for satellite service, and T-Mobile remains SpaceX’s US launch partner for Starlink Mobile even as it leads the push to keep satellites out of 2.5 GHz. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has said service on SpaceX’s own airwaves is targeted for early 2028.
Tesla Full Self-Driving becomes main pillar of new Referral Program
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
