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SpaceX’s orbital Starship gains a nose as East Coast prototype makes progress
On May 20th, SpaceX technicians successfully stacked a nosecone on top of the company’s Boca Chica orbital Starship prototype. Simultaneously, a separate team of technicians and engineers have been hard at work building a second similar-but-different Starship prototype near Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Officially confirmed last week by Elon Musk, the SpaceX CEO revealed that the company was not only building two orbital Starship prototypes simultaneously – not news in itself – but that those prototypes were being built as a sort of internal competition between different teams and ideas. The competition is not cutthroat – knowledge is shared between Texas and Florida – but the strategy is fairly similar. In lieu of actual commercial competitors, SpaceX is attempting to compete with itself to more rapidly and effectively develop a brand new launch vehicle – the stainless steel Starship/Super Heavy.
A Starship rises in the East
In just the last week, both SpaceX groups have made major progress. On the East Coast, the general public saw the first photo of SpaceX’s Florida Starship build precisely seven days ago. It appears that SpaceX has more or less taken over a Cocoa, Florida facility known to be the prior home of Coastal Steel, a repeat NASA contractor known for steelwork.
It’s unclear if SpaceX has fully acquired Coastal Steel or is simply partnering with the small company in the early stages of its Florida Starship buildup. Regardless, even from perspectives quite a bit more distant than those available in Texas, it’s clear that the metal workmanship is at least on par with Boca Chica, if not giving them a run for their money.
Admittedly, the playing field is not exactly level. SpaceX’s South Texas team has been working just a few thousand feet away from the unobstructed Gulf of Mexico in conditions that would make for an excellent traditional-aerospace horror show. Aside from a lone tent, all welding, assembly, integration, and testing has been done while fully exposed to the elements. SpaceX’s Florida team appears to have the luxury of an established warehouse – previously used for steelwork – to use as a covered and partially insulated work and staging area. The Florida team effectively had everything they needed (give or take) on hand from the moment work began, while Texas had to quite literally build all of its facilities from nothing.
Be it the facility luxuries or Cape Canaveral’s far larger pool of local aerospace talent, it’s clear that SpaceX’s Florida team will be a competitive force to be reckoned with despite Texas’ apparent head start. In the seven days since the first photos of the Florida Starship were published, SpaceX technicians have almost doubled the height of the largest welded section, raising it from ~5.5m to ~9m (18-30 ft).
Meanwhile, those working inside the staging warehouse continue to crank out 2x9m subsections, already making way for what appears to be the first tapered nose section of the Florida Starship. At this rate, Florida could very well catch up to SpaceX’s Texas Starship just a month or two from now. It’s worth noting that the Florida team does not appear to be involved in any Starhopper activities. SpaceX Boca Chica, on the other hand, has spent a major portion of the last several months building out Starhopper and preparing the odd prototype for untethered hop tests.
The (slightly) Old(er) Guard
Despite Starship Florida’s rapid progress, Starship Texas has not exactly been standing around. In the last week or so, SpaceX technicians and engineers have been simultaneously working on major new integration, assembly, and test campaigns with both Starhopper and the first orbital Starship prototype. A dedicated Starhopper article will come later this week as SpaceX’s South Texas team nears Raptor reinstallation and an untethered hop test campaign, scheduled to begin as early as the end of May.
On the orbital Starship side of things, Boca Chica took a major symbolic step towards aeroshell completion by capping off the upper half of the prototype with a stainless steel nose section. Altogether, the Starship assembly now stands about 25m (80 ft) tall from tip to tail, roughly 60% as tall as a Falcon 9 booster (first stage). With the installation of the craft’s nose, SpaceX has also implicitly confirmed that most – if not all – of the Starship prototype’s tankage still needs to be built, unless a great deal of hardware is hiding inside Boca Chica’s on-site tent.
What could either be the orbital Starship’s seven-Raptor engine section or the start of its liquid oxygen or methane tank is also being built a few hundred feet distant. That mystery segment was recently lifted onto a second concrete jig for easier access, while SpaceX has also been hard at work building a dedicated integration facility similar to the warehouse being used in Florida.
Altogether, SpaceX’s South Texas team appears to be 30-40% away from completing a Starship-sized steel aeroshell. A huge amount of work remains to be done on the inside of the theoretically orbit-capable vehicle, including propellant tanks, a thrust structure capable of supporting seven Raptor engines, landing legs/fins, and a jungle of plumbing and avionics installation. Still, the amount of progress already visible is undeniably impressive, made even more intriguing by the existence of a separate Starship build effort to the east.
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Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor is proving to be a difficult task, according to some riders who made the journey to Austin to attempt to ride in one of its vehicles that has zero supervision.
Last week, Tesla officially removed Safety Monitors from some — not all — of its Robotaxi vehicles in Austin, Texas, answering skeptics who said the vehicles still needed supervision to operate safely and efficiently.
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla aimed to remove Safety Monitors before the end of 2025, and it did, but only to company employees. It made the move last week to open the rides to the public, just a couple of weeks late to its original goal, but the accomplishment was impressive, nonetheless.
However, the small number of Robotaxis that are operating without Safety Monitors has proven difficult to hail for a ride. David Moss, who has gained notoriety recently as the person who has traveled over 10,000 miles in his Tesla on Full Self-Driving v14 without any interventions, made it to Austin last week.
He has tried to get a ride in a Safety Monitor-less Robotaxi for the better part of four days, and after 38 attempts, he still has yet to grab one:
Wow just wow!
It’s 8:30PM, 29° out ice storm hailing & Tesla Robotaxi service has turned back on!
Waymo is offline & vast majority of humans are home in the storm
Ride 38 was still supervised but by far most impressive yet pic.twitter.com/1aUnJkcYm8
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) January 25, 2026
Tesla said last week that it was rolling out a controlled test of the Safety Monitor-less Robotaxis. Ashok Elluswamy, who heads the AI program at Tesla, confirmed that the company was “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader Robotaxi fleet with Safety Monitors,” and that “the ratio will increase over time.”
This is a good strategy that prioritizes safety and keeps the company’s controlled rollout at the forefront of the Robotaxi rollout.
However, it will be interesting to see how quickly the company can scale these completely monitor-less rides. It has proven to be extremely difficult to get one, but that is understandable considering only a handful of the cars in the entire Austin fleet are operating with no supervision within the vehicle.
Tesla has given its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent, as a new feature seems to show that the company is preparing for frequent border crossings.
Tesla owner and influencer BLKMDL3, also known as Zack, recently took his Tesla to the border of California and Mexico at Tijuana, and at the international crossing, Full Self-Driving showed an interesting message: “Upcoming country border — FSD (Supervised) will become unavailable.”
FSD now shows a new message when approaching an international border crossing.
Stayed engaged the whole way as we crossed the border and worked great in Mexico! pic.twitter.com/bDzyLnyq0g
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) January 26, 2026
Due to regulatory approvals, once a Tesla operating on Full Self-Driving enters a new country, it is required to comply with the laws and regulations that are applicable to that territory. Even if legal, it seems Tesla will shut off FSD temporarily, confirming it is in a location where operation is approved.
This is something that will be extremely important in Europe, as crossing borders there is like crossing states in the U.S.; it’s pretty frequent compared to life in America, Canada, and Mexico.
Tesla has been working to get FSD approved in Europe for several years, and it has been getting close to being able to offer it to owners on the continent. However, it is still working through a lot of the red tape that is necessary for European regulators to approve use of the system on their continent.
This feature seems to be one that would be extremely useful in Europe, considering the fact that crossing borders into other countries is much more frequent than here in the U.S., and would cater to an area where approvals would differ.
Tesla has been testing FSD in Spain, France, England, and other European countries, and plans to continue expanding this effort. European owners have been fighting for a very long time to utilize the functionality, but the red tape has been the biggest bottleneck in the process.
Tesla Europe builds momentum with expanding FSD demos and regional launches
Tesla operates Full Self-Driving in the United States, China, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship V3 gets launch date update from Elon Musk
The first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.
Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX’s next Starship launch, Flight 12, is expected in about six weeks. This suggests that the first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.
In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that the next Starship launch is in six weeks. He accompanied his announcement with a photo that seemed to have been taken when Starship’s upper stage was just about to separate from the Super Heavy Booster. Musk did not state whether SpaceX will attempt to catch the Super Heavy Booster during the upcoming flight.
The upcoming flight will mark the debut of Starship V3. The upgraded design includes the new Raptor V3 engine, which is expected to have nearly twice the thrust of the original Raptor 1, at a fraction of the cost and with significantly reduced weight. The Starship V3 platform is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability.
The Starship V3 Flight 12 launch timeline comes as SpaceX pursues an aggressive development cadence for the fully reusable launch system. Previous iterations of Starship have racked up a mixed but notable string of test flights, including multiple integrated flight tests in 2025.
Interestingly enough, SpaceX has teased an aggressive timeframe for Starship V3’s first flight. Way back in late November, SpaceX noted on X that it will be aiming to launch Starship V3’s maiden flight in the first quarter of 2026. This was despite setbacks like a structural anomaly on the first V3 booster during ground testing.
“Starship’s twelfth flight test remains targeted for the first quarter of 2026,” the company wrote in its post on X.
Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor proves to be difficult
Tesla gives its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent
