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SpaceX installs two Starship wings ahead of Elon Musk’s Saturday update

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is just six days away from giving an updated Starship presentation and the company is working relentlessly to get the spacecraft as close to a finished product as possible.

In the last 48 hours, this burst of effort was marked (most notably) by the installation of two of Starship Mk1’s actuating fins/wings, revealing a definite departure from the design Musk and SpaceX revealed almost exactly a year ago. Musk took to Twitter this morning to partially describe some of those design changes and the reasoning behind them.

Musk confirmed that the current design will involve several legs attached to the rear of Starship, separating the fin-leg combination shown in previous tripod-fin renders. Intriguingly, Musk expressed that he has not fully “bought into” this updated design, motivated by analyses that indicated that separating the legs and fins would actually be a lighter solution than combining them. This is certainly unintuitive, but it’s extremely encouraging to hear that Musk is seriously trusting and bowing to the educated opinions of some of the extremely skilled engineers that SpaceX is known for.

Like the circa-2018 design, Starship 2019 will feature two actuating wings/fins near its rear and another two canard-like control surfaces near the nose. A third non-functional fin may or may not serve as a leg in the 2019 design. Those control surfaces will work in concert with “very rapid movement[s]” to ensure the stability of Starship during reentry and atmospheric operations, as well as ensuring that the spacecraft can safely and stably land on a variety of surfaces.

Starship, featuring its circa-2018 tripod fin/leg design, is pictured reentering Earth’s atmosphere. (SpaceX)

The new legs look quite a bit different as a result of the design change. As the two actuating fins no longer have to reach the ground and double as landing legs, they can be quite a bit smaller and situated further above Starship’s engine section and rear. It’s possible that the stubby fins will have tips attached at their ends to produce a more triangular shape, but we are now heading into unknown terrain until Musk or SpaceX provide updated renders, likely to come later this week.

SpaceX’s spectacular Starship Mk1 prototype is pictured here on September 22nd, just after the second fin’s installation. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)

Of note, based on observations of inactivity at SpaceX’s Cocoa, Florida Starship facilities, it appears that the company is wholly prioritizing Starship Mk1 in order to get the spacecraft prototype as close to finished as possible over the next several days. Work on Starship Mk2, pictured below, appears to have more or less been paused, almost certainly indicating that SpaceX has flown a large portion of its Florida-based workforce to Texas in a bid to expedite Starship Mk1’s assembly.

This is probably the result of CEO Elon Musk requesting that the spacecraft be nearly complete by the time he is supposed to present an updated design overview in Boca Chica, Texas. Knowing Musk, it’s likely that the event will be held with Starship Mk1 as a centerpiece, be it in several pieces or as a single, nearly-complete stack. Set to be livestreamed by SpaceX, that presentation is scheduled to occur on Saturday, September 28th.

Teslarati will be on the ground in Texas to cover the event live and in person. Stay tuned for updates in the coming days!

Check out Teslarati’s Marketplace! We offer Tesla accessories, including for the Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Model 3.

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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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Elon Musk

The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”

The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.

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The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”

The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.

Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.

Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.

The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.

The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.

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Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”

SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.

It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.

Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.

Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:

There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.

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Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened

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(Credit: The Boring Company)

Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.

The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.

The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel

The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.

Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.

Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.

A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.

The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.

Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.

Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.

There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.

The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.

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