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SpaceX contemplates Mars rocket factory on the South Texas coast
In statements provided to the Brownsville Herald, a Texan paper dedicated to a South Texas region that includes SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site, state representative René Oliveira hinted that SpaceX’s plans for the region could go “well beyond conducting launches.”
SpaceX and South Texas
The Herald’s Steve Clark provided a great summary of the history between SpaceX and Texas in recent years, particularly related to the company’s efforts to construct a launch facility in the region. Aside from a considerable effort to create a sturdier foundation for the pad along the sandy, shifting shoreline of Boca Chica, Texas, the company’s work in the region has been rather quiet since the prospective pad’s announcement in 2014. Through a combination of tax incentives and a direct cash infusion, the state of Texas and the Rio Grande Valley region have both in some way strived to strengthen their relationships with SpaceX and solidify the iconic group’s presence in the region.
For Brownsville and Boca Chica, in particular, the latter of which has a population well under 100 individuals, SpaceX’s permanent presence would be a massive boom for the local economy by bringing an infusion of dozens or potentially hundreds of skilled, full-time positions to the quiet region.
In recent months, SpaceX has been very gradually progressing development of facilities around their potential launch site, albeit not the pad itself. These changes include a nearly complete public-private radio communications facility intended to both give college students hands-on experience and communicate with SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule as early as late 2018. Intriguingly, a Tesla energy installation has also been recently spotted at the facility.
Finally, a vast crane has been semi-permanently stationed on SpaceX property and had a corrugated shed build around it to protect it from the elements and SpaceX stalking fans in the region.
- Tesla Powerpack battery storage unit being installed at SpaceX’s facility in Boca Chica, Texas [Credit: Nomadd via NASASpaceFlight.com Forum]
- The boom of a giant crane (possibly meant for BFS) seen in late 2017, parked at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facilities. (Reddit /u/ ticklestuff)
More than just a launch pad?
State Rep. Oliveira’s statements can be seen in full below.
“About a year ago, SpaceX came to me with their concept of a new, larger, expanded plan for Boca Chica Beach,” Oliveira said. “The concept went well beyond conducting launches, and would require new commitments for construction, investment and jobs to support the new operations.”
“We looked at the original plan for the launch site, and the chain of work that would be done inside and outside on the rockets that would take off from Boca Chica. The concept SpaceX is examining would bring a lot of that work to Boca Chica, going well beyond the original plan.”
He [State Rep. René Oliveira, D-Brownsville] declined to reveal the details of the new concept for Boca Chica, saying it’s up to SpaceX to detail its plans and associated costs when it makes a request to CCSDC to apply for funding.
The timing of SpaceX concept, reportedly presented to Oliveira in late 2016 or early 2017, strongly indicate that the rocket company is considering a considerable expansion of their aspirations for the South Texas facilities under construction. Partly based on Oliveira’s suggestion that SpaceX and Brownsville “looked at…the chain of work” necessary for rockets to launch Boca Chica, the most obvious conclusion available is that SpaceX is thinking about developing Boca Chica into a veritable rocket city.

A Falcon 9 conducts tests at SpaceX’s McGregor testing facility in central Texas. (SpaceX)
A major problem facing SpaceX’s Mars rocket (BFR) program is dealing with the vehicle’s sheer size, 9m (30 feet) in diameter and at least as tall as Falcon 9. This size would make transporting the vehicle cross-country by road all but impossible, potentially forcing the company to abandon a bulwark of their current Falcon manufacturing strategy. The most obvious solution, as discussed briefly by CEO Elon Musk and President Gwynne Shotwell, would be to build a rocket factory where the launch pad is located. Boca Chica is thus almost certainly a prime location under SpaceX’s consideration for both the launch complex and factory needed to build and operate BFR. And this argument has been strengthened in recent months by statements from both executives hinting that prototype BFR spaceship (BFS) tests could begin in South Texas as soon as early 2019.
To say that the creation of such a manufacturing and launch infrastructure would transform the region would be an understatement. The sheer shock value of a small city being able to lay claim to the only private orbital launch complex in the US would be valuable in its own right, not to mention the distinct possibility that such a facility might one day launch the first humans to Mars. If the educated speculation above is, in fact, the truth of the matter, SpaceX can be expected to begin earnestly petitioning the local and state governments for additional public funds to partially support the major undertaking. Most importantly, the company would almost certainly need to procure an updated or wholly new environmental impact assessment from the FAA before being allowed to begin construction beyond the scope of the original 2014 grant.
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Lucid unveils Lunar Robotaxi in bid to challenge Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Lucid’s Lunar robotaxi is gunning for Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Lucid Group pulled back the curtain on its purpose-built autonomous robotaxi platform dubbed the Lunar Concept. Announced at its New York investor day event, Lunar is arguably the company’s most ambitious concept yet, and a direct line of sight toward the autonomous ride haling market that Tesla looks to control.

At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
A comparison to Tesla’s Cybercab is unavoidable. The concept of a Tesla robotaxi was first introduced by Elon Musk back in April 2019 during an event dubbed “Autonomy Day,” where he envisioned a network of self-driving Tesla vehicles transporting passengers while not in use by their owners. That vision took another major step in October 2024 when, Musk unveiled the Cybercab at the Tesla “We, Robot” event held at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 concept Cybercabs autonomously drove around the studio lot giving rides to attendees.
Fast forward to today, and Tesla’s ambitions are finally materializing, but not without friction. As we recently reported, the Cybercab is being spotted with increasing frequency on public roads and across the grounds of Gigafactory Texas, suggesting that the company’s road testing and validation program is ramping meaningfully ahead of mass production. Tesla already operates a small scale robotaxi service in Austin using supervised Model Ys, but the Cybercab is designed from the ground up for high-volume, low-cost production, with Musk stating an eventual goal of producing one vehicle every 10 seconds.

At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
Into this landscape steps Lucid’s Lunar. Built on the company’s all-new Midsize EV platform, which will also underpin consumer SUVs starting below $50,000. The Lunar mirrors the Cybercab’s core philosophy of having two seats, no driver controls, and a focus on fleet economics. The platform introduces Lucid’s redesigned Atlas electric drive unit, engineered to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper to manufacture at scale.
Unlike Tesla’s strategy of building its own ride hailing network from scratch, Lucid is partnering with Uber. The companies are said to be in advanced discussions to deploy Midsize platform vehicles at large scale, with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi publicly backing Lucid’s engineering credentials and autonomous-ready architecture.
In the investor day event, Lucid also outlined a recurring software revenue model, with an in-vehicle AI assistant and monthly autonomous driving subscriptions priced between $69 and $199. This can be seen as a nod to the software revenue stream that Tesla has long championed with its Full Self-Driving subscription.
Tesla’s Cybercab is targeting a price point below $30k and with operating costs as low as 20 cents per mile. But with regulatory hurdles still ahead, the window for competition is open. Lucid’s Lunar may not have a launch date yet, but it arrives at a pivotal moment, and when the robotaxi race is no longer viewed as hypothetical. Rather, every serious EV player needs to come to bat on the same plate that Tesla has had countless practice swings on over the last seven years.
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Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the closure of an investigation involving Elon Musk and social media platform X. The inquiry had been pending for about two years and examined whether the platform was used to coordinate attacks against members of the judiciary.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
According to a report from Agencia Brasil, the investigation conducted by the Federal Police did not find evidence that X deliberately attempted to attack the judiciary or circumvent court orders.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet concluded that the irregularities identified during the probe did not indicate fraudulent intent.
Justice Moraes accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation and ruled that the investigation should be closed. Under the ruling, the case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The inquiry stemmed from concerns that content on X may have enabled online attacks against Supreme Court justices or violated rulings requiring the suspension of certain accounts under investigation.
Justice Moraes had previously taken several enforcement actions related to the platform during the broader dispute involving social media regulation in Brazil.
These included ordering a nationwide block of the platform, freezing Starlink accounts, and imposing fines on X totaling about $5.2 million. Authorities also froze financial assets linked to X and SpaceX through Starlink to collect unpaid penalties and seized roughly $3.3 million from the companies’ accounts.
Moraes also imposed daily fines of up to R$5 million, about $920,000, for alleged evasion of the X ban and established penalties of R$50,000 per day for VPN users who attempted to bypass the restriction.
Brazil remains an important market for X, with roughly 17 million users, making it one of the platform’s larger user bases globally.
The country is also a major market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, which has surpassed one million subscribers in Brazil.
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FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Amazon after the company opposed SpaceX’s proposal to launch a large satellite constellation that could function as an orbital data center network.
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
Amazon recently urged the FCC to reject SpaceX’s application to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites that could serve as artificial intelligence data centers in space.
The company described the proposal as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” arguing that SpaceX had not provided sufficient details about how the system would operate.
Carr responded by pointing to Amazon’s own satellite deployment progress.
“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote on X.
Amazon has declined to comment on the statement.
Amazon has been working to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite network, which is intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the program and has launched more than 200 satellites since April of last year.
Amazon has also asked the FCC for a 24-month extension, until July 2028, to meet a requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by July 2026, as noted in a CNBC report.
SpaceX’s Starlink network currently has nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves roughly 10 million customers. The FCC has also authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional satellites as the company continues expanding its global satellite internet network.

