News
SpaceX’s Moon Starship is a brilliant step towards reusable Mars rockets
SpaceX’s newly-announced Moon Starship is a fairly radical departure from the Mars-focused, fully-reusable vehicle the company has been pursuing for years. Unintuitively, that may be the perfect half-step towards truly reusable Mars rockets.
On April 30th, NASA announced that SpaceX had won $135 million to design and build a highly-customized variant of its reusable Starship spacecraft with the intention of launching a handful of space agency astronauts to the Moon in the mid-2020s. Whether or not that initial seed translates into enough funding to seriously design and build the ship SpaceX has shown off in new renders, it has already broken the ice, so to speak, between the US federal government (or at least NASA) and the company’s ambitious next-generation launch vehicle.
With a substantial amount of money now on the table for SpaceX to begin initial work on its Moon Starship, it’s worth analyzing just how different it is from the Starship the company is working on today.
First and foremost, perhaps the most obvious difference between SpaceX’s ‘base’ Starship and its lunar variant is the rocket’s hull. In the case of the Moonbound ship, SpaceX appears to have returned to a fully-painted vehicle for unknown reasons. More likely than not, that white paint is likely motivated by the fact that proposed NASA Moon landers must (obviously) be capable of landing and safely returning their astronaut cargo back into lunar orbit.
To do that, those landers must be able to sit on the surface of the Moon after landing for at least several days, with longer stays being even better. For Starship, this means that the vehicle must likely be able to keep its cryogenic liquid methane and oxygen propellant from warming up and turning into gas, thus preventing it from igniting its main Raptor engines. White paint is at least a bit more reflective (and thus insulating) compared to Starship’s shiny steel hull but it could also hint at the use of more extensive insulation then sealed off with paint.
This ties into perhaps the most significant functional change to the rocket. While visible in a render of the craft after landing on the Moon, a separate render just before touchdown fully revealed not only the addition of large vacuum-optimized retrothrusters – but a major strategic shift in how Lunar Starship will attempt to land on the Moon.
In short, it appears that SpaceX does not plan on propulsively landing Lunar Starship on the Moon under the power of its main Raptor engines. Instead, three triple-thruster clusters – likely relying on the same methane and oxygen propellant as Raptor – will fire up shortly before touchdown to gently land Starship on the Moon. This approach has significant benefits: the Moon’s gravity is so low (~1/6th of Earth’s) that using even just one engine as powerful as Raptor to land would be incredibly difficult – a single engine could theoretically lift a fully-fueled Starship thanks to low lunar gravity.
Additionally, powerful Raptor engines – even if they could be used to land – would likely dig huge craters in the Moon’s powder-like surface during a landing burn, making it more difficult astronauts to leave the ship to explore their surroundings. However, it also means that SpaceX must design and certify an entirely new kind of vacuum-optimized rocket engine – likely using gas propellant and fed by high-pressure tanks – for an extremely critical part of operations. If those landing engines were to fail, Starship would very likely crash on the Moon, marooning, wounding, or even condemning the astronauts aboard it.
Beyond new thrusters, a radically different landing strategy, and a painted (and possibly insulated) steel hull, Lunar Starship also features what looks like the tip of a Crew Dragon spacecraft in place of its nose, likely including Draco thrusters and a docking port. SpaceX has also copied the concept of Crew Dragon’s trunk section, installing a curved solar array that wraps around a large portion of Starship’s conical nose. Lunar Starship also offers what looks like the first official glimpse into a new style of Starship landing legs, prototypes of which are already installed on Starship SN4.
Simplicity first (ish)
Additionally, SpaceX has chosen to entirely exclude a windward heat shield from Lunar Starship, as NASA’s plan is (rather painfully) to launch astronauts to the Moon with SLS and carry them to lunar orbit and back to Earth on Orion. Starship also appears to be missing its complex and extensive habitation module and massive gallery window. All that absent hardware is almost certainly meant to dramatically simplify Starship to the point that even NASA would consider funding its development. Incredibly, that strategy appears to have worked and it’s possible that we could see Lunar Starships flying to the Moon as early as 2022.
While a stop at the Moon is decidedly one-way and requires a bit of a one-off Starship variant, what SpaceX has really done is found a way to get NASA to help fund the development of its fully-reusable next-generation launch system. Even if NASA’s Artemis program dies, flounders, or goes nowhere, SpaceX will likely still benefit significantly, much in the same way that NASA’s assistance developing Cargo Dragon and Falcon 9 was a huge boon for the company.
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News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.
Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.
The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.
Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.
Check out the “Robovan” from @Tesla
📸: @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/D4es2i9NUe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”
Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.
The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”
Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.
Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
