News
SpaceX and NASA accidentally set the stage for a new race to the Moon
Almost entirely driven by chance, SpaceX and NASA may soon find themselves in an unintentional race to return humans to the Moon for the first time in half a century.
Both entities – SpaceX with its next-generation BFR and NASA with its Shuttle-derived SLS – are tentatively targeting 2023 for their similar circumlunar voyages, in which NASA astronauts and private individuals could theoretically travel around the Moon within just months of each other, showcasing two utterly dissimilar approaches to space exploration.
Over the course of no fewer than seven years of development, NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft have run into an unrelenting barrage of issues, effectively delaying the system’s launch debut at a rate equivalent to or even faster than the passage of time itself. In other words, every month recently spent working on the vehicle seems to have reliably corresponded with at least an additional month of delays for the launch system.
Why these incessant delays continue to occur is an entire story in itself and demands the acknowledgment of some uncomfortable and inconvenient realities about the state of NASA’s human spaceflight program in the 21st century, but that is a story is for another time.
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- SLS. (NASA)
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- NASA’s Orion spacecraft, European Service Module, and ICPS upper stage. (NASA)
A different kind of paper rocket
Returning to SLS, a brief overview is in order to properly contextualize what exactly the rocket and spacecraft are and what exactly their development has cost up to now. SLS is comprised of four major hardware segments.
- The Core Stage: A massive liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket booster, this section is essentially a lengthened version of the retired Space Shuttle’s familiar orange propellant tank, while the stage’s four engines are quite literally taken from stores of mothballed Space Shuttle hardware and will be ingloriously expended after each launch (SLS is 100% expendable).
- Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs): Minimally modified copies of the SRBs used during the Space Shuttle program, SLS’ SRBs have slightly more solid propellant and have had all hints of reusability removed, whereas Space Shuttle boosters deployed parachutes and were reused after landing in the Atlantic Ocean.
- The Upper Stage (Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System, ICPS): ICPS is a slightly modified version of ULA’s off-the-shelf Delta IV upper stage.
- The Orion spacecraft and European Service Module: Borrowing heavily from the Apollo Command and Service Modules that took humanity to the Moon in the 1960s and 70s, Orion has been in funded development in one form or another for more than 12 years, with just one partial flight-test to call its own. Orion’s development has cost the U.S. approximately $16 billion since 2006, with another $4-6 billion expected between now and 2023, a sum that doesn’t account for the costs of production and operations once development is complete.
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- The Orion spacecraft and ESM. (NASA)
For the SLS core stage and SRBs, a generous bottom-rung estimate indicates that $14 billion has been spent on the rocket itself between 2011 and 2018, not including many billions more spent refurbishing and modifying the rocket’s aging Saturn and Shuttle-derived launch infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center. Of the many distressing patterns that appear in the above descriptions of SLS hardware, most notable is a near-obsessive dependence upon “heritage” hardware that has already been designed and tested – in some cases even manufactured.
Despite cobbling together or reusing as many mature components, facilities, and workforces as possible and relying on slightly-modified commercial hardware at every turn, SLS and Orion will somehow end up costing the United States more than $30 billion dollars before it has completed a single full launch; potentially rising beyond $40 billion by the time the system is ready to launch NASA astronauts.
Moonward bound
SLS’ first crewed mission, known as Exploratory Mission-2 (EM-2), brings us to the title – NASA’s mission planning has settled on sending a crew of four astronauts on what is known as a Free Lunar Return trajectory in the Orion spacecraft, essentially a single flyby of the Moon. Official NASA statements appear to be sending mixed messages on the schedule for EM-2’s launch, with September 2018 presentations indicating 2022 while a late-August blog post suggests that the crewed circumlunar mission is targeting launch in 2023.
As it happens, SpaceX announced its own plans for a (private) crewed circumlunar voyage less than two weeks ago. Funded in large part by Japanese billionaire Yasuka Maezawa, SpaceX’s hopes to send 10+ people to the Moon on its next-generation BFR launch vehicle, comprised of a fully-reusable booster and spaceship. Deemed Dear Moon by Maezawa, SpaceX is targeting an extremely ambitious launch deadline sometime in 2023, although CEO Elon Musk frankly noted that hitting that 2023 window would require all aspects of BFR booster and spaceship development to proceed flawlessly over the next several years.
Compared to the 10+ years and $30+ billion of development SLS and Orion will have taken before their first full launch, SpaceX is targeting the first orbital BFR test flights as early as 2020 or 2021, self-admittedly optimistic deadlines that will likely slip. Still, betting against SpaceX completing its first BFR launch sometime in the early to mid-2020s for something approximating Musk’s $2-10 billion development cost seems a risky move in the context of SpaceX’s undeniable track record of proving the old-guard wrong.
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- NASA’s EM-2 circumlunar voyage. (NASA)
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- SpaceX’s own circumlunar trajectory, nearly identical. (SpaceX)
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- SLS Block 1. (NASA)
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- BFR’s spaceship and booster (now Starship and Super Heavy) separate in a mid-2018 render of the vehicle. (SpaceX)
It must be noted that the apparent alignment of both SpaceX and NASA’s first crewed circumlunar missions with new rockets and spacecraft is a fluke of chance, and the fact that it may or may not take the shape of a second race to the Moon – pitting two dramatically different ideologies and organizational approaches against each other – is purely coincidental.
However, despite the undeniable fact that NASA and SpaceX are deeply and cooperatively involved through Crew and Cargo Dragon and despite Musk’s genuine affirmations of support and admiration for the space agency, it can be almost guaranteed that the world will look on in the 2020s with the same underlying emotions and motivations that were globally present during the Apollo Program. Rather than a battle of economic and nationalistic ideologies, the New Space Race of the 2020s will pit two (publicly) amicable private and public entities against each other at the same time as they work hand-in-hand to deliver crew and cargo to the International Space Station.
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- An overview of BFR’s booster and spaceship, now known as Super Heavy and Starship. (SpaceX)
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- SpaceX has already completed the first of many carbon-composite sections of its prototype spaceship. (SpaceX)
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- SLS’ movable launch pad is very slowly being prepared for a 2020/2021 debut. (Tom Cross)
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- SLS undoubtedly has several steps up on BFR in terms of volume of hardware in work, although target launch dates are quite similar for both rockets. (NASA)
Critically, this new “race” will be fairly illusory. Thanks to the fact that the new goal of human spaceflight appears to be the sustainable exploration of the solar system, there will inherently be no Apollo-style finish line for any one company or country or agency to cross. Rather than the Apollo Program’s shortsighted economic motivations and its consequentially abrupt demise, the end-result of this new age of competition will be the establishment of humanity as a (deep) spacefaring species, be it a temporary burst of effort or a permanent human condition.
Buckle up.
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Lifestyle
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.
Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.
Halloween is coming pic.twitter.com/lM3ASUeOqX
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 1, 2026
The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.
On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a Halloween Mode.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to receive improvements to address its two biggest issues, according to a company engineer.
Director of Engineering at Tesla AI, Phil Duan, revealed in a post on X that improvements to both pothole avoidance and navigation “are coming,’ something we have heard many times in the past. However, there are a few things that seem to hint that things might be different this time around.
Improvements on both are coming.
— Phil Duan (@pduan) October 1, 2026
Pothole avoidance, navigation, speed control, and left lane camping are some of the most prevalent and frequently mentioned shortcomings of the Full Self-Driving suite. These are a few of the biggest issues that have kept Tesla Full Self-Driving as a Supervised suite, meaning drivers must remain attentive during operation.
Pothole Avoidance
Pothole avoidance was first mentioned as an “Upcoming Improvement” with the Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 update back in early April of this year. It was listed alongside “Expand reasoning to all behaviors beyond destination handling.”
It’s been six months since we first saw pothole avoidance explicitly mentioned, and it has not moved beyond that and joined the main release notes yet.
Tesla has not shed any light on why pothole avoidance has been such an issue for it to solve, but it also has issues identifying large bumps much of the time, so its modeling of sudden changes in road conditions is likely pretty weak at this particular point. I’ve had more issues with large bumps than potholes, personally, but both are issues that need to be resolved.
This is that big bounce that I mentioned in the quoted post.
It’s just a tad too drastic to take at the speed FSD wants to go over it. You can see me quickly swipe down into Sloth, but I intervened. https://t.co/K20PK9ysBg pic.twitter.com/81Oc82ZJcZ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 2, 2026
It makes sense that things might be pretty close to being released to the public, as we are going on such an extensive period of time between it being mentioned and it actually being deployed.
Navigation
Navigation is likely the most painful part of using Full Self-Driving, as it routinely takes strange routes, has trouble with local rules (like Except Right Turn Stop Signs in Pennsylvania), and sometimes does not realize that maneuvers it is suggesting are against the law. Turning out of my neighborhood, you cannot turn left, yet my Model Y still suggests it roughly 70 percent of the time when I’m leaving.
However, Tesla might be close to a breakthrough on this. With the Summer Update, Tesla added “Preferred Routes” alongside “Automatic Navigation.”
Preferred Routes prioritized roads that the driver had actually taken before, instead of always defaulting to what the vehicle believes is the most efficient path. This has already solved many of my issues. Formerly, I would turn off the Online Routing setting, and that would eliminate most of my complaints with routing, but then you lose out later on the Live Traffic Visualization.
Tesla’s Navigation has improved tremendously thanks to the Preferred Routes release with the Summer Update, but it still could use some polishing, as it still suggests strange routes from time to time, and it also has a lot of issues getting out of a parking lot. I find that those truly confuse FSD sometimes.
News
SpaceX’s midnight spy satellite launch quietly set a new record
Falcon Heavy launched its first NRO mission while SpaceX landed four boosters in one day.
SpaceX closed out one of its busiest days ever with a midnight Falcon Heavy launch from Florida, and the rocket’s two side boosters came home to finish off a landing record the company had never set before.
Falcon Heavy lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 11:54 p.m. ET Thursday carrying NROL-97, a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. It was the first time the NRO has flown on Falcon Heavy after 22 missions on Falcon 9, and the first NRO mission bought through the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 2 contract awarded in 2025, according to Spaceflight Now.
Falcon Heavy lifts off from pad 39A in Florida for the 14th time! pic.twitter.com/uuZLKNTdD7
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
Roughly eight minutes after liftoff, side boosters B1104 and B1072 touched down at Landing Zones 1 and 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, setting off double sonic booms across Brevard County. B1104 was flying for the second time and B1072 for the fourth. Both last flew on August 30 on NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, making NROL-97 the quickest turnaround between Falcon Heavy missions to date. The brand new center core, B1106, was expended in the Atlantic so the payload could reach its high energy orbit, and SpaceX’s mission page noted the fairing had previously flown on the NROL-95 mission in July.
The two landings capped a record for SpaceX. Earlier Thursday, Falcon 9 booster B1101 returned to Landing Zone 40 after sending the Crew-13 astronauts to the International Space Station, and another Falcon 9 launched the Transporter-18 rideshare with 130 payloads from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Spaceflight Now reported it was the first time SpaceX has landed four boosters in a single day, wrapping up the triple header Teslarati previewed on Wednesday.
Falcon Heavy’s side boosters land on LZ-1 and LZ-2 pic.twitter.com/dBPcNeggFx
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 2, 2026
The mission also brought Landing Zone 1 back for what may be its final landing. SpaceX first landed an orbital class booster there in December 2015, but its lease on the former Launch Complex 13 site ended in 2025 as the company moved Florida landings to new pads at its own launch complexes. With LZ-40 already holding the Crew-13 booster, SpaceX brought LZ-1 back into service for one more night. Launch tracker Next Spaceflight listed NROL-97 as the final expected landing at the site.
NROL-97 adds to a fast growing stack of national security work for SpaceX. The company has flown four Space Force missions from Vandenberg since mid August, several believed to carry Starshield satellites, pushing its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion. Elon Musk was also named this week to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
The Florida doubleheader stood out for another reason. The Space Coast saw only one launch in all of September as SpaceX shifts more of its East Coast infrastructure toward Starship, which reached orbit for the first time on Flight 14 just three days earlier.
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla says fixes on Full Self-Driving’s two biggest issues are on the way
