News
SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch slips into 2021
SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch – set to be the rocket’s fourth overall – has slipped several months into 2021 according to the vice commander of the US Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (USAF SMC).
Known as AFSPC-44 (now USSF-44), the nature of Falcon Heavy’s next payload remains a mystery. Headed to geostationary orbit, the satellite will likely be involved in military satellite communications, possibly including espionage (also known as signals intelligence or SIGINT). Technically, the USSF-44 mission includes two separate satellites and at least two additional rideshare payloads and will weigh roughly 3.7 metric tons (~8200 lb) at launch.
When the contract was announced, Falcon Heavy was expected to launch USSF-44 no earlier than (NET) Q4 2020. By April 2020, that target was closer to late November or December. Now, four months after that report, Brigadier General Jason Cothern says that SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy launch is scheduled NET February 28th, 2021.
The delay doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Based on public observation of SpaceX’s Falcon booster production and testing, requiring thousands of miles of extremely conspicuous highway transport, it was already clear that the mission was unlikely to launch this year. Of the six first stages spotted in transport over the last nine months, all were clearly Falcon 9 boosters and lacked any of the telltale parts that distinguish Falcon Heavy side and center boosters.
The most recent ‘core spottings’ – a new Falcon 9 booster headed West after acceptance testing and another preparing for acceptance testing in Texas late last month – all but confirmed that USSF-44 was significantly delayed. Since mid-2019, SpaceX has intentionally slowed down Falcon booster production to focus on the higher-volume production of expendable hardware (fairings and second stages). While the company could technically complete boosters every two weeks if its feet were put to the coals and has generally averaged 10 per year, that figure has dropped closer to 6-8 boosters per year over the last ~18 months.
Coupled with a report that all three of the USSF-44 Falcon Heavy rocket’s boosters would be brand new, the lack of sightings in the wild implied that has yet to ship even one of those complex rockets to McGregor, Texas for acceptance testing. Based on preparations for Falcon Heavy’s April 2019 Block 5 launch debut, the process of testing three new Falcon boosters singlehandedly takes at least three months. Additionally, all three of the Arabsat 6A mission’s new Falcon Heavy boosters arrived in Florida a full two months before launch.
In other words, given that a brand new Falcon 9 booster rolled out of SpaceX’s Hawthorne, CA factory on August 24th and that said factory isn’t really set up for concurrent booster completion, it would take unprecedented feats of manufacturing and testing for Falcon Heavy Flight 4 to be ready to launch less than four months from now (around the turn of the New Year).
In fact, even under the assumption that the next three boosters on SpaceX’s factory assembly line are all for Falcon Heavy Flight 4, the new February 2021 launch date is going to be a tight deadline. There is no evidence that SpaceX production delays are to blame for the USSF-44 launch delay and the coronavirus-related disruption of satellite production is equally – if not more – likely. Either way, SpaceX’s fourth Falcon Heavy launch will have to wait a few extra months. Barring a surprise mission over the next six months, Falcon Heavy Flight 4 will also be SpaceX’s first operational launch directly to geostationary orbit (GEO).
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Tesla has revealed plans through permit submissions for a massive Robotaxi charging hub in Austin, Texas.
Tesla plans to build the Supercharger hub in multiple phases, with the second phase potentially introducing wireless induction charging, something the company has been developing for the Robotaxi fleet.
Initially, 48 Tesla Robotaxi-geared Superchargers will be built on a lot just across from the St. Elmo, Texas, Service Center. There are about 80 additional spots that will not be impacted by phase 1 of the construction process.
Filings show that the second phase of the project will turn those 80 additional spots into wireless charging for Robotaxi, but it might be an error. The Key Notes state that item 3 is listed as “V4 Charging Cabinet to Support 80 Wireless Chargers in Phase 2. However, the drawings point to V3 Cabinets that are already tied to Superchargers:
There are roughly 128 total spots in the lot, but it is unclear if they will all be used for charging based on what appears to be some sort of typo in the blueprint.
A new Robotaxi fleet charging hub is coming soon to Austin, Texas!!
Permits have been filed for the installation of 48 (V3) stalls in a vehicle storage lot across the road from Tesla’s St Elmo service center. pic.twitter.com/xwRgSWDqht
— MarcoRP (@MarcoRPi1) August 18, 2026
This is among the first Robotaxi charging hubs Tesla has started to develop, as it currently has four others planned throughout various areas: one in Phoenix, one in San Antonio, another in Irving, which will serve the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and another in Las Vegas.
These projects are necessary as Tesla expands its Robotaxi program. Now that preparations have started for the public launch of Cybercab, Robotaxi will likely be expanding aggressively, especially over the next two to three years.
Last night, The Information reported that Tesla was planning to launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Hours later, Tesla then announced it was launching a competition for fans to potentially ride in Cybercab during its first public rides.
Tesla’s plan to expand its charging infrastructure in the regions where Robotaxi will initially operate is great preparation for the expanding service. There is still a lot to do, including launching the Cybercab on time.
Tesla got its largest order for the all-electric Class 8 Semi yet, a 500-unit order from Einride AB, a Swedish trucking company.
Einride made the announcement this morning following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said it plans to use 500 Tesla Semi units on its fleet intelligence platform, called Saga AI. The deployments will serve large companies like Amazon and will extend Einride’s electric freight network across logistics routes in California, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.
🚨 Tesla has received a MASSIVE order from Swedish freight company Einride AB, which placed an order for 500 Tesla Semi trucks
Tesla’s biggest order for the Semi yet! pic.twitter.com/PrtLp5yzvh
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 18, 2026
The deployment is being carried out in several phases over the next two years as Tesla ramps production of the Semi at its dedicated production facility in Sparks, Nevada. Einride will receive its first Semi units in September.
Saga AI
Saga AI is Einride’s dedicated fleet intelligence platform. It enables scaled adoption of electric trucks for freight use and allows shippers to integrate electric capacity without the operational burden or capital risks of managing a fleet. This helps integrate cost-efficient logistics and makes budgeting and forecasting much more accurate.
Tesla Semi’s Adoption
The Tesla Semi is now gathering large-scale clients past those who have helped the company operate a Pilot Program to gain initial information and feedback from real-world drivers.
Perhaps the biggest and most notable is that of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo., who have worked with Tesla for the past several years to dial in the finer details of the truck, including its efficiency and operation-related components.
Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno
There has been tremendous progress in that time, and it even catalyzed Tesla to make some design changes, which were unveiled earlier this year.
But Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli says his company’s partnership with Tesla will continue to push those things forward:
“This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand. Working closely with Tesla to bring next-generation Semis into active operations quickly and at scale is a testament to the strength of that partnership, and how quickly this technology is maturing from promise to daily operations.”
Additionally, Dan Priestley, the Director of the Semi Program at Tesla, said the partnership is ideal due to Einride’s focus on sustainable transport:
“Einride is at the forefront of sustainable freight, and we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with them through this order of 500 Semis. EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks. These savings increase further through operational efficiency when deploying EV trucks at scale, and we are excited that Einride recognizes this and look forward to supporting their deployments.”
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Tesla reveals plans for Robotaxi charging hub in Austin
Tesla Semi gets its largest order yet
