News
SpaceX’s first orbital-class Starship stretches ‘wings’ ahead of Raptor installation
SpaceX’s first orbital-class Starship prototype was spotted stretching its ‘wings’ on Sunday after completing a successful cryogenic proof test late last week.
While minor relative to almost any other testing milestone, the small step still serves as a reminder that the end goal of Ship 20’s test campaign is a launch on Super Heavy to orbital altitudes and velocities. If that launch goes more or less according to plan, Starship will then attempt to survive an orbital-class reentry for the first time, subjecting it to extreme heat and putting its many thousands of heat shield tiles through their most daunting challenge yet. Dozens of things could (and probably will) go wrong, while almost every system aboard must work perfectly to ensure that Starship makes it through reentry in one piece.
And even if all of that occurs as planned with no major issues, those same systems will still need to hold on for several more minutes to perform a freefall, engine reignition, flip, and landing maneuver that only two other Starship prototypes have completed. As it so happens, one of those crucial systems is Starship’s flaps.
Outfitted with actuators powered by Tesla Model 3/Y motors and a pair of Model S batteries, Starship’s four large ‘flaps’ are only capable of simple flapping motions. While they may look the part, Starship flaps aren’t wings and are specifically designed not to produce lift. Instead, in support of Starship’s unusual descent profile, they act more like the hands and legs of a skydiver (particularly one in a wingsuit), allowing ships to control their pitch, attitude, and roll while freefalling belly-down to the ground. In theory, that allows Starship to gain practically all of the benefit of a structural wing like that on the Space Shuttle but for a far lower mass penalty.
Instead of elegantly slowing down with wings, Starship uses its flaps to create as much drag as possible during descent, slowing down to a terminal velocity around 100 m/s (~225 mph) or less. Using a freefall trajectory and flaps incapable of generating lift does likely come at the cost of “crossrange performance,” referring to how far Starship can travel horizontally in Earth’s atmosphere after reentry. However, significant crossrange performance is almost entirely irrelevant outside of Cold War paranoia like the kind that NASA let influence the Shuttle’s design to an ultimately catastrophic degree. Landing vertically also precludes the need for exceptionally long, expensive runways like those the Shuttle needed.
Aside from allowing it to navigate to a small vertical landing pad (or massive ‘Mechazilla’ catch tower), Starship’s flaps are also important for controlling vehicle orientation and heading during reentry itself. To fill that role, those flaps will have to be able to actuate across their full range of motion during reentry, as Starship’s hypersonic assault against the thin upper atmosphere creates a flood of superheated plasma that wants nothing more to find the gaps in its heat shield. Shuttle engineers had to deal with the same issue, ultimately designing complex seals that would allow the vehicle’s wing and body flaps to actuate during reentry without allowing superheated plasma to leak inside and damage their fragile mechanisms or structure.
Although Starship does have the benefit of relying on steel – not aluminum – for almost all of its structures, it still has to grapple with the same challenges of shielding sensitive electronics, actuators, motors, and more from the reentry onslaught that its heat shield and steel structure are designed to survive.
Half-covered in heat shield tiles, it’s not clear how SpaceX plans to seal off the more sensitive, exposed components of each flap’s actuation mechanism – including motors, cabling, and the hinge itself. Based on what’s visible, Starship’s flaps and the cradle-like ‘aerosurfaces’ they slot into do have very tight tolerances and may rely on some felt-like ceramic wool or TPS blanket to seal the tiny remaining gaps. With small enough gaps, a hypersonic airstream can behave as if there are no gaps at all, suggesting that that might be SpaceX’s preferred approach to sealing Starship flaps.
Up next on Starship S20’s path to launch is the reinstallation of 3-6 Raptor engines (for the third time) ahead of a crucial static fire test campaign that could begin as early as Thursday, October 7th. Likely beginning with 1-3 Raptors, SpaceX will perform an unknown number of static fire tests, ultimately culminating in the first ignition of 4, 5, and 6 engines on any Starship prototype. If all goes well, that testing will also mark the first time Raptor Vacuum has been ignited on a Starship prototype and the first time SpaceX has ignited multiple Raptor variants (sea level and vacuum, in this case) on the same vehicle. Stay tuned for updates on engine installation.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
News
NHTSA just escalated its Tesla Cybercab investigation in a big way
NHTSA escalated its Cybercab audit into a sworn Special Order with a September 30 deadline.
Federal regulators have moved from asking Tesla questions about its Cybercab to demanding sworn answers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a Special Order that requires a Tesla officer to sign an affidavit attesting to the completeness of the company’s responses, with a deadline of September 30.
The order builds on Audit Query AQ26002, which NHTSA opened on September 3, the same day Tesla began commercial Cybercab service in Austin. Teslarati covered that initial inquiry when it surfaced, noting the agency wanted to understand how Tesla certified a vehicle with no permanently attached steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors as compliant with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. A Special Order is a different tool and converts a fact finding review into a legally enforceable demand, the same mechanism NHTSA used against Tesla in 2023 during its Autopilot investigation.
Several of the 21 requests target a specific gap in Cybercab’s design. One asks whether Tesla used temporarily attached human controls at any point to help certify the vehicle, and if so, which standards depended on that equipment being present. Another quotes an existing rule directly: “The service brakes shall be activated by means of a foot control.” Cybercab has no foot pedal. NHTSA wants a detailed explanation of how the vehicle satisfies that requirement, and how it complies without the kind of exemption granted to Zoox in July under Part 555, the regulatory pathway built for steering wheel free vehicles.
The order does not claim Cybercab is unsafe or that Tesla broke a rule. It requires Tesla to explain, under oath, the reasoning behind decisions the company already made when it self-certified the vehicle. That distinction matters, but so does the exposure. Motor1’s reporting, summarized here, put potential civil penalty exposure as high as $139 million if NHTSA later finds the certification was flawed, on top of whatever criminal risk comes with a false sworn statement.
Tesla has not said publicly how it plans to respond. Cybercab is still carrying passengers in Austin through the Robotaxi app while the September 30 deadline approaches, and the company has continued expanding the vehicle’s footprint even as the regulatory question remains open. The Special Order does not pause any of that and just sets a date by which Tesla has to put its certification logic on the record, with a company officer’s name attached to it.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
