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SpaceX publishes dedicated Starship webpage after Elon Musk’s presentation
Shortly after CEO Elon Musk’s 2019 presentation, SpaceX has published a new webpage dedicated to the next-generation Starship launch vehicle and its Super Heavy booster, detailing the rocket and providing some excellent new images and renders.
Beyond the images of Raptor and renders of Starship and Super Heavy, the webpage discusses several possible use-cases in Earth orbit and throughout the solar system, showing off the latest iteration of a cargo-focused Starship and teasing possible missions to the Space Station.
Known informally as “Chomper” in the spaceflight community, a cargo-optimized Starship would replace the pressurized crew section with a vast cargo bay and actuating door, the source of its nickname. Similar to but slightly simpler than the Space Shuttle’s famous clamshell doors, such a nose could be extremely useful. Although it could obviously be used to place massive payloads in orbit, a sealable cargo section could also be used to grab similarly large items on orbit and then either return them to Earth or service/repair them in situ.
Of note, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) – responsible for the proposed LUVOIR super-telescope – has already seriously begun considering a cargo-optimized Starship as one of a handful of possible launch options. In the event that LUVOIR is chosen for development by NASA, the massive space telescope could be ready for launch sometime in the 2030s, at which point GSFC believes there will be only three plausible options – NASA’s SLS, Blue Origin’s New Glenn, or SpaceX’s Starship.
According to LUVOIR’s extensively detailed “Final Report”, published less than a month ago, GSFC worked fairly closely with SpaceX to determine where exactly Starship might fit into the picture. Intriguingly, an April 2019 tweet from the Center revealed that SpaceX had verified that Starship would be able to launch LUVOIR-B, a smaller and simpler version of the telescope. The August 2019 report, however, reveals that Starship could also launch LUVOIR-A – the full-sized telescope – with just a few slight modifications to Starship’s payload section.
SpaceX acknowledged Starship’s already well-known potential for transporting cargo and crew to the Moon and Mars, but also noted that the massive spacecraft could be used to deliver cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS) or elsewhere in Earth orbit. The ISS is undeniably large but Starship is (relatively) even bigger, nominally featuring enough pressurized volume (~1000m3 vs ~910m3) to more than double the habitable capacity of the ISS upon arrival. CEO Elon Musk noted this in an offhand remark on September 28th, cognizant of the fact that a Starship on its own is effectively a reusable ISS-class space station that can be placed in orbit with a single launch.
If a given Starship can support a crew of astronauts over a multi-month interplanetary cruise, the same Starship can also – and probably even more easily so – serve as an all-in-one space station with months of longevity. Add in Starship-enabled resupply and refueling runs and SpaceX could likely sustain a fleet of autonomous space stations in Earth orbit with relative ease. Assuming SpaceX is interested, Starship launch prices are low enough, and a large enough market exists, Starship could almost instantly and singlehandedly take orbital tourism from a distant fantasy for billionaires to a serious market potentially accessible to hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
Musk has noted in previous SpaceX presentations that the goal is to make Starship so reusable that the price of per-person tickets to Mars becomes comparable to buying a house ($500k to $1m). Assuming SpaceX gets close to that price target, the cost of a 100-person mission low Earth orbit – likely requiring just one launch – could potentially be comparable to buying a car (~$50,000).
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Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
SpaceX targets September 22 for Starship Flight 14, its first attempt to reach real orbit.
SpaceX has set September 22 as the target date for Starship’s 14th test flight, and this one carries a different goal than any of the 13 that came before it. Every previous Starship mission has intentionally flown a suborbital arc, reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launched. Flight 14 is designed to send the craft into a genuine orbit around Earth for the first time.
The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central time at Starbase in South Texas and runs for 75 minutes, pending regulatory approval, according to SpaceX’s mission description published Tuesday. If the flight goes as planned, Starship will circle the planet roughly six times at an altitude near 275 kilometers over about ten hours before a deorbit burn sends it toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a departure from the Indian Ocean recoveries used on the last several flights.
The mission also marks the first attempt to put a working batch of Starlink V3 satellites into actual service. Flight 13 carried 20 of the new satellites in July, but because that mission never left a suborbital trajectory, the payload reentered along with the ship instead of separating into orbit.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Each V3 satellite is rated for roughly one terabit per second of downlink capacity, so a successful deployment on Flight 14 would be SpaceX’s largest single jump in network bandwidth since Starlink began flying on Falcon 9.
Flight 13 still did the heavier lifting on the technical side. That July mission flew a deliberately more stressful reentry profile to test Starship’s heat shield, and the ship survived its softest splashdown yet, intact enough for drone inspections shortly after landing. Elon Musk said the flight delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some,” a result Teslarati covered in detail when he later said SpaceX had solved the vehicle’s biggest reusability challenge. Flight 14 is where SpaceX starts spending that confidence on an actual orbital insertion rather than another controlled fall back to Earth.
One thing Flight 14 will not attempt is a tower catch of the ship. Musk floated the idea right after Flight 13, but walked the timeline back in August, saying a catch attempt was more likely “in a few months.” The Super Heavy booster will still aim for its own recovery, targeting an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America, the same approach used on recent flights.
September 22 is SpaceX’s own target, not a locked date. Starship’s schedule has slipped before over hardware readiness and FAA sign off, and the company has said as much in its own mission notes. But the plan itself represents the clearest marker yet that Starship is moving from a suborbital test program into something meant to carry paying payloads and, eventually, people.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.
Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.
Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.
He said:
“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:
It’s out of this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Excitement guaranteed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.
Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.
However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
