News
SpaceX is ready to build the first Starship destined for space after latest tests
After a busy several days of rocket hardware testing, Elon Musk says that SpaceX may be ready to build the first Starship prototype destined for space.
According to Musk, one test in particular – performed in South Texas just yesterday – is an encouraging sign that SpaceX’s Starship team is becoming increasingly competent at building the massive steel parts that will ultimately make up the generation launch vehicle. For SpaceX, the particular skills and expertise needed to precisely and consistently build a launch vehicle – let alone a rocket as large and complex as Starship – are quite a bit different from those it has mastered with Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon.
A lot of the expertise – particularly engineering talent, countless lessons-learned, and insight into reusability – is directly transferable from Falcon rockets to SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy program. Where it really isn’t transferable, however, is in the methods required to actually build the steel subcomponents that must ultimately be assembled together to form the rocket’s upper stage and booster. As a result, SpaceX has spent more than a year focused on building, testing, scrapping, improving, and re-testing any number of critical Starship components. Over the last four weeks (and last few days in particular), that testing has come to a head and Elon Musk believes the results have opened the door for SpaceX to begin building its first space-bound Starship prototypes.
SpaceX’s latest round of full-scale Starship hardware tests began just 10-20 days ago, depending on how one counts. Back around the start of the new calendar year, SpaceX began rapidly integrating two new Starship bulkheads and two cylindrical steel rings (barrel sections), ultimately delivering a finished ‘test tank’ after just 20 days of work. On January 10th, scarcely 24 hours after the two halves of the test tank were welded together, SpaceX sent the Starship test tank to its nearby launch pad and pressurized it with water until it quite literally burst.
Musk tweeted the results of that intentional test-to-destruction just a few hours after it was completed, revealing that SpaceX’s upgraded production and integration techniques enabled the tank to survive pressures almost 20% greater than the minimum Starships will need to perform orbital launches.
“Critically, the tank reached a maximum sustained pressure of 7.1 bar (103 psi), 18% more than the operating pressure (6 bar/87 psi) Musk says Starship prototypes will need to begin orbital test flights. At 7.1 bar, the test tank would have been experiencing an incredible ~20,000 metric tons (45 million lbf) of force spread out over its interior surfaces — equivalent to ~20% of the weight of an entire US Navy aircraft carrier. Perhaps even more impressive, that same Starship test tank was built from almost nothing extremely quickly, going from first weld to said pressurization test in just three weeks (20 days).
With relatively minor improvements to welding conditions and the manufacturing precision of Starship rings and domes, Musk believes that SpaceX can reliably build Starships and Super Heavy boosters to survive pressures greater than 8.5 bar (125 psi), guaranteeing a safety margin of at least 40%. Even a minor improvement of ~6% would give Starship a safety margin of 125%, enough – in the eyes of most engineering standards committees – to reasonably certify Starships for orbital test flights.”
Teslarati.com — January 12th, 2020
Test Tank 2: The Tankening
This brings us to January 27th, a little over two weeks after SpaceX completed and burst the first standalone Starship test tank. Over the last week, SpaceX has quickly assembled a second Starship test tank, using a few clearly new methods and parts, as well as a brand-new tent built by the same company that Tesla used for Fremont’s fourth General Assembly line.
In the last few days, two new bulkheads and steel rings came together to form Starship test tank #2, which was subsequently prepped for transport and moved about a mile down the road to SpaceX’s launch facilities on the morning of January 27th. Scarcely a few hours later, well before anyone was paying close attention for test activities, Elon Musk took to Twitter to reveal that the second tank had already been subjected to a pressure test with water. That second tank reportedly survived up to 7.5 bar, an improvement of about 6% compared to the first tank.
This time, however, the tank wasn’t actually catastrophically destroyed by the pressure test, instead developing a leak around the weld connecting the two halves that lead SpaceX to back off. Musk says that that presumably small leak will now be repaired, after which the same tank will be tested again but with one significant difference. Musk says that Test Tank #2’s second pressure test will be performed with a cryogenic liquid — most likely liquid nitrogen (LN2).
In replies after his reveal, Musk noted that he believed the second test tank could perform significantly better if pressurized with a cryogenic liquid. That’s because certain types of steel – particularly those SpaceX has chosen for Starship – exhibit something known as cryogenic hardening when exposed to extremely cold temperatures, producing steel that can be dramatically stronger by some measures.
Ultimately, as mentioned above, a tank pressure safety margin of 125% is the minimum most engineering standards provide for any given orbital-class launch vehicle. At 7.5 bar, even under the very unlikely assumption that Starship tanks will not see even a marginal strength increase at cryogenic temperatures, SpaceX’s second Starship test tank has officially hit that 125% safety margin. As Musk himself noted on Monday, he is now confident that SpaceX can immediately start building the first Starship destined for spaceflight and further revealed that two of that particular Starship’s three tank domes are already nearing completion.
Known as Starship SN01 (serial number 01), there’s a strong possibility that the massive spacecraft will never reach higher than a 20 km (12.5 mi) flight test SpaceX intends to perform. The company’s rapidly changing strategy may very well mean that SN01 – now ‘go’ for production – could also support suborbital spaceflight testing and maybe even the first orbital Starship launch, although orbital launches will require a Super Heavy booster. Elon Musk, for one, has already christened Starship SN01 an “orbital vehicle”.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s next Uranium in Uranus merch is Boring Company’s weirdest tease yet
Elon Musk teased a glowing new Boring Company merch idea, complete with a Geiger counter.
Elon Musk teased the next piece of Boring Company merchandise on X Saturday, and it is exactly as unserious as fans of the company’s product history have come to expect. “The next @boringcompany merch will put Uranium in Uranus,” Musk wrote in a thread posted early Saturday morning. He followed up by explaining that the item would glow in the dark, “because otherwise how could you find it,” and that a Geiger counter would be sold separately as “an optional strap-on.”
Musk closed the thread with a line that doubles as a mission statement for the tunneling company’s merchandise arm: “It’s not easy coming up with something that is both outrageously unsellable and yet extremely popular.”
The Boring Company has built a small but consistent side business out of novelty items that start as jokes and end up selling out. The company’s Not-a-Flamethrower raised roughly $10 million in a few days back in 2018, moving all 20,000 units it produced. Its Burnt Hair perfume, priced around $100 a bottle, sold out fast enough that scalpers were flipping units on eBay for ten times the retail price. Boring Bricks, made from tunneling spoil, followed the same playbook of teasing a product on X months before it became real.
Musk has not said what the actual item will be, only that it involves uranium and glows in the dark. Given the pattern, that vagueness is probably intentional. Past merch announcements have started as one-line jokes and taken weeks or months to turn into an actual product listing on the company’s site, and there is no guarantee this one follows through at all.
The timing lines up with a period of real momentum for the Boring Company outside of the joke merchandise. The company said last week it plans to double the number of operational stations on its Vegas Loop by the end of the year, a target tied to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers. Prufrock-5, one of the company’s tunnel boring machines, also just wrapped a test tunnel in Bastrop, Texas, and is expected to relaunch on its next assignment in November.
Whether the uranium joke turns into an actual product remains to be seen. Musk’s post did not include a price, a shipping date, or even a name for the item, which has historically meant a Boring Company website page goes up quietly, password protected, sometime before an announcement.
News
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
NASA just gave SpaceX a $946 million contract for three more astronaut missions through 2030.
NASA has awarded SpaceX a $946 million contract modification covering three more astronaut missions to the International Space Station, according to an announcement the agency published Friday. The award adds Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s existing Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract, bringing the agreement’s total value to $5.92 billion across 17 flights.
SpaceX confirmed the award on X, writing that it was excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the Space Station from Florida. The new missions cover ground, launch, in orbit, and return operations, along with cargo transport and a lifeboat capability while docked at the station, and the period of performance runs through 2030.
We’re excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch @NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the @Space_Station from Florida https://t.co/Qm16vVK9F3 pic.twitter.com/drg3s7GtuM
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2026
The award follows a notice of intent NASA issued in May, when the agency first signaled it would purchase up to six additional post certification missions from SpaceX. Teslarati covered that filing at the time, noting NASA cited technical issues and schedule delays encountered by Boeing as a driving factor. Friday’s contract modification locks in three of those six missions, with the remaining three left open for NASA to award later, potentially to Boeing if Starliner clears certification.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has still not flown an operational crew rotation mission for NASA. The spacecraft’s most recent crewed test flight in 2024 ended without the astronauts returning aboard Starliner, and the company has spent the time since working through thruster problems. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said this week that SpaceX is not retiring Crew Dragon today, for sure, while stopping short of committing to fly it past 2030.
Crew-12 is currently docked at the space station, and NASA has said Crew-13 is targeting a launch in the coming weeks. The newly awarded Crew-15 through Crew-17 missions extend SpaceX’s role as NASA’s primary way of getting astronauts to and from orbit well into the back half of the decade, regardless of what happens with Starliner or Starship in the meantime.
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.
Elon Musk’s next Uranium in Uranus merch is Boring Company’s weirdest tease yet
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
