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SpaceX rolls naked Starship prototype to test site
SpaceX has rolled a strange, naked Starship prototype from its Starbase, Texas factory to a nearby test site.
Beginning with its cone-tipped nose section, SpaceX started stacking Starship S26 in October 2022. By early January 2023, the prototype had been stacked to its full 50-meter (~165 ft) height and welded together. After about six more weeks of outfitting, Ship 26 left Starbase’s High Bay assembly facility and was transported to one of two stands formerly used for suborbital Starship test flights.
SpaceX lifted Ship 26 onto Suborbital Pad A on the morning of February 12th. Just a few hundred feet to the left, Starship prototype S25 watched from Suborbital Pad B while waiting for the start of its Raptor engine test campaign. Ship 26 is four months younger than Ship 25 and rolled out without Raptors installed, as it still needs to pass several simpler tests. That’s far from the only difference between the Starships.
The update that's rolling out to the fleet makes full use of the front and rear steering travel to minimize turning circle. In this case a reduction of 1.6 feet just over the air— Wes (@wmorrill3) April 16, 2024
Starbullet
Aside from a range of smaller design changes, Ship 26 has three main differences relative to most prior Starships. First, it has zero heat shield tiles. Since the 2020-2021 period of suborbital Starship flight testing, all finished ships (S20, S21, S22, S24, S25) have been fitted with ~10,000 black, ceramic heat shield tiles. Eventually, those tiles will (theoretically) protect Starships from the intense heat created by reentering Earth’s atmosphere at orbital velocity.
Ship 26 also has no flaps. Since SpaceX first fully assembled a Starship in October 2020, every ship the company has completed (SN8, SN9, SN10, SN11, SN15, SN16, S20, S21, S22, S24, S25) has had four large flaps and form-fitting ‘aerocovers’ installed. Starships need flaps to steer and orient themselves during orbital reentries. They also need flaps to control themselves during exotic landing maneuvers, which require ships to free-fall belly-down (like a human skydiver) and aggressively flip into a vertical orientation for propulsive landings.
Finally, and most confusingly, Ship 26 has no payload bay of any kind. The end result is a smooth, featureless Starship that looks like a steel bullet, can’t return to Earth, and can’t deploy satellites. Combined, the fact it exists at all almost seems like an elaborate, multi-month mistake. But SpaceX clearly intended to build Ship 26 and is now preparing to qualify it for flight.
Depot, Moon lander, or something else?
In simpler terms, Ship 26 is an intentionally expendable Starship with no way to launch satellites. That raises the obvious question: why does it exist? There are a few obvious possibilities. SpaceX is developing at least four types of Starships. The Crew and Tanker Ships will have heat shields and flaps. The Starship Moon lander will have no flaps or heat shield and will be painted white and insulated. A Depot Ship with stretched tanks will stay in orbit permanently and store propellant for in-space refilling.
Based on low-resolution renders, the bullet-like Depot Ship is the most reminiscent of Ship 26. However, there’s no evidence that Ship 26 has “exterior optical properties [optimized] for long duration [propellant storage].” The prototype also lacks any of the hardware likely needed for docking or propellant transfer and has propellant tanks that are the same size as past ships. To survive in orbit for days or weeks, it would need some kind of power source – typically solar arrays – that isn’t present. And even if an expendable Starship like S26 can already achieve SpaceX’s reported target of 250 tons (~550,000 lb) to low Earth orbit, 250 tons is only a fifth of a full propellant load.
Ship 26 could also be used for miscellaneous systems testing or a longevity demonstration in orbit. However, it’s unclear why SpaceX couldn’t simply do that with Ship 24 and Ship 25. Both have had their payload bays permanently sealed, meaning that they are only useful as test articles. The same is true for a tank-to-tank propellant transfer test SpaceX received a NASA contract to conduct in 2020. During that test, Starship will transfer “10 metric tons” of cryogenic liquid oxygen (LOx) between its main LOx tank and a smaller header LOx tank used to store landing propellant. But all Starships built to date have header tanks and could be used for the same test.
Ship 26 could exist primarily to demonstrate that a Starship with no flaps or heat shield tiles is aerodynamically stable during launch. However, expending an entire Starship for what amounts to wind tunnel testing would be extravagant.
Preparing for flight
Regardless, Ship 26 is clearly destined for more than the scrapyard. The bullet-like prototype was installed on Suborbital Pad A, which SpaceX has modified for cryogenic proofing and structural testing. While coordinating with Ship 25, which needs to conduct static fire tests, Ship 26 will be pressurized and loaded with liquid nitrogen, liquid oxygen, or both to safely simulate the thermal and mechanical loads it will experience when filled with propellant. The stand is fitted with hydraulic rams that can simultaneously simulate the thrust of six Raptor engines (1380 tons / 3M lbf).
If it passes those tests, SpaceX will presumably return Ship 26 to the Starbase factory for Raptor installation. Strangely, the smooth Starship isn’t alone. It appears that Ship 27 will be more or less identical, with no heat shield or flaps. However, there’s evidence that Ship 27 will have the first working payload bay on a Starship and could be used to deploy full-size Starlink V2 satellites in addition to any other testing SpaceX wants to use it for.
The most exotic (and unlikeliest) explanation for Ship 26 and Ship 27 is that the pair is meant to support SpaceX’s first Starship docking and propellant transfer test. In October 2022, a NASA official indicated that SpaceX’s second Starship test flight would be a “Starship-to-Starship propellant transfer.”
For now, SpaceX’s priority is preparing Ship 24 and Super Heavy Booster 7 for Starship’s first orbital launch attempt, followed by preparing Ship 25 and Booster 9 for the second orbital test flight. Until then, Ship 26 and Ship 27 will likely remain a bit of a mystery.
Elon Musk
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is now the centerpiece of the company’s newly revised Referral Program, which launched on October 29.
Instead of referring people to purchase vehicles and the referrer receiving $250 in Tesla Credit, the new program now incentivizes Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
If a Tesla owner is on an FSD trial and uses a referral code to subscribe to Full Self-Driving, the person whose Referral Link was used will receive one month of FSD (Supervised). Their code can be utilized 12 times per year, with January 1 marking the reset date.
Realistically, this means that if your Referral Code is used by 12 Tesla owners on an FSD trial, you will receive a full year of FSD for free.
🚨 Here is Tesla’s new Referral Program for Full Self-Driving (Supervised):
When someone subscribes to FSD using your link, you’ll get a month free. Up to a year of FSD is available to you for free!
If you’d like to use my link: https://t.co/g00IX9OCE3 https://t.co/GFBzEO2jjS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The previous program made it pretty difficult to get referrals; buying a vehicle is obviously a much larger financial strain than subscribing to Full Self-Driving for a month.
Of course, the previous Referral Program also offered a tangible benefit: $250 in credits you could use on Service, Supercharging, or anything in the Tesla Shop. It truly could pay for someone’s travel for a year. It recently bought me a new backpack and a T-shirt.
However, this new program is much more attainable for those who do not have a massive online presence of a slew of friends in the Tesla community who will use the code and max out subscriptions for vehicle purchases.
Woke up to maxed out Referrals! Thank you guys, that’s awesome!
Share your referral link below so others can use it! https://t.co/kesbwTcoTV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The Full Self-Driving suite will now be the keystone of the Referral Program, which makes it more inclusive and more fun for everyone with an awesome benefit.
It also gives the impression that Tesla is truly focused on FSD subscriptions, something that saw a tremendous increase in volume in Q3, as 75 percent of deliveries for the quarter came with an FSD subscription attached.
Full Self-Driving data is so instrumental to the suite’s improvement that this kind of program benefits Tesla as much as it does the consumer.
Elon Musk
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
Tesla’s quiet mode reaches Model Y Robotaxis, blacking out the screen for riders wanting rest.
Tesla’s quiet mode, the setting that blacks out the screen for riders who want to rest, has moved beyond the Cybercab. A video posted Thursday by Spencer (@scotsrule08) shows the feature running in a Model Y Robotaxi on a night ride that appears to be in Dallas.
New quiet mode now on @Robotaxi https://t.co/2cM2eM9NeN — Spencer (@scotsrule08) October 29, 2026
The rider taps a small crescent moon icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. The map, media player, app shortcuts and Grok prompt disappear, leaving a dark display with “Arriving soon,” the destination and a line reading “Tap display to exit quiet mode.” Controls a passenger may still need, including Pull Over, cabin temperature, volume and Support, stay visible. One tap anywhere brings the full map back.
Quiet mode first showed up in the Cybercab last week, which Teslarati reported alongside a new rear camera view. Tesla has been trimming cabin noise in other ways too. On October 25, Spencer reported that Robotaxi turn signals now chime for the first four blinks and then go silent. Tesla has not published release notes for either change.
Elon Musk has been pitching this use for more than a decade. In October 2014, he said that “maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,”
By 2017 he was setting a higher bar. Speaking at TED, Musk said the hard part was not making self-driving work 99.9 percent of the time, “because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.”
Owners asked for something similar in their own cars. In December 2019, a Tesla owner requested a Nap Mode that would keep the climate running and wake the occupant with an alarm, and Musk answered “Ok,” as Teslarati covered at the time.
The line returned when the Cybercab was unveiled at the We, Robot event in October 2024. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. On Tesla’s first quarter earnings call in April 2025, he called it the deciding measure: “The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year,”
Tesla has run driverless Model Y rides in Dallas and Houston since April, so a passenger dozing off on the way home is now a realistic use of the button. Tesla is also offering new riders a free first trip in both cities, according to an in-app screen shared by tracker Ethan McKanna, and said on its third quarter call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas next month.
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Tesla Full Self-Driving becomes main pillar of new Referral Program
