News
SpaceX’s second flight-proven Starship makes way for next ‘test tank’
Four days after the rocket’s hop debut, SpaceX has safely returned its second flight-proven Starship prototype to an assembly building for refurbishment, making way for a new ‘test tank’ at the launch pad.
Known as Starship serial number six (SN6), the ~30m (~100 ft) tall prototype became the second full-scale Starship to take flight on September 3rd, following in SN5’s footsteps to reach a similar ~150m (~500 ft) apogee before gently landing. More or less identical to SN5’s own August 4th hop debut, it marked the second hop of an entirely separate Starship prototype in 30 days – a feat almost certainly unprecedented in the history of large-scale rocket development.
Significant work remains to speed up the post-hop process, which appears to currently amount to some ~48 hours of gradual, uncontrolled detanking and depressurization. Regardless, a bit least than four days after a successful launch and landing, Starship SN6 was rolled back to SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas production facilities around 9am CDT, September 7th. Just five hours after that, Starship test tank SN7.1 – the second in a planned series of two – was loaded onto the same transporter and shipped down the road to the launch pad.
Since its first hop, over the last 30 days, SpaceX has inspected and refurbished Starship SN5 to help support what CEO Elon Musk has described as “several short hops to smooth out [the] launch process.” SN6’s success (and the intact launch infrastructure it thus left behind) now means that SN5 will almost certainly be reused in the near future. It’s unclear how many hops will be needed for Starship launch operations to be optimized into a smooth process but 4+ (2 x SN5, 2 x SN6) seems to be a safe bet.
However, SN5’s second hop will have to wait. Up next on SpaceX’s South Texas manifest is the fifth in a series of intentionally destructive tank tests, used to qualify (or disqualify) new Starship designs, manufacturing techniques, and materials. Known as Starship SN7.1, this particular test tank is the second in a series of two meant to determine the capabilities of a new steel alloy.
The first tank, SN7, was (successfully) tested to destruction on June 23rd and is believed to have reached record pressures before it failed. Perhaps more importantly, an unintentional leak during one of SN7’s first pressure test attempts proved that the new 304L (-ish) steel alloy it was built out of would make certain failure modes far less catastrophic (i.e. a leak instead of a violent rupture).
SN7 was a single basic test tank: an upper dome, lower dome, and three steel rings. SN7.1 is significantly more complex, adding a skirt section with hold-down clamps at the base and replacing the aft tank dome with a thrust dome and thrust puck (Raptor engine attachment points). SN7 was simply loaded with cryogenic liquid nitrogen and pressurized. SN7.1 – thanks to the addition of a thrust puck and skirt section – will perform similar cryo pressure tests but will also be subject to the simulated thrust of three Raptor engines with a series of hydraulic rams.
As of now, SpaceX has road closures scheduled today and tomorrow (Sept 8th) from 8am to 8pm CDT – tomorrow likely being the earliest opportunity for SN7.1 testing to begin.
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Investor's Corner
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Elon Musk says Starship Flight 15 will try to catch the ship itself, a first.
Elon Musk says SpaceX’s next Starship flight will try something nobody has done before, by catching the ship itself. Speaking to roughly 2,000 people at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on Saturday, Musk said Flight 15 is about four to six weeks away and “probably launches a little bit before Thanksgiving, is my guess.”
That is a slip from earlier reporting, which had pointed to a launch as early as October 19. Musk explained why the date keeps moving. “We’re making a bunch of improvements to the rocket between every flight,” he said, adding that there are often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small changes. This time the list is short, “but some of them take a fair bit of work and we’ve got to go inside the tank to make some of these changes.”
“We’re going to try to catch the ship, which is a super big deal,” Musk said. “If we do so, that’ll be the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket.” SpaceX has already caught the Super Heavy booster with the tower’s mechanical arms, and has talked about catching the ship since late 2025, but the upper stage has never been caught.
Musk also laid out what comes after. “The next big milestone would be to refly both the booster and the ship,” he said, describing a Flight 16 where “all parts of an orbital rocket are reflown.”
The reason SpaceX wants this comes down to cost and cadence. Every Starship ship so far has ended its flight in the ocean, and SpaceX expects most of those water landings to end in fireballs. A ship that returns to Starbase intact can be inspected and flown again. SpaceX’s IPO filing, says Starship V3 is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, that SpaceX aims to cut the cost to reach orbit by 99% or more versus the historical average, and that tower catches should allow “multiple launches per day.”
The payoff goes beyond cheaper launches. The next generation Starlink V3 satellites are too large for Falcon 9 and can only fly on Starship, which can carry up to 60 per flight. Flight 14 on September 28 deployed the first 26 of them after Starship reached orbit despite an early engine shutdown, as Teslarati reported. Musk blamed engine computer software, and said the heat shield “was extremely robust,” which he claimed in August had solved Starship’s biggest challenge.
NASA’s Moon plans depend on the same capability. NASA’s inspector general has described a lander mission that needs a propellant depot in low Earth orbit and more than 10 tanker flights, with SpaceX targeting one tanker launch every six days. That schedule only works if ships and boosters come back fast and fly again. Also, ship to ship propellant transfer has not been attempted yet.
One interesting hurdle yet to be explored is bringing the ship back to the launch site, with reentry over land, which will undoubtedly come with a lot of aviation safety reviews.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
News
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
Tesla confirms its first official Cybercab fleet number as Austin scales fast and Dallas looms.
Tesla says more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, the first time the company has put an official number on its active Cybercab fleet. The figure came from the Robotaxi account on X on Saturday, which wrote that one month after launch the service had “scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days.”
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI software, quoted the post with a line that carried the bigger news. “Two years since the 10/10 Cybercab WeRobot event, the cabs are everywhere in Austin now. Dallas soon,” he wrote. It is the first time Tesla has named the next city for public Cybercab rides.
One month after launch, we’ve scaled to 300+ Cybercabs serving Austin – an 8x increase in 30 days https://t.co/EagJy2JAsm
— Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 10, 2026
Tesla opened Cybercab rides to the public in Austin on September 4, as Teslarati reported, a day after an invite only launch event. The ramp since then has been steep. Our September 28 report had the fleet at well over 100 units after availability jumped from 58 to 125 in a single week. On Thursday, Tesla added 150 Cybercabs to the Texas automated vehicle registry, lifting its registered count to 319 from 169. The first seven appeared on the registry on August 31.
RobotaxiTracker, a community site that counts vehicles from sightings and state records, listed 275 vehicles in unsupervised service in Austin on Saturday, 105 of them Cybercabs, which is well below Tesla’s figure. Tracker counts can lag official numbers, though Sawyer Merritt noted that Cybercab wait times in Austin stayed short on Saturday evening even with more than 2,000 fans in town for X Takeover.
Regulators are watching the rollout. NHTSA opened an audit query into Tesla’s certification that the Cybercab meets federal safety standards, and sworn answers are due October 30. Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21, which gives the company a natural venue to define its fleet numbers and put a date on Dallas.
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla’s Cybercab fleet jumped 8x in a month, with Dallas up next
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