News
SpaceX ships another huge propellant tank to South Texas BFR test site
Captured by NASASpaceflight.com forum user “bocachicagal”, the second of several massive liquid methane tanks has arrived at SpaceX’s prospective Boca Chica, Texas facilities, to be dedicated to integrated testing of BFR’s spaceship/upper stage.
If there was any doubt beforehand, the arrival of a second ~100,000 gallon vacuum-insulated tank all but guarantees that SpaceX is planning a major campaign of BFR spaceship testing in South Texas – with as much as 200,000 gallons of storage capacity in those two tanks alone, SpaceX could easily top off two Falcon 9’s with liquid oxygen and still have more than 100 tons left over.
Per NASASpaceflight.com’s forums, it appears that this newest tank arrived at the site sometime yesterday or the day before. Thanks to the fundamental properties of BFR’s planned liquid methane and oxygen fuel and oxidizer, aspects of basic ground support infrastructure may actually be a significant improvement over Falcon 9’s refined kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen, and dramatically superior (at least in a logistical and practical sense) to hydrogen/oxygen, a popular choice for many rockets.
In terms of volume and density, oxygen is about 2.5x denser than methane but optimally combusts at a ratio of roughly 3.5 parts oxygen to 1 part methane (3.5:1), with SpaceX likely to operate the Raptor engine closer to 3.8:1. This means that – despite their major density differences – BFR’s oxygen and methane tanks will ultimately end up very similarly sized to hold ~230t of liquid methane and ~860t of liquid oxygen (2017 BFR numbers).
Testing giant rockets: it’s not easy
As it relates to SpaceX’s South Texas propellant infrastructure, this likely means that a minimum of four large vacuum-insulated tanks will be needed to fully fuel a BFR spaceship (BFS), two for oxygen (~800t) and two for methane (~300t). Depending on how SpaceX has structured its BFR infrastructure acquisitions, the two large tanks now present in Boca Chica could be more than enough to support a wide range of spaceship hop tests. A full load of fuel is almost certainly unnecessary – if not outright implausible – for BFS hop testing: with a full load of ~1100t of fuel and the spaceship’s total mass around ~1250t, all seven planned Raptor engines would need to be installed and operating near full thrust (~1400t, 14,000 kN) to lift the ship off the ground.
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- F9R seen just before liftoff for a 2014 hop test at SpaceX’s McGregor, TX test facilities. BFR’s first test pad might (or might not) look quite similar. (SpaceX)
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- An updated spaceship lands on Mars. (SpaceX)
For context, Falcon 9’s first stage produces a maximum thrust of roughly 7,600 kN at liftoff, while Falcon Heavy triples that figure to ~22,800 kN. The spaceship/upper stage of BFR alone thus produces nearly two times as much thrust as an entire Falcon 9 at full throttle and as much as fourteen times as much thrust as Falcon 9 and Heavy’s upper stage, statistics that properly illustrate just how extraordinarily powerful BFR is when compared with the rockets SpaceX currently operates. BFR’s booster (BFB) is even wilder, featuring ~3.5 times as many Raptors and thus ~3.5 times as much thrust as the spaceship/upper stage.
As a result of the sheer power of just the spaceship alone, SpaceX may have to move directly to a style of launch pad closer to that used by Falcon 9 and Heavy rather than the spartan concrete slab used for Falcon 9’s Grasshopper testing. In this case, the rocket would be mounted some distance from the ground to minimize acoustic loads on the vehicle’s after and would likely include a water deluge system to further deaden thermal and acoustic energy while also minimizing damage to the concrete and metal structures that launch and landing pads are built out of.
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- Prior to liftoff, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are held down by massive “hold-down clamps” at the rocket’s base. Even after engine ignition, those clamps only release once the flight computer decides that the rocket is healthy. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Falcon 9 B1049 lifts off from SpaceX’s LC-40 pad on September 10, producing more than 1.7 million pounds of thrust.(Tom Cross)
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- A September 2018 render of Starship (then BFS) shows one of the vehicle’s two hinged wings/fins/legs. (SpaceX)
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- BFR’s booster is at least three times more powerful still than BFS at liftoff. (SpaceX)
Above all else, the presence of not one but two huge ~100,000-gallon vacuum-insulated tanks at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facilities all but guarantees that the company intends to situate a serious campaign of BFR tests there, likely including the integrated spaceship hop tests both Elon Musk and Gwynne Shotwell have explicitly mentioned in recent months. Put simply, SpaceX has no other reason to be bringing massive cryogenic propellant tanks to South Texas – the company has plenty of space at any one of its three large launch complexes (not to mention McGregor) if it wanted to store those tanks elsewhere, and those three facilities already have operational propellant storage and loading infrastructure for Falcon 9 and Heavy launches.
If more massive tanks continue to arrive or if it becomes clear that the two similar tanks present or solely meant for LOX or methane, the scale of SpaceX’s intentions in South Texas will become increasingly clearer.
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Elon Musk
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.
Tesla is planning to roll out some pretty significant safety and accident avoidance features with Full Self-Driving version 15, which will be the next major FSD deployment from the company.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy used a near-miss this week to preview what the company says is the next leap in Full Self-Driving.
In response to a driver whose car had swerved away from another vehicle pulling out of a parking lot, Elluswamy wrote that he was glad the owner was safe and that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” would arrive with FSD v15.
Glad you are safe. Even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance coming as part of the next big upgrade (v15).
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 11, 2026
The comment landed as Tesla continues to treat software as the primary safety upgrade path. v15 is described internally as a larger architectural step, with a much bigger neural network and tighter coupling between prediction and control.
The company has already begun using early v15 software in some robotaxi operations while rolling out safety features such as Automatic Collision Evasion into current customer cars, allowing the driving stack to intervene even when the driver is in manual control.
Tesla is rolling out a new FSD version with a massive safety addition
Tesla’s published telemetry is the backbone of its safety argument. In recent North American Vehicle Safety Report data, vehicles with FSD (Supervised) engaged traveled roughly 5.1 million to 5.7 million miles between major collisions, defined as airbag-deployment events.
Tesla’s estimate of the U.S. average over the same period is about 699,000 miles per comparable crash. That is the comparison Tesla often frames as roughly seven times fewer major collisions.
A tighter comparison uses the same Tesla fleet. Cars driven manually with active safety features such as automatic emergency braking still recorded a major collision about every 2.1 million miles. Against that baseline, FSD’s advantage shrinks to roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times fewer severe crashes, which independent researchers argue is the more apples-to-apples figure.
European data released in 2026 pointed in the same direction: Tesla reported FSD as 3.5 times safer than manual driving in the Netherlands and 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas with active safety across more than 100 million kilometers in five approved countries.
Those numbers do not settle every debate. NHTSA’s Standing General Order still shows Tesla accounting for the large majority of U.S. Level 2 driver-assist crash reports, in part because the fleet logs far more assisted miles than rivals. Critics also note that Tesla’s “U.S. average” mixes crash definitions and driving mix.
Even so, Tesla’s own same-car comparisons, plus lower rates of automatic emergency braking and harsh maneuvers when FSD is engaged, are the evidence Elluswamy is pointing to when he says v15 will push prediction and collision avoidance further. The claim is not that software already eliminates risk. It is that each major version is meant to widen the gap between the system and an unaided human driver.
Cybertruck
Tesla’s most delayed Cybertruck feature is finally here
Tesla finally links Cybertruck Powershare with Powerwall 3 for extended home backup after years overdue.
Tesla’s Cybertruck can now pair with a Powerwall 3 to keep a house running longer during an outage, a feature the company first promised when the truck launched in November 2023.
The official Cybertruck account posted the update on X Thursday: “Powerwall 3 & I can now power your house together. This extends your home backup by over 3 days, equivalent to 9 additional Powerwalls,” Cybertruck lead engineer Wes Morrill confirmed the rollout separately, calling it the first time a vehicle and a home battery have worked together this way. Powerwall 2 and Powerwall+ compatibility is still coming later this year, per both the Cybertruck account and Morrill.
Powerwall 3 & I can now power your house together⁰ ⁰This extends your home backup by over 3 days, equivalent to 9 additional Powerwalls pic.twitter.com/8G2twIm6AN
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 10, 2026
Powershare itself is not new. Tesla enabled the version that lets Cybertruck power tools, appliances or another EV through its bed outlets when the truck launched in 2023. Home backup through a Powershare Gateway and Universal Wall Connector arrived in 2024, and Tesla extended that support to homes with solar the following year. What has been missing until now is Powershare working alongside an existing Powerwall, instead of functioning as a separate backup source competing for the same job.
The pairing matters because a single Powerwall home battery typically covers a home for about a day, less if usage is heavy or the outage stretches into a heat wave or freeze. A second Powerwall for more backup storage costs several thousand dollars installed. A Cybertruck instead uses a battery the owner already has, one large enough here to add roughly three more days of backup without mounting another unit or booking an installer visit. For households in wildfire, hurricane or winter storm regions where outages run past a day, that keeps the refrigerator and medical equipment running instead of shutting down.
The company told owners in October 2024 that Powerwall integration was coming sometime in 2025. That date passed, and in December 2025 Tesla pushed the target to mid-2026, with Morrill explaining at the time that two grid-forming devices need to negotiate which one manages a home during an outage, and that certifying the process across multiple generations of Powerwall took longer than expected.
For owners who bought Powershare hardware expecting it to work with whatever battery setup they already had, Thursday’s update closes a gap that has shown up repeatedly in owner complaints since Cybertruck deliveries began. Tesla has also rolled out a separate Powershare grid support program in Texas, letting Cybertrucks send power back to the grid during high demand events, so the truck’s role in a home’s energy setup keeps expanding even as individual pieces of it arrive later than promised.
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla plans big safety improvements for Full Self-Driving v15
