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SpaceX set for second weekend launch, new titanium grid fins to be tested

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After a highly successful Friday launch and recovery of a reused Falcon 9, a second vehicle is preparing to launch on the opposite coast of the United States. Scheduled to lift off at precisely 1:25 p.m. PST, this mission will see a brand new Falcon 9 lift Iridium’s second set of ten NEXT satellites, after which the first stage will attempt to land in the Pacific Ocean aboard Just Read The Instructions, SpaceX’s West Coast drone ship.

If the schedule holds, the 46 hours separation between launches will make SpaceX one of very few entities to have launched the same vehicle in such close succession. While Russia/USSR and the Republic of China have tended to routinely launch missions with as few as a handful of hours in between, it is extremely rare in the United States, and such an accomplishment will likely make SpaceX the second private company to ever conduct two launches in under 48 hours.

This turnaround, which COO Gwynne Shotwell clarified could safely be as few as 24 hours, bodes extremely well for SpaceX’s and Musk’s goal of being able to launch every 24 hours. With the COO of the company already under the impression that 24 hours would be safely and reliably achievable, all that lies in the way of 24 hour cadence is pad availability. With current cadence suggesting that at least two weeks of down time is needed after a launch to verify pad health, the late-fall reactivation of Launch Complex 40 and eventual activation of SpaceX’s planned Boca Chica, Texas launch facility will give SpaceX three general-purpose pads and one limited use-case pad (Vandenberg Air Force Base) to launch from by late 2018 or early 2019. Three general purpose pads would allow SpaceX to launch every four or five days, assuming no improvements in pad resilience and autonomy, and this weekend’s back to back launches will demonstrate that SpaceX is easily capable of fully taking advantage of those three (or four) pads once they are all active.

Falcon 9’s fancy new titanium grid fins. (SpaceX/Instagram)

As for the launch today, it will debut some intriguing new hardware intended to improve the ease of reusability for the first stage. Musk offered a tweet storm last night and SpaceX one or two photos to explain the utility of the vehicles distinctive and unusual black grid fins. Ready to launch in just over an hour from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Falcon 9 and its new grid fins will place the next ten iridium NEXT satellites in Low Earth Orbit. The first stage will then proceed to the autonomous spaceport drone ship Just Read The Instructions, while testing its rather fancy titanium grid fins. Considerably larger than their aluminum predecessors, this new iteration of grid fins will is intended to both provide more control authority and glide capability in anticipation of the Falcon Heavy, while also offering improve resilience to the extreme heat and forces grid fins must necessarily cope with during reentry. You may have noted grid fins appearing to glow red and orange with the heat of reentry in past live coverage, and recovered stages demonstrate just how harsh high temperatures can be to aluminum. Titanium is famously resistant to heat and will thus optimally be able to be reused with no refurbishment or replacement whatsoever.

With the launch just over an hour out and no current known issues, you can watch SpaceX’s regularly amazing live coverage of the launch at spacex.com/webcast.

Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”

The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.

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The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”

The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.

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Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.

Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.

The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.

The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.

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Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”

SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.

It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.

Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.

Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:

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There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.

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Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened

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(Credit: The Boring Company)

Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.

The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.

The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel

The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.

Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.

Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.

A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.

The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.

Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.

Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.

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There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.

The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.

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