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SpaceX ramps South Texas activity to prepare for 2019 BFR spaceship testing

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7 years ago

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At the same time as the hardware for SpaceX’s first BFR spaceship is entering the early stages of manufacturing, the company’s South Texas test facility is slowly taking shape after more than 18 months of what can be fairly described as hibernation.

The likeliest location for a near-future spaceship test stand or pad has also experienced a comparatively vast influx of construction workers and general activity that began earlier this month September, nearly two and half years after SpaceX began preparing the unstable coastal wetland with the addition of several hundred tons of soil.

It may not look like much, but ~5 contractors and a few pieces of heavy machinery truly is an explosion of SpaceX activity in South Texas. The hill in the background is the soil surcharging mound. (Maria Pointer, 09/19/2018)

According to a number of posts from local Texans that are also members of a small SpaceX fan group on Facebook, activity around the company’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities has exploded in recent months, and even more so over the last several weeks. SpaceX’s ground tracking facility has harbored the vast majority of attention for some time, particularly following the relatively recent arrival of a massive crane, construction of a shelter for said crane, and the appearance of two massive vacuum-insulated tanks for liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid methane/natural gas (LNG).

Presently sat beside two large antennae on the Crew Dragon tracking facility’s plot, those propellant tanks are certainly both eye-catching and definitive evidence that something huge and nearby will soon need large quantities of liquid propellant. In the case of the LOX tank, a back-the-envelope estimate suggests that it can hold an obscene 400 metric tons (~900,000 lbs) of liquid oxygen, while the much smaller LNG tank (assumed, not guaranteed) would be capable of holding less than 25,000 kg of liquid methane, thanks mainly to the fact that liquid methane is roughly three times less dense than LOX.

Thankfully, SpaceX’s BFR Raptor engines will nominally burn oxygen and methane at a ratio of approximately 3.8 to 1, meaning that every 1 kg of methane exiting the rocket will be accompanied by 3.8 kg of oxygen. The fact that this ratio is actually larger than the density ratio of LOX and LNG means that the propellant tanks can be almost the same size

Most notably, as described above, is the abrupt return of construction and site preparation activities at what once was expected to be a Falcon 9 and Heavy launch pad. Over the last 24+ months, SpaceX has simply let the lot sit, although in this case, that sitting was rather productive. Known as soil surcharging, the site was essentially leveled, loaded with hundreds of tons of soil, plumbed with drainage pipes, and then left alone up to this point to let gravity do the rest of the work. Put simply, the unsteady soil of coastal Texas was aggressively drained and compacted into something stable enough to build expensive, long-term facilities on.

 

The hundreds of truckloads it took to bring in the soil will have to be repeated in reverse, removing most of the same soil to leave a level field ready for foundation-laying and series construction. Heavy machinery and construction contractors began arriving earlier this month, indicating that that process is about to begin, after which construction of the facilities that will eventually support Grasshopper-style spaceship testing can begin in earnest. Those BFR hop tests are scheduled to begin no earlier than late 2019.

For prompt updates, on-the-ground perspectives, and unique glimpses of SpaceX’s rocket recovery fleet check out our brand new LaunchPad and LandingZone newsletters!

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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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Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor proves to be difficult

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4 hours ago

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January 26, 2026

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor is proving to be a difficult task, according to some riders who made the journey to Austin to attempt to ride in one of its vehicles that has zero supervision.

Last week, Tesla officially removed Safety Monitors from some — not all — of its Robotaxi vehicles in Austin, Texas, answering skeptics who said the vehicles still needed supervision to operate safely and efficiently.

BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor

Tesla aimed to remove Safety Monitors before the end of 2025, and it did, but only to company employees. It made the move last week to open the rides to the public, just a couple of weeks late to its original goal, but the accomplishment was impressive, nonetheless.

However, the small number of Robotaxis that are operating without Safety Monitors has proven difficult to hail for a ride. David Moss, who has gained notoriety recently as the person who has traveled over 10,000 miles in his Tesla on Full Self-Driving v14 without any interventions, made it to Austin last week.

He has tried to get a ride in a Safety Monitor-less Robotaxi for the better part of four days, and after 38 attempts, he still has yet to grab one:

Tesla said last week that it was rolling out a controlled test of the Safety Monitor-less Robotaxis. Ashok Elluswamy, who heads the AI program at Tesla, confirmed that the company was “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader Robotaxi fleet with Safety Monitors,” and that “the ratio will increase over time.”

This is a good strategy that prioritizes safety and keeps the company’s controlled rollout at the forefront of the Robotaxi rollout.

However, it will be interesting to see how quickly the company can scale these completely monitor-less rides. It has proven to be extremely difficult to get one, but that is understandable considering only a handful of the cars in the entire Austin fleet are operating with no supervision within the vehicle.

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Tesla gives its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent

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5 hours ago

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January 26, 2026

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Credit: BLKMDL3 | X

Tesla has given its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent, as a new feature seems to show that the company is preparing for frequent border crossings.

Tesla owner and influencer BLKMDL3, also known as Zack, recently took his Tesla to the border of California and Mexico at Tijuana, and at the international crossing, Full Self-Driving showed an interesting message: “Upcoming country border — FSD (Supervised) will become unavailable.”

Due to regulatory approvals, once a Tesla operating on Full Self-Driving enters a new country, it is required to comply with the laws and regulations that are applicable to that territory. Even if legal, it seems Tesla will shut off FSD temporarily, confirming it is in a location where operation is approved.

This is something that will be extremely important in Europe, as crossing borders there is like crossing states in the U.S.; it’s pretty frequent compared to life in America, Canada, and Mexico.

Tesla has been working to get FSD approved in Europe for several years, and it has been getting close to being able to offer it to owners on the continent. However, it is still working through a lot of the red tape that is necessary for European regulators to approve use of the system on their continent.

This feature seems to be one that would be extremely useful in Europe, considering the fact that crossing borders into other countries is much more frequent than here in the U.S., and would cater to an area where approvals would differ.

Tesla has been testing FSD in Spain, France, England, and other European countries, and plans to continue expanding this effort. European owners have been fighting for a very long time to utilize the functionality, but the red tape has been the biggest bottleneck in the process.

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Tesla Europe builds momentum with expanding FSD demos and regional launches

Tesla operates Full Self-Driving in the United States, China, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.

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SpaceX Starship V3 gets launch date update from Elon Musk

The first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.

Published

6 hours ago

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January 26, 2026

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Credit: SpaceX/X

Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX’s next Starship launch, Flight 12, is expected in about six weeks. This suggests that the first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.

In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that the next Starship launch is in six weeks. He accompanied his announcement with a photo that seemed to have been taken when Starship’s upper stage was just about to separate from the Super Heavy Booster. Musk did not state whether SpaceX will attempt to catch the Super Heavy Booster during the upcoming flight.

The upcoming flight will mark the debut of Starship V3. The upgraded design includes the new Raptor V3 engine, which is expected to have nearly twice the thrust of the original Raptor 1, at a fraction of the cost and with significantly reduced weight. The Starship V3 platform is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability. 

The Starship V3 Flight 12 launch timeline comes as SpaceX pursues an aggressive development cadence for the fully reusable launch system. Previous iterations of Starship have racked up a mixed but notable string of test flights, including multiple integrated flight tests in 2025.

Interestingly enough, SpaceX has teased an aggressive timeframe for Starship V3’s first flight. Way back in late November, SpaceX noted on X that it will be aiming to launch Starship V3’s maiden flight in the first quarter of 2026. This was despite setbacks like a structural anomaly on the first V3 booster during ground testing.

“Starship’s twelfth flight test remains targeted for the first quarter of 2026,” the company wrote in its post on X. 

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