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SpaceX’s Starbase environmental review is inches from the finish line
Update: Just two days after the FAA’s latest delay announcement, an online portal documenting SpaceX’s Starbase environmental assessment progress has been updated to show that the last step requiring “interagency consultations” was completed on June 2nd.
In theory, that means that to successfully complete its Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for orbital Starship launches, SpaceX merely needs to incorporate all recommendations, requirements, or mitigations added during the interagency review process into one final draft and presumably secure the approval of all relevant stakeholders one last time. Once those documents are complete, approved, and published, all Starbase will need to begin orbital Starship test flights is an FAA launch license.
Securing that launch license is its own can of worms with plenty of unique challenges, but it’s highly unlikely that SpaceX and the FAA won’t be able to come to some kind of agreement allowing the company to begin those test flights within a month or two of receiving a good environmental review. According to the FAA, the final results of the Starbase PEA are scheduled to be released on June 13th.
The US Federal Aviation Administration says that its environmental review of SpaceX’s plan to conduct orbital Starship launches out of South Texas has been delayed for the fifth time in five months.
However, despite the chronic delays and the FAA’s odd decision to announce a new delay every month instead of simply acknowledging that it doesn’t know when the process will be finished, there are now even more reasons to expect a positive outcome.
Even though there were attempts to spin the new information into something negative, a document acquired through the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) by Bloomberg revealed that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had decided to approve its portion of the Starbase environmental review. Their only condition: that SpaceX implement a few small mitigation measures, “including contracting with a qualified biologist to conduct monitoring of vegetation and birds, operating an employee shuttle between the launch facility site and nearby town of Brownsville, reducing vehicle traffic, and adjusting lights to minimize the impact on sea turtles.” Bloomberg chose not to publish the documents it received through the FOIA process.
In the same set of documents, the FWS also revealed that SpaceX has removed a request for permission to build a small desalination plant, a natural gas production and liquefaction plant, and a natural gas power plant at or near Starbase’s launch site from Starbase’s first Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA). That change comes as little surprise. In fact, SpaceX’s decision to pursue a “programmatic” assessment instead of a more common standalone assessment means that the company will be able to pursue additions to a basic Starbase environmental approval without having to rebuild the foundation each time.
In this case, a “basic approval” would mean the ability to conduct at least a few orbital Starship launches per year. Once that foundation is secured, SpaceX should be able to tier new environmental assessments on top of it and pursue permission for a desalination plant, natural gas production, more annual launches, or any other additions that might benefit Starbase. The simpler the foundation, the harder it should be for environmental stakeholders and agencies to protest or prevent SpaceX from receiving a good outcome.
“The FAA now plans to release the Final PEA on June 13, 2022 to account for ongoing interagency consultations concerning Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act. All other consultations and analysis have been completed at this time.”
Another cause for optimism: after four delays of one or two months, the FAA’s latest delay announcement only pushes the conclusion of the review from May 31st to June 13th. Additionally, the FAA confirmed that only one small component of the entire review remains unfinished. Every other major component has been completed successfully and will likely result in a Finding Of No Significant Impact (FONSI) or Mitigated FONSI that would greenlight the environmental side of conducting orbital Starship launches out of Boca Chica, Texas.
When the draft PEA was first published, the FAA noted several points of contention over Section 4(f) compliance, which is designed to “protect significant publicly owned public parks, recreation areas, and wildlife and waterfowl refuges, as well as significant historic sites, whether they are publicly or privately owned.” At the time, the main problem was SpaceX’s request to close the public Boca Chica Beach and the only highway to it for up to 500 hours (~42 days), as well as a contingency that would allow for another 300 hours of closures to safely respond to emergencies.
Thanks to an even more in-depth environmental impact statement (EIS) completed in 2014 for a Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch pad where Starship’s launch site now stands, we know that SpaceX has already met Section 4(f) demands with a plan for up to 180 hours of road closures per year. In the absolute worst-case scenario, SpaceX should be able to drastically reduce its road closure request to satisfy the Department of Transportation. Subsisting on roughly 20-30 days of closures per year would undoubtedly maim Starbase’s utility but it would at least allow SpaceX to conduct a few basic orbital test flights and some limited ground testing while it rapidly redirects most of its effort to finishing alternative Starship production and launch facilities in Florida.
Regardless, it’s now quite likely that SpaceX’s Starbase environmental review will finally be over by the end of June, freeing up the FAA and SpaceX to focus fully on the launch license side of the equation. Meanwhile, SpaceX still has weeks or even months of work ahead of it to prepare a Starship and Super Heavy pair for their first orbital launch attempt, so (for now) there is no risk of the company being forced to sit around and wait for the gears of bureaucracy to turn.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.
The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.
The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.
Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!
Urgently hiring exceptional and enthusiastic Drivers and Ops Managers.
Apply here!
Driverhttps://t.co/ZUPXBYTONb
Senior Loop Ops Managerhttps://t.co/mV6V22V8jH pic.twitter.com/IZ9FqIw8WY
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2026
Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.
Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.
Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.
Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.
Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.
Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”
The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.
Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.
Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.
Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.
Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence
