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SpaceX’s Starbase environmental review suffers third delay
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that the completion of a crucial ‘environmental assessment’ SpaceX needs to begin orbital-class Starship launch attempts out of South Texas has been delayed for the third time.
Official known as a programmatic environmental assessment or PEA, the FAA says it started the process in late June 2021 with the goal of verifying that SpaceX’s Starbase orbital launch site (OLS) was mostly benign before the end of 2021. Compared to a regular EA, the programmatic nature of SpaceX’s Starbase review would theoretically allow the company to start small and gradually expand and add new facilities and capabilities without having to restart the arduous review process for each change.
Along those lines, SpaceX’s first draft PEA requested permission for no more than five full-stack Starship launches per year compared to the maximum of 12 Falcon 9 launches or nine Falcon 9 and three Falcon Heavy launches out of Boca Chica that SpaceX had already received permission for from the FAA in 2014.
Unfortunately, even at the time that the start of the process was announced, completing a full PEA in half a year was already unbelievably optimistic. No comparable review, of which there are effectively none, has been completed anywhere close to that quickly. In the face of substantial local opposition, like in the case of Georgia’s Camden Spaceport, even an FAA environmental review for a relatively small rocket launch facility can make little progress after years of tooth-and-nail fighting.
However, the best possible comparison has always been SpaceX’s own environmental assessment for an almost identical orbital-class Starship launch site at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. Despite the fact that no untouched ground would be broken and even with the apparent might of NASA behind it, it took the FAA and SpaceX about a full year to complete a Pad 39A EA for up to 24 Starship launches per year. As such, the idea that the FAA would be able to complete a PEA for Boca Chica Starship launches in six months was always almost unimaginable.
It should come as no surprise, then, that nine months after SpaceX and the FAA began their Starbase PEA, they appear to be only marginally closer to completing the review. Days before the original December 31st, 2021 deadline, the FAA announced a delay to February 28th, 2022. On February 14th, the FAA announced a second delay to March 28th. Most recently, on March 25th, the FAA announced a third delay to April 29th.
Put simply, the FAA is effectively saying that it is actually further away from completing SpaceX’s South Texas Starship PEA than it was in December 2021. The extraordinarily opaque nature of the process also means that anyone outside of the loop or without internal sources is left to simply guess what is causing those delays or why the FAA keeps pushing the goalposts back just one or two months at a time when it’s unclear that anyone can actually predict when the process will be completed.
Without journalists filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the full extent of public knowledge about what is causing those delays would be the FAA’s scant few statements on the process. The most valuable information provided thus far is that the FAA is “reviewing the Final PEA,” which does seem to imply some degree of progress. Nonetheless, the agency still included a boilerplate statement noting that it’s “completing consultation and coordination with agencies at the local, State, and Federal level,” making it hard to actually say if any progress has been made. In February 2022, the FAA said it was “continuing consultation and coordination with other agencies.”
In December 2021, the FAA stated that it was “continuing consultation and coordination with other agencies at the local, State, and Federal level” while “SpaceX continues to prepare the Final PEA for…FAA review and acceptance.” By using such vague and unspecific language, the FAA makes what little it does say virtually impossible to parse and barely better than nothing. Solely thanks to documents secured through FOIA, we know that the FAA itself may not actually be to blame for most or all of the PEA’s four months of delays.
Instead, the US Department of the Interior (DOI), Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS), and National Park Services (NPS) may be partially responsible through their required coordination with the FAA, which they appear to be taking full advantage of to exert some form of control over the outcome. Bureaucrats are being bureaucratic, in other words.
Outside of email chains and boardrooms, however, it’s no longer clear that completing the PEA and securing an FAA launch license are the limiting factor for the first orbital Starship test flights. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently announced that SpaceX is changing the prototypes assigned to the first full-stack launch – likely to Booster 7 and Ship 24. Super Heavy B7 has yet to begin any kind of testing and Starship S24 is still in several pieces, so it’s safe to say that SpaceX’s new pair are months of concerted testing away from launch readiness.
If anything goes wrong during those tests, any significant design issues are discovered, or any damage is caused, it’s entirely possible that what Elon Musk says could take as few as two months will actually take more like four to six. Only time will tell. For now, the FAA likely has a few months before Starship’s South Texas PEA and full-stack launch license truly become the limiting factor for the rocket’s first orbital launch attempt.
Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.
SpaceX officially launched the Starlink Mini 2 on November 10, delivering the first portable Starlink terminal designed around independent power.
Invitation-only preorders for select U.S. customers are priced at $999 plus tax, a figure that includes a full year of Roam Unlimited service valued at roughly $2,100. A refundable $100 deposit reserves the kit, with the balance due at shipment, expected to begin in mid-December. Broader availability is listed as coming soon.
Starlink just unveiled Mini 2, its next-gen portable dish.
Quick-swap battery, up to 4.5 hrs per charge
USB-C power
Built-in Wi-Fi
Online in about 60 secondsPreorders are open now. https://t.co/QawqgbswrQ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 10, 2026
The headline feature is the quick-swap 71 Wh battery. Clipped to the rear of the dish without tools, it delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity on a single charge.
The 490-gram pack includes its own USB-C port and LED indicators, so users can charge a spare separately and swap it in seconds while staying online. Starlink notes that the terminal can continue operating while the battery charges or run directly from a 60 W USB-C source. The retail box includes one battery, a 60 W USB-C charger, and a 3-meter cable.
Beyond power, the Mini 2 is thinner at 23.1 mm (versus 38.5 mm on the original Mini) while measuring 263 × 314 mm. With the battery and kickstand attached it weighs 1.6 kg.
Built-in Wi-Fi 6 expands coverage to up to 1,800 square feet, an IP67 rating protects against dust and water, and a standard 1/4-20 tripod thread plus physical power button round out the design. Field of view remains 110 degrees, and the unit retains support for mobile use.
For travelers, campers, and remote workers, the swappable battery removes the longstanding requirement for an external power bank or vehicle outlet that defined the first Mini. Spare packs sold separately further extend runtime, turning the compact terminal into a more self-contained solution.
While the bundled $999 invitation price sits well above the original Mini’s current $149 starting point, the included year of service and genuine untethered operation mark a clear step forward in portable satellite internet.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s $24B Starbase supercomputer plan slipped past a key roadblock
SpaceX wants a Starbase tax break for a $24 billion gas plant and supercomputer campus.
SpaceX is asking its own company town for a tax break on a $24 billion natural gas power plant and supercomputing facility at Starbase, Texas, and the land it picked sits just outside the reach of a data center moratorium that took effect in neighboring Brownsville last week.
A City of Starbase public hearing notice says SpaceX “proposes to construct, own, and operate a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility” on roughly 444 acres between Boca Chica Boulevard and the Port of Brownsville. The $24 billion figure covers only the initial phases, and the notice leaves room for future expansions. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement and a related economic development agreement at a 7 p.m. hearing on December 9. The notice does not disclose the size or length of the abatement, or how much computing capacity the site would hold.
The location has a history. Over the summer, SpaceX asked Brownsville to remove the tract from its city limits and offered $220 million for water and wastewater projects in return. Brownsville approved the move in August, and Starbase later annexed the land. Brownsville’s own 90-day pause on data center applications took effect last week, and had the tract stayed inside the city, the project likely would have needed a different home.
The power side is already in front of state regulators. SpaceX has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for air permits covering 35 mobile gas turbines producing roughly 750 megawatts, according to Politico, which also noted that two of the three Starbase commissioners voting on the incentives are SpaceX executives.
Building its own plant lets SpaceX skip the Texas grid. Gov. Greg Abbott paused new data center grid connections in August pending an audit, but a facility that generates its own electricity does not need one. The air permit still has to clear the TCEQ, where Abbott also ordered a halt on data center permits.
The bigger test arrives in January. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who unseated Abbott last week, has said she will block data center approvals until the legislature passes new protections, and she has already asked state officials to hold off on any sale of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX until she is sworn in. Tesla and SpaceX shares both fell the day after the election, and Musk’s first reaction on X was “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”
That line points to Starmind, SpaceX’s orbital compute constellation. Musk has said terrestrial compute will be “peanuts compared to orbital compute” and expects monthly orbital deployments to pass ground deployments around the end of 2028, as Teslarati reported. Until then, SpaceX still needs gigawatts on the ground. It ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute, is targeting 2.5 to 3 GW by the end of this year and wants at least 10 GW more in 2027. Its existing Colossus sites around Memphis already run on gas turbines and face a lawsuit from residents over emissions.
Local reaction is split. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network has announced a protest, citing air quality, water use and energy bills, while some Brownsville residents told the Tribune they welcome the jobs. SpaceX did not respond to the Tribune’s questions about the project.
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Starlink Mini 2 arrives with one feature for true off-grid connectivity
