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SpaceX ships Raptor to Texas for first Starhopper hover tests after fixing vibration bugs

SpaceX technicians work to install Raptor SN06 on Starhopper, the third time a full-scale engine has been attached to the rocket testbed. (NASASpaceflight - bocachicagal, 07/11/19)

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After a brisk week of no fewer than three lengthy static fire tests, SpaceX has effectively confirmed that a critical vibration-related fault was solved, delivering the company’s latest completed Raptor engine to Boca Chica, Texas earlier today.

SpaceX technicians are now in the process of installing the engine – believed to be Raptor SN06 – on Starhopper, a low-fidelity prototype meant to act as a sort of flying testbed for Starship technologies and a mobile test stand for Raptor test fires. According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, if Raptor SN06 is installed, successfully checks out, and supports Starhopper’s first untethered hover test within the next 3-7 days, he will deliver an updated presentation on SpaceX’s Starhip/Super Heavy launch vehicle and (hopefully) the company’s plans for the Moon and Mars around the end of July.

This Raptor is the third to be installed on Starhopper. The first engine (SN02) was installed in March 2019 and became the first Raptor to ignite as part of a vehicle meant to eventually fly. During a duo of more or less successful test fires, Starhopper strained against its tethers, lifting a few inches off the ground. Although it did technically mark Starhopper’s inaugural hop, Raptor SN02 also suffered damage during the tests that demanded its removal.

Starhopper’s first static fire test with Raptor SN02 occurred on April 3rd, 2019.

As recently noted by observant fans after Musk revealed that SpaceX had been dealing with a “600 Hz” vibration issue, the horn-like noise during shutdown actually happens to be in the 600 Hz range, with an additional spike at 300 Hz a likely sign of an issue with acoustic and/or mechanical resonance. With SN06, SpaceX engineers and test/production technicians have managed to rapidly implement a fix for that undesirable resonance, powering through several successful static fires with durations as high as 80+ seconds, approaching the propellant storage limits of SpaceX’s McGregor test facilities.

Raptor SN04?

Shortly after its static fire tests in Boca Chica, Raptor SN02 was removed. According to a source familiar with the test process, the engine was brought up to McGregor, TX and repaired before SpaceX technicians – urged by CEO Elon Musk – effectively ran the engine until it failed catastrophically. Some two months after its removal (early June), a new Raptor engine – this time believed to be Raptor SN04, effectively an inert test article – was installed on Starhopper for a handful of days.

SN04 was exclusively used to check fitment and verify Raptor’s thrust vector control (TVC) gumball capabilities – quite successfully, by all appearances. A few days after installation, it was removed and shipped elsewhere. Subsequently, Raptor SN05 was tested in McGregor with the hopes that it would be able to support the first Starhopper hover tests, but the vibration issue described by Musk caused damage or at least killed confidence that the engine (a single point of failure on Starhopper) was reliable enough to support hover tests.

Raptor SN06 thus entered our story, arriving at McGregor around July 4th. SpaceX’s world-class team of engineers and technicians demonstrated their famous speed and agility, firing up SN06 less than 24 hours after its arrival. This initial test showed nothing out of order and was followed by no less than 3-4 30-80-second static fire tests, all of which were more or less successful. Per Musk, things were looking good as of July 8th, and Raptor’s July 11th arrival at Boca Chica is a foolproof confirmation that the engine is healthy and ready for the Raptor family’s first true flight.

Starhopper stands stoically as technicians install a new Raptor (SN06) on its thrust structure. If all goes as planned, the unorthodox vehicle could begin hover tests as early as next week (July 15th). (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)

Stay tuned for coverage of SpaceX’s imminent Starhopper static fire and hover test campaign.

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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 CEO Elon Musk says flying cars are coming

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that flying cars will be coming to the market, something that his own company has hinted at previously.

Musk said on X, in response to a post that read, “We were promised flying cars and all we got is infinite superintelligence for everyone,” “You will get flying cars.”

The post rang back to when Musk teased flying and hovering capabilities for the Tesla Roadster, the company’s supercar that has been delayed more times than anyone cares to count. It was set for an unveiling earlier this year, but it was then pushed back to August. There is still no sign of it coming.

However, that does not mean it won’t. But one of the biggest features of the Roadster that was teased was a SpaceX package that featured cold gas thrusters on the rear end that would help with white-knuckle acceleration. Another set would face the ground and would help the Roadster gain small bits of altitude, potentially helpful to jump over obstacles.

Elon Musk hints at Tesla Roadster’s “hovering” abilities in SpaceX package

But it is not a straightforward thing for Musk. As a serial entrepreneur, he tends to spend his time on major disruptors; currently, his largest projects are artificial intelligence and compute power, as well as SpaceX’s launches that will eventually make life multiplanetary.

In the past, he has been critical of flying cars and has been in favor of tunnels, one of the big reasons he started the Boring Company. In 2017 at a TED talk, he said:

“There is a challenge with flying cars in that they’ll be quite noisy. The wind force generated will be very high. Let’s just say that if something’s flying over your head, if there are a whole bunch of flying cars all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation…You’re thinking, ‘Did they service their hubcap? Or is it going to come off and guillotine me as they’re flying past?'”

However, he’s never been against them. He has also said he’s in favor of both tunnels and flying cars.

Most recently, Musk said that anyone who wants a flying car should be able to get one. This was stated last October on the Joe Rogan Experience:

“My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars… I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.”

Whether the Roadster will be Tesla’s flying car or potentially another one remains in the mind of Musk. Of course, the Roadster will have to make its way to production lines before we find out.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff

Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.

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Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.

The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.

Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.

Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry

None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.

The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.

Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors: Morgan Stanley

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Credit: Tesla

In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.

Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.

Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue

Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.

The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”

Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”

Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”

Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.

Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.

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