News
SpaceX Starlink user terminals tested by board members as beta nears
SpaceX’s nascent Starlink user terminal technology – the consumer hardware that will connect customers to a vast space-based internet constellation – is being put through its paces in a series of closed tests with employees, board members, and investors.
This news comes around the same time as SpaceX took two significant steps towards a beta debut for Starlink internet service, completing the eighth successful launch of Starlink v1.0 satellites and opening a new web portal where anyone can sign up for updates on service availability in their region. According to COO and President Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX means to begin rolling out Starlink internet service once 14 launches are completed and ~840 satellites are in orbit. Whether or not that figure includes SpaceX’s first launch of 60 ‘v0.9’ Starlink satellites back in May 2019, it’s safe to say that that 14-launch milestone is just two or three months away if the company can sustain and average of two to three launches per month.
Regardless of the spectacular, well-publicized launch component of SpaceX’s Starlink internet satellite constellation, apparent user terminal testing helps shed light on the customer-facing side of the venture. While currently just shy of invisible, the user terminal is at least as difficult and important a problem to solve as Starlink satellite production and launch – if not more important and more challenging.
As previously discussed on Teslarati, user terminals could easily make or break Starlink regardless of dozens of successful launches or the quality of satellites, ground stations, or the network in general.
“Aside from the quality, reliability, and usability of the network itself (can it stream YouTube/Netflix videos? Game? Teleconference?), the user terminals customers need in order to access said network will also be under the microscope. If SpaceX is unable to mass-produce millions of high-quality, reliable user terminals and ensure that they are easy and intuitive to use, the quality of the Starlink satellite network itself would be effectively irrelevant.
The problem is familiar for users of ISPs (i.e. a majority of humans): your WiFi router and modem can be top-of-the-line but bad internet service makes the quality of your home network irrelevant. Vice-versa, a bad router or modem will also make high-quality internet service effectively irrelevant. In other words, SpaceX fundamentally needs to ensure that neither component threatens the user experience.”
Teslarati.com – April 23rd, 2020
In other words, low-quality, buggy user terminals that are hard to set up or require frequent babysitting to ensure a stable connection would make the quality of the satellites SpaceX launches and the ground-based infrastructure it installs irrelevant. Hence the closed focus group-style testing like that described above by investor Steve Jurvetson.
According to Jurvetson, board members (him included) were invited to SpaceX on June 11th or 12th to try out Starlink user terminal prototypes the company is in the midst of developing. Specifically, each board member was given a terminal and asked to set it up themselves in a friendly race to the finish line (establishing an internet connection). Steve ultimately said that the prototype he set up offered the “simplest out-of-box experience imaginable.”
In fact, SpaceX has already been performing similar tests for several months according to a virtual seminar hosted by data company Tape Ark earlier this month, performing a similar setup test but with dozens of employees’ spouses rather than board members. While board members of a high-tech rocket company and families of its employees aren’t exactly a random sample of American (or worldwide) consumers, all non-employees tested thus far have been able to set up Starlink terminals and establish an internet connection without issue. That’s no mean feat when one considers that the alternative is setting up a modem and router and activating internet service through an ISP like Comcast, a task that can easily destroy the sanity of even technically-savvy users.
CEO Elon Musk himself has always made it clear that simplicity is a priority for Starlink user terminals, recently stating that the final product should be even simpler than the prototypes that board and family members alike had zero difficulty setting up, requiring customers to simply “plug [it] in & point [it] at [the] sky”. Given that SpaceX could be ready to roll out Starlink internet service in some capacity as early as August or September, it’s safe to say that the mysterious “UFO-on-a-stick” user terminal wont remain a secret for much longer.
Specs-wise, the same virtual seminar revealed that a normal level of connectivity for a user terminal will be around 100 megabits per second (mbps) down and 40 mbps up. According to Musk, Starlink internet latency (often known as ping) might actually be better than fiber internet, offering ~20 ms for Version 1 and ~8 ms when Version 2 debuts (ETA unknown).
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News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.
Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.
The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.
Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.
Check out the “Robovan” from @Tesla
📸: @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/D4es2i9NUe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”
Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.
The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”
Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.
Cybertruck
Tesla Cybertruck production snaps back after ugly supplier fight
Cybertrucks are piling up again at Giga Texas after Tesla’s court win against a parts supplier.
Cybertruck production at Giga Texas is showing its first visible recovery since Tesla sued a supplier last month over withheld manufacturing tooling.
Aerial observer Joe Tegtmeyer flew over the Austin factory Wednesday morning and counted roughly 100 or more Cybertrucks filling the outbound lot, a sharp jump from the thin numbers seen in recent weeks. The flyover came a day after a judge granted Tesla a temporary restraining order against Angstrom Automotive Group, the parts supplier at the center of the dispute.
Tesla filed an emergency lawsuit in late July after Angstrom told the automaker it planned to close the Troy, Texas facility where Tesla’s die-cast tools, trim dies and other Cybertruck stamping equipment were housed. According to Tesla’s complaint, a shipment of 700 finished parts never left the building, and when Tesla sent representatives to retrieve its equipment, accompanied by law enforcement, they were turned away. Angstrom allegedly then asked for an extra $250,000 a week to keep operating, which Tesla’s filing described as holding its own property for ransom.
TESLA: U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Wolfe of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Waco Division granted Tesla a Temporary Restraining Order and Writ of Replevin in its dispute with Angstrom Automotive (Case No. 6:26-cv-00477).
The order authorizes… https://t.co/E1DKcQSxMn pic.twitter.com/LR8aAiV2Og
— S.E. Robinson, Jr. (@SERobinsonJr) August 5, 2026
The restraining order gives Tesla immediate right of entry to Angstrom’s facility to recover the tooling. It is temporary, with a fuller hearing still to come, but the speed of Wednesday’s rebound suggests the Angstrom shortage was indeed the main bottleneck limiting Cybertruck output. Outbound lot counts are an imperfect measure of actual production, since finished trucks can sit for days before shipping, but a lot that full after a lean stretch is a meaningful signal.
Cybertruck output at Giga Texas has fluctuated all year as Tesla worked through supply issues and introduced new trims, including a cheaper Dual Motor AWD version that drew strong early demand.
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
