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SpaceX’s Starship to spar with Blue Origin for NASA Moon landing contracts
On November 18th, NASA announced that it had added commercial Moon lander offerings from SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and others to a pool of companies that will be able to compete to affordably deliver cargo to the surface of the Moon. With this latest addition of landers, competition could get very interesting, very quickly.
In November 2018, NASA revealed a big step forward in its plans to kickstart robotic exploration and utilization of the Moon, announcing nine new partners in its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Designed first and foremost to encourage the commercial development of unprecedentedly affordable Moon landers, the program’s first nine partners included Lockheed Martin, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, Masten Space, Orbit Beyond, and several others.
In May 2019, NASA announced the next step, contracting with three of those nine aforementioned providers to bring their proposed Moon landers to fruition and attempt their first lunar landings. Orbit Beyond dropped out shortly after but Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines continue to work towards that goal and aim to attempt the first Moon landings with their respective Peregrine and Nova-C spacecraft no earlier than (NET) July 2021. Intuitive Machines has contracted a SpaceX Falcon 9 for its first Nova-C Moon launch, while Astrobotic side with the very first launch of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) next-generation Vulcan rocket.
Generally speaking, the landers offered by the first nine CLPS partners were on the smaller side of the spectrum, capable of delivering around 50-100 kg (100-200 lb) of useful cargo to the surface of the Moon with launch masses around 1500-3000 kg (3300-6600 lb). On November 18th, NASA announced that a second group of partners would be added to the competitive ‘pool’ of CLPS-eligible Moon landers, all of which can technically compete to land a range of NASA payloads on the Moon. The new five are Ceres Robotics, Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Sierra Nevada Corporation, Blue Origin, and SpaceX.
Next to nothing is known about Tyvak’s or Ceres Robotics’ apparently proposed landers, but a render of SNC’s Moon lander concept shares some obvious similarities with its Dream Chaser spacecraft and expendable power and propulsion module, implying that it’s likely on the larger side. Blue Origin and SpaceX, of course, proposed their Blue Moon and Starship spacecraft.
As a 100%-speculative guess, Ceres and Tyvak’s landers are likely in the same ~100 kg-class range as the nine CLPS providers selected before it, while Sierra Nevada’s lander concept is probably closer to 500 kg (1100 lb). According to Blue Origin, it’s recently-updated Blue Moon lander is designed to deliver up to 4500 kg (9900 lb) to the lunar surface and is expected to attempt its first Moon landing no earlier than 2024.
Unsurprisingly, SpaceX’s Starship blows all 13 other lander proposals out of the water and, in the context of the CLPS program, is a bit like bringing a Gatling gun to a paintball match. According to SpaceX, a fully-refueled Starship should be able to land 100 metric tons (220,000 lb) of cargo on the Moon, although it’s unclear if that would allow the Starship to return to Earth.
In simpler terms, there is just no chance whatsoever that the practical scope of NASA’s CLPS program could possibly warrant more than a few metric tons delivered to the surface of the Moon. NASA as a whole doesn’t have the budget needed to build useful several-dozen-ton spacecraft or experiments, let alone CLPS. In that sense, the real question to ask is what could Starship manage if the useful payloads it needs to deliver are no more than a few metric tons?
Assuming SpaceX’s technical know-how is mature enough to allow Starship to preserve cryogenic propellant for weeks or months after launch, it’s entirely conceivable that a Moon launch with, say, 10 tons of cargo could be achieved with just one or two in-orbit refuelings, all while leaving that Starship enough margin to safely return to Earth. Given that NASA awarded Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic approximately $80M apiece to land 50-100 kg on the Moon, it’s far too easy to imagine SpaceX quoting a similar price to deliver 10+ tons to the Moon by enabling full Starship reuse.
All things considered, politics still looms in the distance and there is just as much of a chance that SpaceX (and maybe even Blue Origin) will be passed over by CLPS when the time comes to award the next round of Moon delivery contracts. Still, the odds of something far out of the ordinary happening are much higher with a program like CLPS. Stay tuned!
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Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
Tesla is expanding its Robotaxi service hours by pushing the time back by one hour, keeping the ride-hailing service operational until 11 p.m., one hour later than previously.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed the change and offered a specific reason the expansion has been gradual: the system still needs to reliably avoid small pets that are difficult to see after dark, as they commonly blend into the color of the road, especially when they’re grey.
The latest adjustment restores only a fraction of the operating window the service once held. When paid Robotaxi rides began in Austin on June 22, 2025, vehicles ran from 6 a.m. to midnight.
In September 2025, Tesla lengthened the day to a 2 a.m. close, producing a 20-hour window that stayed in place for most of the following year. By early August of this year, the cutoff had already been pulled back; an August 26 update formalized hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. across Austin and several other markets.
The October move to 11 p.m. therefore leaves the Austin day one hour shorter than the original launch schedule and three hours shorter than the 2025 peak.
Musk addressed the constraint directly after the announcement. “The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night,” he wrote. “Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.”
Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm.
The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The example points to a low-contrast perception problem in which a small animal can blend into the road surface under limited lighting.
Tesla’s vehicles rely on cameras and neural-network processing rather than lidar; Musk has previously argued that advanced vision software can extract useful information even in low light by analyzing photon counts, but the pet-detection case remains the stated limiter in later hours.
The modest schedule change arrives alongside faster growth in the purpose-built Cybercab fleet. Texas registration data tracked by observers showed the Austin Cybercab count rising sharply in recent weeks, reaching 169 vehicles after more than 100 were added in a short span.
Tesla has indicated that a broader shift toward 24-hour operation is tied to the upcoming FSD v15 software release expected this month on Robotaxi vehicles. Until that capability is validated for the edge cases Musk described, the company continues to add service time incrementally rather than jumping straight to overnight coverage.
The one-hour extension gives Austin riders a later option for evening trips while the underlying detection work continues.
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Tesla reveals early Robotaxi charging strategy, showing scrappy DNA
