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SpaceX is building Starship’s first orbital-class booster at a breakneck pace
Within the last week, SpaceX’s South Texas Starship factory appears to have kicked things into high gear and are now assembling the first orbital-class Super Heavy booster prototype at a breakneck pace.
While the assembly of the Super Heavy known as Booster 4 (B4) wasn’t too dissimilar to what CEO Elon Musk described as a “very hard” build of Booster 3 up to last week, work on the rocket has visibly accelerated. Since January 2020, the process of building Starships and Super Heavy boosters has been fairly simple. Both onsite and offsite, raw materials (mostly sheet steel) are cut, bent, and welded into relatively small parts that then make their way to (or around) Boca Chica by truck, forklift, or crane.
With the help of jigs and good amount of automation, the resulting hardware is then welded together to form domes, header tanks, transfer tubes, tank barrels, flaps, and more. Once subassembly is complete, those integrated rocket sections are reinforced with stringers, ribs, and baffles and outfitted with mechanisms, hardpoints, brackets, plumbing, and more. Finally, final assembly – better known as stacking and by far the most visible step – can begin and technicians stack each of those premade segments on top of each other to form a complete Starship or Super Heavy.
While part fabrication and subassembly integration take weeks or months on their own, those earlier steps can be done concurrently, meaning that SpaceX can prepare sections for several different ships and boosters at the same time. For the last six or so months, at any given moment, SpaceX has had 40-60+ rings in work as part of 15-20+ different ring ‘sections’ visible all across Starbase.
Respectively, each Starship and Super Heavy booster require 20 and 36 rings apiece, while each of the propellant storage tanks SpaceX itself is building for the rocket’s first orbital launch pad require 12-15. All told, SpaceX usually has a combination of around 3-5 ships, boosters, and GSE tanks in some stage of assembly. Unsurprisingly, some assembly tasks are harder than others and building the first in a series of prototypes has almost invariably taken far longer than building those that follow.
Booster 3 Booster 4 LOx tank start May 20th July 16th LOx tank finish June 18th July 30th CH4 tank start June 24th July 28th CH4 tank finish June 27th July 29th Final stack June 29th Aug 1st?
In that sense, it’s not a huge surprise that SpaceX’s Booster 4 assembly has quickly surpassed the pace set with Booster 3 less than a month earlier. SpaceX began stacking Super Heavy B3 around May 20th, starting with the rocket’s aft liquid oxygen (LOx) tank. Five separate stacks are required to turn the LOx tank’s 23 steel rings into a single structure – a process that took SpaceX about a month with Booster 3.
Booster 3 methane (CH4) tank assembly began a few days after the LOx tank’s completion but proceeded far more quickly, wrapping up just a few days later. Two days after that, those two tank sections were then mated and welded together to complete Booster 3’s full ~65m (~210 ft) tall airframe.
Now, just four weeks after Booster 3 was rolled to the launch pad for proof and static fire testing, Super Heavy Booster 4 is well on its way to reaching its full ~65m height almost twice as quickly. With work beginning around July 16th, B4’s oxygen tank is now just missing an (extremely complex) engine section and the booster’s methane tank was stacked to completion – 13 rings tall – in less than two days. That leaves SpaceX’s first potentially flightworthy, orbital-class Super Heavy booster just two stacks away from completion less than two weeks after its assembly began.
If SpaceX can sustain that pace for another few days, Booster 4 assembly will be the fastest of any full-height prototype ever built at Starbase, most of which have been Starship prototypes that are half to about three quarters the size of Super Heavy.
Elon Musk
California snubs Tesla in its newly passed EV incentive that favors Rivian and Lucid
California passed a $135 million EV incentive that rewards Rivian and Lucid while sidelining Tesla
California just drew a line in the EV incentive sand to put Tesla on the wrong side of it. The state recently passed a $135 million program offering first-time electric vehicle buyers a direct incentive with no application required, but the rules were written in a way that leaves Tesla at a structural disadvantage compared to Rivian and Lucid.
The program caps eligible vehicles at $50,000 for new EVs and $25,000 for used ones. That pricing threshold rules out a significant portion of Tesla’s lineup, though some lower-priced Model 3 and Model Y configurations would still qualify. California-based automakers are exempt from the price cap entirely, regardless of what their vehicles cost. Rivian, headquartered in Irvine, and Lucid, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, both benefit from that exemption. Rivian’s R2 starts at roughly $45,000 but has versions above the cap. Lucid’s Air and Gravity start at $70,990 and $79,990 respectively, well above any threshold a non-California company would face.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
Tesla built its reputation and a significant portion of its early market share in California, where EV adoption has consistently led the nation. The company operates its original factory in Fremont, California, and the state was home to Tesla’s headquarters for most of its existence. That changed in 2021 when Tesla moved its corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas. Since then, the relationship between the company and California Governor Gavin Newsom has been openly adversarial, with Musk and Newsom trading public criticism on multiple occasions.
California’s EV incentive landscape has shifted repeatedly in recent years, and Tesla has previously lost eligibility for state-level programs as its vehicles exceeded income-adjusted price thresholds. The federal $7,500 EV tax credit, which Tesla models have qualified for and lost depending on policy cycles, is no longer available after it expired without renewal, making state-level programs more meaningful to buyers than they have been in years.
The practical impact for buyers is more nuanced than the headline suggests. California residents purchasing a Tesla under $50,000 for the first time can still access the incentive. But the exemption written for California-based manufacturers is a structural advantage that rewards where a company plants its headquarters flag rather than where it builds its products, and Tesla moved that flag to Texas.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest logo confirms everything about what it’s become
SpaceX officially absorbed xAI under the SpaceXAI brand, completing the largest private merger in history.
SpaceX made its corporate transformation official in May 2026 when Elon Musk posted on X that xAI would cease to exist as a standalone company. “xAI will be dissolved as a separate company, so it will just be SpaceXAI, the AI products from SpaceX,” he wrote.
A new SpaceXAI logo was announced today, visually embedding the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity, which can be seen as a deliberate design choice that signals the merger is not a partnership but a full absorption and XAi a core function of the same company. The same way Starlink is not a separate brand but a SpaceX product. The announcement closed the loop on a process that began February 2, 2026, when SpaceX acquired xAI in the largest private merger in history, valued at $1.25 trillion. SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion.
We are now @SpaceXAI. pic.twitter.com/ema66xDWC9
— SpaceXAI (@SpaceXAI) July 6, 2026
The reason SpaceX bought xAI was stated plainly by Musk at the time of the deal: to build orbital data centers. SpaceX had simultaneously filed with the FCC to launch up to one million satellites designed to function as AI compute nodes in low Earth orbit, escaping what Musk described as the energy constraints limiting AI development on Earth.
xAI provided the AI software stack, with Grok, the X platform, and the Colossus supercomputer infrastructure in Memphis with over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs, while SpaceX provided the rockets, Starlink, and the capital base to fund it. The two companies needed each other. xAI was burning $2.5 billion in losses on $250 million in revenue. SpaceX was generating an estimated $8 billion in profit on $15 billion in revenue and needed an AI narrative to command the valuation it was targeting for its IPO.
What SpaceX has done, regardless of how the orbital AI vision ultimately plays out, is walk into a public market as something no company has been before: a rocket manufacturer, satellite internet provider, AI software company, social media platform, and supercomputer operator under one ticker. Whether that combination is worth $2 trillion depends entirely on which of those businesses you believe in most.
Tesla brought its innovative Cybercab robotaxi to the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) Annual Convention in Austin, Texas, on July 3 at the JW Marriott Austin.
The hands-on demonstration highlighted the vehicle’s thoughtful design for blind and visually impaired users, underscoring Tesla’s commitment to inclusive autonomous mobility. Attendees, many using white canes or accompanied by service dogs, experienced the steering-wheel-free Cybercab firsthand.
Cybercab at the National Federation of the Blind’s Annual Convention in Austin for a hands-on experience of its accessibility features for blind or visually impaired customers⁰⁰For example:⁰– Braille lettering on physical controls
– Space for service animals & assistive… pic.twitter.com/8wrJcDHkw7— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) July 6, 2026
The showcase emphasized practical features tailored to the needs of the blind community. Braille lettering appears on physical controls, including door releases and emergency buttons, allowing users to navigate interfaces independently through touch. Generous interior space accommodates service animals and assistive devices such as canes, guide dogs, or mobility aids without compromising comfort.
Wheelchair-height seating facilitates easier transfers for users with additional mobility challenges. Photos from the event captured blind attendees approaching the vehicle confidently, service dogs relaxing inside, and hands exploring Braille-equipped handles.
Tesla Robotaxi’s official account detailed these elements, noting the Cybercab’s focus on accessibility, especially noting the Braille lettering and additional space for service animals.
How Tesla Will Transform Mobility for the Blind
Autonomous vehicles like the Cybercab promise revolutionary independence for the roughly 2.2 million visually impaired Americans. Traditional barriers—reliance on sighted drivers, costly paratransit, or limited public transit—often restrict spontaneous travel. Tesla Full Self-Driving aims to eliminate the need for a human operator, enabling on-demand, door-to-door rides via simple app hailing with voice guidance.
Users gain freedom to work, socialize, shop, or attend events anytime without scheduling hassles or safety concerns. This reduces isolation, boosts employment opportunities, and enhances quality of life, turning mobility from a dependency into true personal autonomy.
The NFB demonstration not only gathered valuable feedback but also generated excitement about a future where technology levels the playing field. By prioritizing inclusive design, Tesla advances a vision of transportation that serves everyone, potentially reshaping daily life for blind individuals and setting a standard for the autonomous industry.
As Cybercab deployment scales, these accessibility innovations could mark a significant step toward equitable mobility.
California snubs Tesla in its newly passed EV incentive that favors Rivian and Lucid
SpaceX’s newest logo confirms everything about what it’s become
