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SpaceX to send retired Starship to local Texas airport, says Elon Musk
In a brief Twitter exchange, the Brownsville/South Padre Island International Airport (BRO) appears to have talked SpaceX CEO Elon Musk into turning a retired Starship prototype into a public exhibit.
Operational in some form since 2020, SpaceX’s ‘Starbase’ Starship factory is already a bit of a tourist destination for Brownsville, Texas and the local Rio Grande Valley – particularly for fans of spaceflight and rockets. The substantial factory and a trio of orbital and suborbital launch pads are both located directly beside a public highway, a tiny private housing development, and a public beach – maintaining access to all of which has been a consistent challenge for SpaceX for years.
However, the company has continued to work to coexist with locals while simultaneously generating tourism and bringing unprecedented economic growth and publicity to the relatively quiet region. It’s increasingly unclear if SpaceX will be able to realize its full ambitions for Starbase and South Texas but Elon Musk recently reiterated the company’s commitment to maintaining a strong presence in the region whether or not the US government gives it the permissions it needs for regular Starship launches.
Musk’s drop-of-a-pin willingness to donate an entire Starship prototype to a local organization certainly exemplifies that commitment. While Starbase is already a de facto tourist destination where people can get within a stone’s throw of several prototypes of the largest rockets ever built, the setup for visitors is very impromptu, inconvenient, and right beside an active highway and rocket factory. A dedicated Starship display at a less frenetic site with dedicated parking and no need to tiptoe around a highway would undoubtedly be an improvement.
Situating that public Starship display directly beside the largest local airport would also preclude the need for prospective visitors to drive half an hour out of their way, ensuring that far more people actually get to experience a Starship up close and learn about SpaceX’s presence in the region. Thankfully, increasingly unusual behavior means that SpaceX has no shortage of prototypes to choose from.
Starship SN15 is the first prototype of any kind to fly to a moderate altitude (~10 km), fall back to Earth like a skydiver, flip around at the last second, and survive a soft landing in May 2021. Musk once said that the historic prototype would be reused on a second flight test but the ship never did and has instead sat at Starbase’s ‘Rocket Garden’ ever since. Starship SN16 – almost identical to SN15 – was also supposed to fly but never got to perform a single test before it was retired to the same garden.
Up next, SpaceX mostly finished an entire Super Heavy booster – standing almost 70 meters (230 ft) tall – late last year but sent it (B5) directly to the ‘garden’ without even attempting to finish or test the rocket. Its sister booster, Super Heavy B4, was at one point supposed to support Starship’s first orbital launch attempt but has only completed a fraction of the necessary proof tests after spending almost half a year floating around the orbital launch site. It’s entirely possible that B4 will meet its end beside B5 later this year.
Finally, SpaceX most recently decided to assemble Starship S22 – very similar to Starship S20, the other half of the first orbital test flight pair of B4/S20 – and stacked the ship to its full height on February 14th, 2022. After installing its nosecone and the last two of four flaps, though, SpaceX immediately sent the unfinished Starship to the same graveyard of retired prototypes, strongly implying that it, too, will never be used.
While increasingly confusing from a programmatic standpoint, SpaceX’s ever-growing supply of retired or fully unused Starship and Super Heavy hardware gives the company plenty of options for donating one or even several prototypes. The only real barriers are the need for a concrete foundation to secure the display vehicles and the challenge of transporting vertical, building-sized rockets by road. To get a Starship all the way to the Brownsville International Airport, a number of power lines and traffic lights would likely need to be temporarily removed or rerouted, but that’s a relatively minor inconvenience with enough political will.
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Tesla Model Y Standard Long Range RWD launches in Europe
The update was announced by Tesla Europe & Middle East in a post on its official social media account on X.
Tesla has expanded the Model Y lineup in Europe with the introduction of the Standard Long Range RWD variant, which offers an impressive 657 km of WLTP range.
The update was announced by Tesla Europe & Middle East in a post on its official social media account on X.
Model Y Standard Long Range RWD Details
Tesla Europe & Middle East highlighted some of the Model Y Standard Long Range RWD’s most notable specs, from its 657 km of WLTP range to its 2,118 liters of cargo volume. More importantly, Tesla also noted that the newly released variant only consumes 12.7 kWh per 100 km, making it the most efficient Model Y to date.
The Model Y Standard provides a lower entry point for consumers who wish to enter the Tesla ecosystem at the lowest possible price. While the Model 3 Standard is still more affordable, some consumers might prefer the Model Y Standard due to its larger size and crossover form factor. The fact that the Model Y Standard is equipped with Tesla’s AI4 computer also makes it ready for FSD’s eventual rollout to the region.
Top Gear’s Model Y Standard review
Top Gear‘s recent review of the Tesla Model Y Standard highlighted some of the vehicle’s most notable features, such as its impressive real-world range, stellar infotainment system, and spacious interior. As per the publication, the Model Y Standard still retains a lot of what makes Tesla’s vehicles well-rounded, even if it’s been equipped with a simplified interior.
Top Gear compared the Model Y Standard to its rivals in the same segment. “The introduction of the Standard trim brings the Model Y in line with the entry price of most of its closest competition. In fact, it’s actually cheaper than a Peugeot e-3008 and costs £5k less than an entry-level Audi Q4 e-tron. It also makes the Ford Mustang Mach-E look a little short with its higher entry price and worse range,” the publication wrote.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s xAI bets $20B on Mississippi with 2GW AI data center project
The project is expected to create hundreds of permanent jobs, dramatically expand xAI’s computing capacity, and further cement the Mid-South as a growing hub for AI infrastructure.
Elon Musk’s xAI plans to pour more than $20 billion into a massive new data center campus in Southaven, Mississippi, marking the largest single economic development project in the state’s history.
The project is expected to create hundreds of permanent jobs, dramatically expand xAI’s computing capacity, and further cement the Mid-South as a growing hub for AI infrastructure.
xAI goes MACROHARDRR in Mississippi
xAI has acquired and is retrofitting an existing facility in Southaven to serve as a new data center, which will be known as “MACROHARDRR.” The site sits near a recently acquired power plant and close to one of xAI’s existing data centers in Tennessee, creating a regional cluster designed to support large-scale AI training and inference.
Once completed, the Southaven facility is expected to push the company’s total computing capacity to nearly 2 GW, placing it among the most powerful AI compute installations globally. The data center is scheduled to begin operations in February 2026.
Gov. Tate Reeves shared his optimism about the project in a press release. “This record-shattering $20 billion investment is an amazing start to what is sure to be another incredible year for economic development in Mississippi. Today, Elon Musk is bringing xAI to DeSoto County, a project that will transform the region and bring amazing opportunities to its residents for generations. This is the largest economic development project in Mississippi’s history,” he said.
xAI’s broader AI ambitions
To secure the investment, the Mississippi Development Authority approved xAI for its Data Center Incentive program, which provides sales and use tax exemptions on eligible computing hardware and software. The City of Southaven and DeSoto County are also supporting the project through fee-in-lieu agreements aimed at accelerating development timelines and reducing upfront costs.
Founded in 2023 by Elon Musk, xAI develops advanced artificial intelligence systems focused on large-scale reasoning and generative applications. Its flagship product, Grok, is integrated with the social media platform X, alongside a growing suite of APIs for image generation, voice, and autonomous agents, including offerings tailored for government use.
Elon Musk highlighted xAi’s growth and momentum in a comment about the matter. “xAI is scaling at an immeasurable pace — we are building our third massive data center in the greater Memphis area. MACROHARDRR pushes our Colossus training compute to ~2GW – by far the most powerful AI system on Earth. This is insane execution speed by xAI and the state of Mississippi. We are grateful to Governor Reeves for his support of building xAI at warp speed,” Musk said.
Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, says that something that was expected with version 14.3 of the company’s Full Self-Driving platform has already partially shipped with the current build of version 14.2.
Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have teased on several occasions that reasoning will be a big piece of future Full Self-Driving builds, helping bring forth the “sentient” narrative that the company has pushed for these more advanced FSD versions.
Back in October on the Q3 Earnings Call, Musk said:
“With reasoning, it’s literally going to think about which parking spot to pick. It’ll drop you off at the entrance of the store, then go find a parking spot. It’s going to spot empty spots much better than a human. It’s going to use reasoning to solve things.”
Musk said in the same month:
“By v14.3, your car will feel like it is sentient.”
Amazingly, Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.2.2.2, which is the most recent iteration released, is very close to this sentient feeling. However, there are more things that need to be improved, and logic appears to be in the future plans to help with decision-making in general, alongside other refinements and features.
On Thursday evening, Elluswamy revealed that some of the reasoning features have already been rolled out, confirming that it has been added to navigation route changes during construction, as well as with parking options.
He added that “more and more reasoning will ship in Q1.”
🚨 Tesla’s Ashok Elluswamy reveals Nav decisions when encountering construction and parking options contain “some elements of reasoning”
More uses of reasoning will be shipped later this quarter, a big tidbit of info as we wait v14.3 https://t.co/jty8llgsKM
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 9, 2026
Interestingly, parking improvements were hinted at being added in the initial rollout of v14.2 several months ago. These had not rolled out to vehicles quite yet, as they were listed under the future improvements portion of the release notes, but it appears things have already started to make their way to cars in a limited fashion.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.2 – Full Review, the Good and the Bad
As reasoning is more involved in more of the Full Self-Driving suite, it is likely we will see cars make better decisions in terms of routing and navigation, which is a big complaint of many owners (including me).
Additionally, the operation as a whole should be smoother and more comfortable to owners, which is hard to believe considering how good it is already. Nevertheless, there are absolutely improvements that need to be made before Tesla can introduce completely unsupervised FSD.
Tesla Model Y Standard Long Range RWD launches in Europe
Elon Musk’s xAI bets $20B on Mississippi with 2GW AI data center project
