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SpaceX's "Christmas tree" is a Raptor engine for the holidays
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk showed off a holiday-themed Raptor engine “Christmas tree” with its very own star on top. Musk noted via a tweet that the company’s Starship propulsion team is “making great progress” building, testing, and refining the Raptor engines that will one day propel the next-generation rocket to Earth orbit and beyond.
On December 13th, Musk revealed that SpaceX is preparing to ship the 17th completed Raptor engine to the company’s McGregor, Texas rocket test and development facilities, the site of several dedicated test stands for the Starship engine. Likely one of the most complex rocket engines ever designed, built, or tested, Raptor relies on an exotic combustion cycle, referring to the specifics of how engines turn their propellant into meaningful thrust.
Raptor uses what is known as full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) and is the first FFSC engine to graduate beyond ground testing and actually fly, thus far having completed two flight tests in July and August 2019 as part of SpaceX’s Starhopper test campaign. In simple terms, the FFSC cycle aims to extract as much energy from a rocket’s propellant as efficiently as possible, resulting in what is theoretically the most efficient possible chemical propulsion from a given fuel and oxidizer combination.
Due to the sheer complexity required to achieve full-flow staged combustion, the engine type is incredibly rare and only two other (once) functional examples exist – one developed by Soviet engineers in the 20th century and the other built, tested, and inexplicably scrapped by NASA in the 2000s. In fact, the Soviet RD-270 engine’s thrust-to-weight ratio is likely second only to SpaceX’s own Merlin 1D engine, an absolutely spectacular achievement for a propulsion bureau operating in the late 1960s.
RD-270 had major development challenges and would likely have taken years of additional hardware-rich (i.e. destructive trial and error) testing to produce an engine actually capable of reliable flight. Before the program was cancelled in 1970, 22 engines were tested and no single RD-270 survived to perform a fourth static fire, a testament to the immense challenge of FFSC engines.
SpaceX appears to have had a much better go of it with Raptor, although many, many engines have definitely been destroyed or irreparably damaged since the full-scale engine’s February 2019 static fire debut. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the 17th completed Raptor engine is almost ready to head to McGregor, Texas to kick off development and acceptance testing.
It remains to be seen when exactly Raptor engines will be mature and reliable enough to perform the 3-10 minute burns needed to send a Starship to orbit, let alone the Moon or Mars, but Musk appears confident that SpaceX is making great progress along those lines.
Per photos and info posted by NASASpaceflight.com earlier today, Raptor engine SN15 is already installed on a recently-reactivated McGregor test stand ahead of its first rocket-related test in almost half a decade.
Formerly used to test Falcon 9 first stages before SpaceX built a new stand for Falcon 9 and Heavy, that tripod stand has been reactivated for the sole purpose of supporting vertical Raptor engine static fire testing, which Musk says will simplify and expedite development by making test conditions much more flight-like. As of now, all subscale and full-scale Raptor engine static fire testing has been performed at horizontal test stands in McGregor, apparently resulting in wear and behavior that would not likely appear if engines were tested vertically.
SpaceX has gone through the same process with its Merlin engine programs, beginning with horizontal testing (far easier and simpler) but ultimately building a number of dedicated vertical test bays to ensure that engine acceptance and development tests can be performed under more flight-like conditions.
According to NASASpaceflight, SpaceX may have already fired up Raptor SN15 on its reactivated tripod test stand earlier this week, kicking off Raptor’s first Starhopper-free vertical static fire testing. It’s now unclear where the twin horizontal Raptor test bays will fit into future engine testing given Musk’s comments. More importantly, every completed Starship and Super Heavy rocket will require several dozen new Raptor engines and every one of those engines will likely need to pass acceptance testing (including static fires) in McGregor before they can be installed on a launch vehicle.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket already requires 10 engines per new booster and upper stage, a test burden SpaceX has only managed with the help of two Merlin 1D stands and one Merlin Vacuum stand, all vertical. In other words, it’s safe to say that the reactivated tripod stand is likely just the first of several vertical Raptor test stands to come.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.
The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.
The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.
Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!
Urgently hiring exceptional and enthusiastic Drivers and Ops Managers.
Apply here!
Driverhttps://t.co/ZUPXBYTONb
Senior Loop Ops Managerhttps://t.co/mV6V22V8jH pic.twitter.com/IZ9FqIw8WY
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2026
Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.
Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.
Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.
Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.
Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.
Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”
The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.
Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.
Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.
Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.
Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence
