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SpaceX Starship event expected this September, says Elon Musk

Elon Musk says that he will continue a SpaceX tradition of annual Starship update events later this year. (NASASpaceflight - bocachicagal)

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has implied that he will continue the tradition of annual Starship update events later this year, likely presenting on the progress the company has made over the last 12 months at its South Texas rocket factory.

Beginning in Guadalajara, Mexico at the September 2016 International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Musk has presented a detailed annual update on the status of SpaceX’s next-generation Starship launch vehicle in September or October for the last four years. Formerly known as the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) and Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), Starship is effectively a continuation of the unprecedented progress SpaceX has made with Falcon 9 and Heavy reusability.

SpaceX has managed to reliably reuse Falcon boosters 5+ times and is on the way to replicating that with payload fairings, but Musk has concluded that the Falcon family – despite being some of the largest operational rockets in existence – is just too small to feasibly recover and reuse the orbital second stage. With Starship, SpaceX wants to take a slightly different approach.

A senior SpaceX engineer and executive believes that Starship’s first orbital launch could still happen by the end of 2020. (SpaceX)

While also a two-stage rocket, Starship will have a magnitude more thrust than Falcon 9 and twice the thrust of Saturn V, the largest liquid rocket ever successfully launched. More importantly, both Starship stages are designed to be easily and rapidly reusable, while also entirely getting rid of deployable payload fairings. In theory, once fully optimized, Starship and the Super Heavy booster should be capable of placing 150 metric tons (~330,000 lb) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO) in a single launch.

Of course, that is going to be an immense challenge – arguably the single most ambitious project in the history of commercial spaceflight – and SpaceX has quite a ways to go before it can even come close. Aside from the huge publicity and excitement it generates, offering detailed explanations of how exactly SpaceX is progressing towards those goals and how Starship’s design is evolving is likely the primary reason Musk has chosen to continue doing annual presentations.

SpaceX may likely be years away from routine, fully-reusable Starship launches but that doesn’t mean that no progress has been made. In the last ~10 months, SpaceX has successfully flown Starhopper to 150 meters (500 ft), destroyed Starship Mk1; built, tested, and destroyed Starships SN1, SN3, SN4, and four standalone test tanks; and expanded its South Texas presence from almost nothing to a large, semi-permanent factory.

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Aside from Starship production and testing, SpaceX has evolved the cutting-edge Raptor engine from a relatively rough prototype to an engine capable of operating at the fringes of what thermodynamics will allow. Per Musk, a vacuum-optimized variant of the existing Raptor engine may already be preparing for its first test fires in McGregor, Texas. Meanwhile, SpaceX won its first Starship contract from NASA a matter of weeks ago, solidifying the ambitious rocket’s stature relative to other more traditional next-generation rockets from Blue Origin and the United Launch Alliance (ULA).

Starship SN5 is perhaps less than 24 hours away from kicking off an ambitious test campaign that could conclude with it becoming the first full-scale prototype to take flight. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)

All things considered, there is an extraordinary amount of tangible progress on tap for the Starship update Musk says is planned for September. With a little luck, the 2020 presentation will align with Starship’s test program much like the 2019 event did with Starhopper, coming just a few months after ambitious flight tests.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

Cybertruck

Tesla Cybertruck is getting a big security upgrade

“Cybertruck was not 100% carryover in execution like S3XY, so it required work.”

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla confirmed today that a massive Cybertruck security feature is on the way soon, and it is one that owners have been asking about for a long time.

Like all Teslas, Cybertruck has the excellent security feature known as “Sentry Mode.” The feature essentially turns your Tesla into a moving security camera, recording any event that happens nearby.

It has been used to solve crimes such as vandalism and burglary, and even used by police departments to solve other, high-profile crimes.

Tesla quietly added this extra Sentry Mode feature to deter vandals

However, Cybertruck has been missing one key feature of Sentry Mode: the use of the B-Pillar camera has not been enabled, leaving one of the most vandalized and targeted vehicles in the United States with a weakness.

One person who has been vocal about it is Tesla Cybertruck enthusiast Greggertruck, who has been pushing for answers for months. He finally got his answer from Cybertruck Vehicle Program Manager Siddhant Awasthi:

“It will come soon! Cybertruck was not 100% carryover in execution like SX3Y so it required work. Team has finished work on this and just need to make sure it’s validated and runs reliably (which it should for its feature).”

It sounds as if Tesla’s issue was something they similarly experienced when deploying Full Self-Driving to Cybertruck. The other four Tesla vehicles were able to use FSD because they’re all relatively similar in ride height and overall functionality. They share tons of similarities.

Cybertruck did not get FSD right away because Tesla still had to work on the differences between it and the other cars in the lineup. As Awasthi said, “Cybertruck was not 100% carryover in execution like S3XY, so it required work.”

Tesla Cybertruck FSD release expected for Sept, Park Assist to come first

It sounds as if Tesla is close to resolving some of the more intricate details of adding the functionality, and it was just a matter of time before it figured out the issue.

The release of the B-Pillar camera being active during Sentry Mode events on Cybertruck will likely come in a software update in the coming weeks.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla investors may be in for a big surprise

All signs point toward a strong quarter for Tesla in terms of deliveries. Investors could be in for a surprise.

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(Credit: Tesla)

Tesla investors have plenty of things to be ecstatic about, considering the company’s confidence in autonomy, AI, robotics, cars, and energy. However, many of them may be in for a big surprise as the end of the $7,500 EV tax credit nears. On September 30, it will be gone for good.

This has put some skepticism in the minds of some investors: the lack of a $7,500 discount for buying a clean energy vehicle may deter many people from affording Tesla’s industry-leading EVs.

Tesla warns consumers of huge, time-sensitive change coming soon

The focus on quarterly deliveries, while potentially waning in terms of importance to the future, is still a big indicator of demand, at least as of now. Of course, there are other factors, most of them economic.

The big push to make the most of the final quarter of the EV tax credit is evident, as Tesla is reminding consumers on social media platforms and through email communications that the $7,500 discount will not be here forever. It will be gone sooner rather than later.

It appears the push to maximize sales this quarter before having to assess how much they will be impacted by the tax credit’s removal is working.

Delivery Wait Time Increases

Wait times for Tesla vehicles are increasing due to what appears to be increased demand for the company’s vehicles. Recently, Model Y delivery wait times were increased from 1-3 weeks to 4-6 weeks.

This puts extra pressure on consumers to pull the trigger on an order, as delivery must be completed by the cutoff date of September 30.

Delivery wait times may have gone up due to an increase in demand as consumers push to make a purchase before losing that $7,500 discount.

More People are Ordering

A post on X by notable Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt anecdotally shows he has been receiving more DMs than normal from people stating that they’re ordering vehicles before the end of the tax credit:

It’s not necessarily a confirmation of more orders, but it could be an indication that things are certainly looking that way.

Why Investors Could Be Surprised

Tesla investors could see some positive movement in stock price following the release of the Q3 delivery report, especially if all signs point to increased demand this quarter.

We reported previously that this could end up being a very strong rebounding quarter for Tesla, with so many people taking advantage of the tax credit.

Whether the delivery figures will be higher than normal remains to be seen. But all indications seem to point to Q3 being a very strong quarter for Tesla.

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Elon Musk

Tesla bear Guggenheim sees nearly 50% drop off in stock price in new note

Tesla bear Guggenheim does not see any upside in Robotaxi.

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tesla showroom
Credit: Tesla

Tesla bear Guggenheim is still among the biggest non-believers in the company’s overall mission and its devotion to solving self-driving.

In a new note to investors on Thursday, analyst Ronald Jewsikow reiterated his price target of $175, a nearly 50 percent drop off, with a ‘Sell’ rating, all based on skepticism regarding Tesla’s execution of the Robotaxi platform.

A few days ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company’s Robotaxi platform would open to the public in September, offering driverless rides to anyone in the Austin area within its geofence, which is roughly 90 square miles large.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirms Robotaxi is opening to the public: here’s when

However, Jewsikow’s skepticism regarding this timeline has to do with what’s going on inside of the vehicles. The analyst was willing to give props to Robotaxi, saying that Musk’s estimation of a September public launch would be a “key step” in offering the service to a broader population.

Where Jewsikow’s real issue lies is with Tesla’s lack of transparency on the Safety Monitors, and how bulls are willing to overlook their importance.

Much of this bullish mentality comes from the fact that the Monitors are not sitting in the driver’s seat, and they don’t have anything to do with the overall operation of the vehicle.

Musk also said last month that reducing Safety Monitors could come “in a month or two.”

Instead, they’re just there to make sure everything runs smoothly.

Jewsikow said:

“While safety drivers will remain, and no timeline has been provided for their removal, bulls have been willing to overlook the optics of safety drivers in TSLA vehicles, and we see no reason why that would change now.”

He also commented on Musk’s recent indication that Tesla was working on a 10x parameter count that could help make Full Self-Driving even more accurate. It could be one of the pieces to Tesla solving autonomy.

Jewsikow added:

“Perhaps most importantly for investors bullish on TSLA for the fleet of potential FSD-enabled vehicles today, the 10x higher parameter count will be able to run on the current generation of FSD hardware and inference compute.”

Elon Musk teases crazy new Tesla FSD model: here’s when it’s coming

Tesla shares are down just about 2 percent today, trading at $332.47.

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