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SpaceX Starship factory churning out new rocket parts with Elon Musk's help
SpaceX’s South Texas team of Starship engineers and technicians – including CEO Elon Musk himself – are working around the clock to manufacture hardware that will likely become the company’s next Starship prototype in the near future.
Over the last few days, SpaceX has made quick progress churning out shiny steel rings and wrapping up propellant tank domes – the next round of full-scale Starship hardware. To better build the first flight and orbit-capable prototypes, not to mention hundreds or even thousands of Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy boosters in the years to come, SpaceX teams and contractors have spent the last two months aggressively expanding the company’s Boca Chica, Texas facilities. In fact, the very same company that built Tesla’s newest tent-based Model 3 assembly line – Sprung Instant Structures – has erected part of a massive, new Starship factory.
Finally giving the company’s grizzled South Texas team a large, climate-controlled space to work from, CEO Elon Musk has also been spending more and more time at SpaceX’s upgraded Boca Chica facilities. Most recently, the executive gave Twitter followers the first official glimpse inside one of the new Starship production tents, revealing several giant spacecraft parts in various stages of completion. It’s currently unclear what the destiny of that new Starship hardware will be, but a few recent clues seem to point in one specific direction.
Yeah, we just finished two more propellant domes. SpaceX team & supporting suppliers are doing amazing work ramping Starship production.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2020
On January 10th, SpaceX intentionally – and largely successfully – ‘popped’ a Starship propellant tank to determine the quality of partially-upgraded manufacturing and assembly techniques. Built in just two weeks, Musk revealed shortly after the test that the baby Starship tank – filled with water – had made it to 7.1 bar (103 psi) before bursting.
While fairly meaningless on its own, it apparently means that the test tank survived well past the pressures Starships will need for orbital flight, although it only managed a safety margin of ~18%. To be fully flightworthy, Musk says that SpaceX wants Starship tanks to survive pressures of at least 8.5 bar (125 psi) – a margin of ~40% – before it considers the giant spacecraft safe enough for humans.
Given that the 7.1 bar the test tank reached is more than enough to support “orbital flight”, albeit with a less-than-optimal safety margin, it would be reasonable to assume that SpaceX would choose to immediately green-light the first flightworthy Starship spacecraft, deemed SN01 (serial number 01) by Musk. While that first prototype would thus be unable to launch humans and fulfill its ultimate goal as a Starship, it would give SpaceX experience building a second full-scale prototype (following Mk1) and give the company time to gradually upgrade its production facilities and manufacturing hardware.
Musk sketched out a number of possible improvements even before SpaceX tested its miniature Starship tank to destruction, indicating that “more precise parts” and an enclosed, wind-protected welding shop should be enough to raise Starship’s safety margin to ~40%. A step further down the road, Musk raised autogenous laser welding as a possibility for future production upgrades, although the advanced welding method would require a truly controlled environment and much more precise parts and manufacturing hardware.
In the last 24 hours, SpaceX has filed for a number of road closures for the highway adjacent to its Boca Chica Starship facilities, a sign that some form of rocket hardware transport and testing is imminent. As such, it now seems much more likely that SpaceX has decided to spend at least a few more weeks building and testing a second (and possibly a third) Starship tank prototype before kicking off the production of the next full-scale rocket.
Intriguingly, SpaceX has also received several large shipments of liquid nitrogen (LN2), a neutral cryogenic fluid often used to simulate cryogenic propellants without risking a massive explosion or fire. That LN2 wont last forever in SpaceX’s storage tanks, confirming that some form of cryogenic testing is imminent. The most likely explanation is that SpaceX is in the late stages of manufacturing a second tank prototype, soon to be shipped about a mile down the road to the company’s nearby test and launch facilities.
If SpaceX is planning to perform a burst test with liquid nitrogen, it will likely be quite the spectacle – much closer to Starship Mk1’s spectacular failure than the milder demise of the first miniature Starship tank. SpaceX has roadblocks scheduled every day for the rest of the week, so stay tuned to find out when exactly Starship’s next big test is expected.
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Lucid unveils Lunar Robotaxi in bid to challenge Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Lucid’s Lunar robotaxi is gunning for Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
![Lucid Lunar robotaxi concept [Credit: Rendering by TESLARATI]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lucid-lunar-robotaxi-concept-teslarati-rendering.jpg)
Lucid Group pulled back the curtain on its purpose-built autonomous robotaxi platform dubbed the Lunar Concept. Announced at its New York investor day event, Lunar is arguably the company’s most ambitious concept yet, and a direct line of sight toward the autonomous ride haling market that Tesla looks to control.
At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
A comparison to Tesla’s Cybercab is unavoidable. The concept of a Tesla robotaxi was first introduced by Elon Musk back in April 2019 during an event dubbed “Autonomy Day,” where he envisioned a network of self-driving Tesla vehicles transporting passengers while not in use by their owners. That vision took another major step in October 2024 when, Musk unveiled the Cybercab at the Tesla “We, Robot” event held at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 concept Cybercabs autonomously drove around the studio lot giving rides to attendees.
Fast forward to today, and Tesla’s ambitions are finally materializing, but not without friction. As we recently reported, the Cybercab is being spotted with increasing frequency on public roads and across the grounds of Gigafactory Texas, suggesting that the company’s road testing and validation program is ramping meaningfully ahead of mass production. Tesla already operates a small scale robotaxi service in Austin using supervised Model Ys, but the Cybercab is designed from the ground up for high-volume, low-cost production, with Musk stating an eventual goal of producing one vehicle every 10 seconds.
At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
Into this landscape steps Lucid’s Lunar. Built on the company’s all-new Midsize EV platform, which will also underpin consumer SUVs starting below $50,000. The Lunar mirrors the Cybercab’s core philosophy of having two seats, no driver controls, and a focus on fleet economics. The platform introduces Lucid’s redesigned Atlas electric drive unit, engineered to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper to manufacture at scale.
Unlike Tesla’s strategy of building its own ride hailing network from scratch, Lucid is partnering with Uber. The companies are said to be in advanced discussions to deploy Midsize platform vehicles at large scale, with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi publicly backing Lucid’s engineering credentials and autonomous-ready architecture.
In the investor day event, Lucid also outlined a recurring software revenue model, with an in-vehicle AI assistant and monthly autonomous driving subscriptions priced between $69 and $199. This can be seen as a nod to the software revenue stream that Tesla has long championed with its Full Self-Driving subscription.
Tesla’s Cybercab is targeting a price point below $30k and with operating costs as low as 20 cents per mile. But with regulatory hurdles still ahead, the window for competition is open. Lucid’s Lunar may not have a launch date yet, but it arrives at a pivotal moment, and when the robotaxi race is no longer viewed as hypothetical. Rather, every serious EV player needs to come to bat on the same plate that Tesla has had countless practice swings on over the last seven years.
Elon Musk
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the closure of an investigation involving Elon Musk and social media platform X. The inquiry had been pending for about two years and examined whether the platform was used to coordinate attacks against members of the judiciary.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
According to a report from Agencia Brasil, the investigation conducted by the Federal Police did not find evidence that X deliberately attempted to attack the judiciary or circumvent court orders.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet concluded that the irregularities identified during the probe did not indicate fraudulent intent.
Justice Moraes accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation and ruled that the investigation should be closed. Under the ruling, the case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The inquiry stemmed from concerns that content on X may have enabled online attacks against Supreme Court justices or violated rulings requiring the suspension of certain accounts under investigation.
Justice Moraes had previously taken several enforcement actions related to the platform during the broader dispute involving social media regulation in Brazil.
These included ordering a nationwide block of the platform, freezing Starlink accounts, and imposing fines on X totaling about $5.2 million. Authorities also froze financial assets linked to X and SpaceX through Starlink to collect unpaid penalties and seized roughly $3.3 million from the companies’ accounts.
Moraes also imposed daily fines of up to R$5 million, about $920,000, for alleged evasion of the X ban and established penalties of R$50,000 per day for VPN users who attempted to bypass the restriction.
Brazil remains an important market for X, with roughly 17 million users, making it one of the platform’s larger user bases globally.
The country is also a major market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, which has surpassed one million subscribers in Brazil.
Elon Musk
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Amazon after the company opposed SpaceX’s proposal to launch a large satellite constellation that could function as an orbital data center network.
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
Amazon recently urged the FCC to reject SpaceX’s application to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites that could serve as artificial intelligence data centers in space.
The company described the proposal as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” arguing that SpaceX had not provided sufficient details about how the system would operate.
Carr responded by pointing to Amazon’s own satellite deployment progress.
“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote on X.
Amazon has declined to comment on the statement.
Amazon has been working to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite network, which is intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the program and has launched more than 200 satellites since April of last year.
Amazon has also asked the FCC for a 24-month extension, until July 2028, to meet a requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by July 2026, as noted in a CNBC report.
SpaceX’s Starlink network currently has nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves roughly 10 million customers. The FCC has also authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional satellites as the company continues expanding its global satellite internet network.
![Lucid Lunar robotaxi concept [Credit: Rendering by TESLARATI]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lucid-lunar-robotaxi-concept-teslarati-rendering-80x80.jpg)
Lucid unveils Lunar Robotaxi in bid to challenge Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
