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SpaceX sends Starship’s first vacuum Raptor engine to Boca Chica
For the first time, SpaceX has shipped a vacuum-optimized Raptor engine to its Boca Chica, Texas Starship factory days after the company’s present reiterated plans for an inaugural orbital launch attempt as early as July.
Back in March 2021, CEO Elon Musk confirmed that he’d set SpaceX a goal of attempting Starship’s first orbital launch no later than the end of July – around four and a half months distant at the time. Fifteen weeks later, though the prospects of an orbital launch attempt happening in July have practically shrunk to zero, SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell – best known for acting as a more grounded foil to Musk’s often impractical schedule estimates – reiterated that the company is still “shooting for July” for Starship’s first orbital launch attempt.
As of late June, hitting that target would require SpaceX to string together numerous extraordinary feats of engineering and rocketry in record time or attempt some extremely unorthodox corner-cutting.
The launch pad and launch vehicle hardware needed for Starship’s first space shot are currently far from ready for flight. On June 24th, Musk unexpectedly revealed that the Super Heavy booster prototype SpaceX is now in the late stages of assembly isn’t actually the booster that will carry Starship on its first space launch attempt. In other words, though dozens of rings in various states of work are strewn about SpaceX’s Boca Chica factory, the company has yet to begin assembling the massive 65m (~215 ft) tall booster required for the first orbital launch attempt.
Using Super Heavy Booster 3 (B3) as a ruler, assembly could easily take 9-10 weeks – starting whenever the process actually begins. If SpaceX started stacking Booster 4 today, in other words, it’s unlikely that the rocket would even be complete by the end of August. Barring SpaceX taking unprecedented shortcuts, completing the booster is just part of the process of preparing for flight and B4 would still need to be qualified for flight, likely involving at least one cryogenic proof and static fire test.
In a best-case scenario where SpaceX begins assembly today, manages to halve Booster 4 assembly time in one fell swoop, the sneaks the second Super Heavy ever completed through qualification testing in a single week, the orbital flight test booster still wouldn’t be ready for Starship installation (likely another unprecedented first) before mid-August.
That would then leave SpaceX five or six weeks to fully assemble Starship S20, a process that has yet to begin. Like Starship SN15, which Musk said sported “hundreds of improvements”, Musk has also stated that Ship 20 and all after it will feature another batch of upgrades needed to take Starship orbital. Starship SN15 was very gradually stacked and assembled over the course of almost four months, though that slow assembly can likely be blamed on the fact that SpaceX is busy testing Starships SN8 through SN11 and was effectively waiting to see if any other major changes might be required.
While most of S20’s upgrades are a mystery, the ship’s thrust dome – spotted in work at Boca Chica earlier this month – has already confirmed that the prototype will be the first with the necessary hardware for Raptor Vacuum engine installation. That likely means that S20 will also be the first Starship to attempt to static fire six Raptor engines*, potentially producing more thrust than a Falcon 9 booster. On June 27th, one such vacuum-optimized Raptor (RVac) arrived in Boca Chica for the first time ever, making it clear that the comparatively brand new engine may already be ready to start integrated Starship testing.
*Update: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the Raptor Vacuum delivered to Boca Chica on June 27th is, in fact, meant for Starship S20, seemingly confirming that the prototype will fly with a full six Raptor engines.
Of course, beyond Starship and Super Heavy, SpaceX also has a great deal of work left to get the rocket’s first orbital-class launch facilities partially operational. SpaceX will need to complete and activate at least one or two more custom-built propellant storage tanks, sleeve those three or four tanks with three or four massive thermos-like ‘shells,’ complete thousands of feet of insulated plumbing and wiring, finish a massive ‘launch table,’ install that table on a six-legged ‘launch mount;’ outfit that table and mount with an array of power, avionics, hydraulics, and fueling equipment and plumbing; complete a ~145m (~475 ft) ‘integration tower,’ and perform the first fit checks and shakedown tests with a real booster or Starship.
Only then will SpaceX be able to attempt Starship’s first space launch. All told, it might not be literally impossible for SpaceX to complete all the above work in less than five weeks, but it’s safe to say that the odds of that happening could probably make a lottery ticket blush. Regardless, if Starship reaches orbit at any point before the end of 2021, it would beat out simpler “next-generation” rockets like Ariane 6, ULA’s Vulcan, and Blue Origin’s New Glenn despite beginning concerted development years later and with a far less certain funding situation.
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Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Elon Musk
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.
Tesla is planning to roll out some pretty significant safety and accident avoidance features with Full Self-Driving version 15, which will be the next major FSD deployment from the company.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy used a near-miss this week to preview what the company says is the next leap in Full Self-Driving.
In response to a driver whose car had swerved away from another vehicle pulling out of a parking lot, Elluswamy wrote that he was glad the owner was safe and that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” would arrive with FSD v15.
Glad you are safe. Even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance coming as part of the next big upgrade (v15).
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 11, 2026
The comment landed as Tesla continues to treat software as the primary safety upgrade path. v15 is described internally as a larger architectural step, with a much bigger neural network and tighter coupling between prediction and control.
The company has already begun using early v15 software in some robotaxi operations while rolling out safety features such as Automatic Collision Evasion into current customer cars, allowing the driving stack to intervene even when the driver is in manual control.
Tesla is rolling out a new FSD version with a massive safety addition
Tesla’s published telemetry is the backbone of its safety argument. In recent North American Vehicle Safety Report data, vehicles with FSD (Supervised) engaged traveled roughly 5.1 million to 5.7 million miles between major collisions, defined as airbag-deployment events.
Tesla’s estimate of the U.S. average over the same period is about 699,000 miles per comparable crash. That is the comparison Tesla often frames as roughly seven times fewer major collisions.
A tighter comparison uses the same Tesla fleet. Cars driven manually with active safety features such as automatic emergency braking still recorded a major collision about every 2.1 million miles. Against that baseline, FSD’s advantage shrinks to roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times fewer severe crashes, which independent researchers argue is the more apples-to-apples figure.
European data released in 2026 pointed in the same direction: Tesla reported FSD as 3.5 times safer than manual driving in the Netherlands and 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas with active safety across more than 100 million kilometers in five approved countries.
Those numbers do not settle every debate. NHTSA’s Standing General Order still shows Tesla accounting for the large majority of U.S. Level 2 driver-assist crash reports, in part because the fleet logs far more assisted miles than rivals. Critics also note that Tesla’s “U.S. average” mixes crash definitions and driving mix.
Even so, Tesla’s own same-car comparisons, plus lower rates of automatic emergency braking and harsh maneuvers when FSD is engaged, are the evidence Elluswamy is pointing to when he says v15 will push prediction and collision avoidance further. The claim is not that software already eliminates risk. It is that each major version is meant to widen the gap between the system and an unaided human driver.
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
