News
SpaceX rapidly constructing Starship’s first Florida launch pad and tower
After restarting work on the project a few months ago, SpaceX appears to have gotten back up to speed and begun to make rapid progress on the construction of Starship’s first Florida launch pad and tower.
Located at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Launch Complex 39A facilities, SpaceX has intended to construct a Starship launch site there for several years. A serious attempt was made in late 2019 but SpaceX soon abandoned the effort and redirected its energy towards Starship prototyping and a much different launch pad design. Two years later, SpaceX’s second attempt shares only a little in common with the first. Both are to be located within the eastern half of Pad 39A’s shield-like footprint, although the specific location of the tower and launch mount has been modified. If this attempt comes to fruition, Starship’s first East Coast launch facilities will still sit just a few hundred feet away from the only SpaceX pad capable of launching Crew Dragon, Cargo Dragon, or Falcon Heavy.
Beyond those two characteristics, SpaceX’s second attempt is almost entirely different.
Instead of continuing with an older launch pad design, Starship’s 39A facilities will likely be close to a direct copy of Starbase’s first orbital launch site (OLS), which SpaceX began constructing in earnest in late 2020. It’s safe to assume that some lessons have been learned from Starbase OLS construction and that some modifications will be made to the Florida pad’s design, but no obvious changes are thus far visible.
Most of the visible work SpaceX has done this year centers around the company’s KSC-based Roberts Road facilities, where it has built a major Falcon processing facility and a staging yard for Starship pad construction and broken ground on a massive East Coast Starship factory. At that staging yard, SpaceX began assembling prefabricated sections of Starship’s Pad 39A ‘launch tower’ around March 10th after tower parts began arriving at KSC sometime in February. Within two weeks, SpaceX had completed the basic structure of two tower sections. Another two more weeks after that, around April 11th, a third section had reached a similar level of completion and SpaceX had begun assembling a fourth.
Compared to SpaceX’s Starbase tower assembly, Florida Starship work appears to be proceeding at a similar pace. SpaceX began assembling the fourth Florida tower section about 30 days after starting the first, while Starbase took about 25 days to reach the same point. However, SpaceX does appear to be taking a slightly different approach for Pad 39A. On top of tower section assembly, SpaceX is constructing an extra four sets of the small concrete foundations and steel frames each tower section is assembled on, implying that Starship’s Florida launch tower could be almost entirely prefabricated before SpaceX begins to combine those sections.
That differs from Starbase, where SpaceX rarely constructed more than two or three tower sections at a time before removing and stacking each completed section and beginning to assemble the next on the same foundation and jig. However, while undeniably efficient, SpaceX workers then had to spend months outfitting the tower with plumbing, wiring, additional structure, and more. It’s likely that SpaceX has concluded that it’s better to do as much of that work as possible before the tower is assembled, in which case each Florida section may end up spending more time on the ground. Given the obvious challenges imposed by attempting a major construction project at an active, one-of-a-kind launch pad like LC-39A, it would make even more sense for SpaceX to want to complete as much work as possible before moving Starship pad hardware into the line of fire.
Nonetheless, work will still have to be done at the pad itself. In recent weeks, SpaceX has made significant progress on the foundations 39A’s Starship launch tower and mount require. The bottom half of the concrete base that each steel tower section will eventually sit on has also progressed rapidly. All told, SpaceX is will on its way to replicating Starbase’s orbital Starship launch site on the East Coast, hopefully ensuring that Starship will be able to begin orbital test flights within the next 6-12 months even if the company’s Starbase environmental review continues to be bogged down by bureaucracy.
News
Why Elon Musk’s target date for buying an Optimus robot is harder than it sounds
Musk says China’s magnet export ban cost Optimus months, and robot hands remain shockingly hard.
Elon Musk says China’s export curbs on magnets used in electric motors set back Tesla’s Optimus program by two to three months, and that the robot’s hands remain the hardest part of the project. He made the comments Saturday during a live interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas, in front of roughly 2,000 attendees. The Optimus discussion begins around the 49 minute mark of the stream.
On the hands, Musk was blunt and noted that a general purpose humanoid needs fine motor skills that are “incredibly difficult to get right. Shockingly difficult,” he said in the interview. He pointed to a problem he says no one has demonstrated yet: “One of the hardest things also generally is to do precision and force at the same time,” such as driving a small self tapping screw into wood. Touch sensors add another layer, since it is “actually kind of hard to get touch sensors that elastically deform and can handle high cycle life and it won’t just break after a few thousand cycles.”
He also took aim at rival robot videos. “Any complicated looking robot demo, it’s a canned demo. It’s not real,” Musk said, adding that real AI means showing a robot something it has never seen and watching it still cope, the way FSD handles a city it has never driven.
Musk expects the Optimus ramp to be slower than a new vehicle production ramp. “The initial part of that S curve of production ramp is going to be very slow at the beginning,” Musk said, partly because “unlike cars, there’s no pre existing supply chain for robot stuff.” That echoes his July reply on X that Optimus production “will be extremely slow at first, as everything is new.”
The magnet disclosure puts a number on a problem Musk first raised in 2025. He said China “prevented the export of magnets for use in electric motors” and that it “set back the Optimus program by like two or three months.” Then he added: “We had robots with no arms.” Tesla’s fix is to bring the supply chain home. “You’ve got to be able to make all the parts domestically,” he said. Teslarati reported in April 2025 that Musk tied the issue to permanent magnets in the arm actuators, where motors have to be as small as possible.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Production is moving regardless, with a reported internal goal of more than 1,000 a week by the end of 2026. Teslarati recently covered how Tesla is certifying supply partners in China for Optimus parts, while the company’s hand design has been the subject of new patent filings.
Musk has said he wants Optimus available to the public by late 2027, though Tesla has not confirmed that date or published updated production figures.
Investor's Corner
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Elon Musk says Starship Flight 15 will try to catch the ship itself, a first.
Elon Musk says SpaceX’s next Starship flight will try something nobody has done before, by catching the ship itself. Speaking to roughly 2,000 people at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas on Saturday, Musk said Flight 15 is about four to six weeks away and “probably launches a little bit before Thanksgiving, is my guess.”
That is a slip from earlier reporting, which had pointed to a launch as early as October 19. Musk explained why the date keeps moving. “We’re making a bunch of improvements to the rocket between every flight,” he said, adding that there are often hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small changes. This time the list is short, “but some of them take a fair bit of work and we’ve got to go inside the tank to make some of these changes.”
“We’re going to try to catch the ship, which is a super big deal,” Musk said. “If we do so, that’ll be the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket.” SpaceX has already caught the Super Heavy booster with the tower’s mechanical arms, and has talked about catching the ship since late 2025, but the upper stage has never been caught.
Musk also laid out what comes after. “The next big milestone would be to refly both the booster and the ship,” he said, describing a Flight 16 where “all parts of an orbital rocket are reflown.”
The reason SpaceX wants this comes down to cost and cadence. Every Starship ship so far has ended its flight in the ocean, and SpaceX expects most of those water landings to end in fireballs. A ship that returns to Starbase intact can be inspected and flown again. SpaceX’s IPO filing, says Starship V3 is designed to deliver 100 metric tons to orbit in a fully reusable configuration, that SpaceX aims to cut the cost to reach orbit by 99% or more versus the historical average, and that tower catches should allow “multiple launches per day.”
The payoff goes beyond cheaper launches. The next generation Starlink V3 satellites are too large for Falcon 9 and can only fly on Starship, which can carry up to 60 per flight. Flight 14 on September 28 deployed the first 26 of them after Starship reached orbit despite an early engine shutdown, as Teslarati reported. Musk blamed engine computer software, and said the heat shield “was extremely robust,” which he claimed in August had solved Starship’s biggest challenge.
NASA’s Moon plans depend on the same capability. NASA’s inspector general has described a lander mission that needs a propellant depot in low Earth orbit and more than 10 tanker flights, with SpaceX targeting one tanker launch every six days. That schedule only works if ships and boosters come back fast and fly again. Also, ship to ship propellant transfer has not been attempted yet.
One interesting hurdle yet to be explored is bringing the ship back to the launch site, with reentry over land, which will undoubtedly come with a lot of aviation safety reviews.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
Why Elon Musk’s target date for buying an Optimus robot is harder than it sounds
Elon Musk drops a Thanksgiving hint about Starship’s biggest test yet
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
