News
(Update: Sunday) SpaceX’s high-altitude Starship launch debut slips to Monday
Update #2: Per new Temporary Flight Restrictions, there’s now a chance that SpaceX has rescheduled Starship’s (now slightly less) high-altitude launch debut on Sunday afternoon, December 6th.
As always with experimental testing, uncertainty remains. Stay tuned for updates as we close in on Starship SN8’s 12.5-kilometer (~7.8 mi) launch debut.
Update: SpaceX’s high-altitude Starship launch debut appears to have slipped to no earlier than (NET) Monday morning, December 7th, and been reduced from 15 km to 12.5 km.
FAA-approved flight restrictions filed on December 2nd were retracted on December 3rd for unknown reasons, ultimately giving SpaceX several more days to prepare Starship SN8 for an ambitious high-altitude launch, coast, freefall, and landing attempt.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has also lowered Starship SN8’s apogee target to 12.5 km (7.8 mi) from 15 km, itself a reduction from 20 km made earlier this year. Why is entirely unclear but it’s likely that the company is in active discussion (and probably arguments) with the FAA, perhaps requiring a compromise to ensure regulatory approval.
It remains to be seen if SpaceX will perform any additional testing over the weekend or if the company will attempt to schedule Starship SN8’s launch debut on Saturday or Sunday. Stay tuned for updates and Elon Musk’s promised SpaceX webcast.
SpaceX has received FAA approval to attempt Starship’s high-altitude launch debut as early as Friday according to a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) filed on December 2nd.
SpaceX’s first high-altitude Starship TFR revealed that the crucial flight test is now scheduled sometime between 8 am and 5 pm CST (14:00-23:00 UTC) on Friday, December 4th, with identical backup windows available (and cleared with the FAA) on Saturday and Sunday. Originally scheduled as early as November 30th, the delays are less than surprising given the complexity and unprecedented nature of the flight test facing SpaceX.
Starship serial/ship number 8 (SN8) – the first functional full-height prototype – is tasked with launching from Boca Chica, Texas to an apogee of 15 kilometers (~9.5 miles) and dropping back to Earth to test an unproven approach to rocket recovery.
Often referred to as a bellyflop or skydiver-style attitude, Starship SN8 will attempt to freefall belly-down back to earth, using four large flaps to maintain a stable approach much like skydivers use their arms and legs to control heading and speed. When landing on planets or moons with relatively thick atmospheres, a controlled freefall could save Starship a huge amount of structural mass (no need for wings or actual airfoils) and propellant – a major benefit for what aims to be the largest reusable orbital spacecraft ever built.
Powered by three Raptor engines capable of producing up to 600 metric tons (1.3 million lbf) of thrust at full throttle, SN8’s launch debut will mark Starship’s first multiengine flight – a major milestone for any rocket prototype. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk also recently noted that Starship SN8’s propellant tanks will only be “slightly filled” for its 15 km launch debut, potentially resulting in an extremely healthy thrust to weight ratio at liftoff.
Based on several unofficial estimates, Starship SN8 is also likely to break the sound barrier on ascent, potentially putting the prototype through conditions similar to what an actual orbital launch might see at Max Q (the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure). Further adding to the daunting list of ‘firsts’, SN8’s 15 km debut will be the first Starship hop or flight with a nosecone, making it the first full-scale structural test of a nose section and the methods used to attach it to Starship’s tank section. It’s hard to exaggerate the number of things that could go wrong and the number of ways Starship SN8 could fail during its first flight.
In the interim, SpaceX has taken Starship’s launch delay as an opportunity to perform some kind of additional testing on the evening of December 2nd, involving some kind of cryogenic proof test (using liquid nitrogen) or wet dress rehearsal (WDR; using real liquid methane and oxygen). While there were initial signs that SpaceX would put SN8 through one or several more Raptor static fires before clearing the rocket for flight, it appears that those plans were cancelled earlier this week.
Less testing amplifies the risk that Starship SN8 will fail after liftoff, the probability of which Musk has pegged at ~67%. Regardless, SN8’s launch debut is bound to be spectacular and Starships SN9 and SN10 are nearly ready to take over wherever SN8 leaves off.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS –Â $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues –Â $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow –Â $1.444 billion
- Profit –Â $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
