News
SpaceX ramps Starship hiring as Elon Musk talks Texas rocket factory's "awesome" progress
After several successful tests last month, Elon Musk says that SpaceX’s South Texas Starship team is looking to rapidly expand in order to aggressively ramp up Starship manufacturing in a sign that the nascent rocket factory is making excellent progress.
Almost immediately after SpaceX successfully wrapped up its first and second explosive Starship tank tests last month, the company’s Boca Chica, Texas presence started to take on a new atmosphere, reminiscent of the rapid progress made at a since-mothballed Florida Starship facility. Perhaps thanks to the fact that SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starship facilities are adjacent to a dedicated test and launch facility just a mile down the road, it’s looking much less likely that a similar fate will befall its Texas presence.
Instead, SpaceX’s successful Starship tank tests – intentionally destroying two massive propellant tanks – are a testament to the progress the next-generation rocket is making in Texas. In fact, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has effectively stated that after the most recent tank test, the company is now ready to shift gears and start building the first space-bound Starship prototypes, while the last week or two of SpaceX’s visible Texas activities make it clear that that shift is already well underway.
In simple terms, SpaceX now appears to be moving full speed ahead in a bid to manufacture, assemble, and test the first flightworthy, full-scale Starship prototypes. It’s worth noting that CEO Elon Musk has underestimated the challenge at hand several times in the last 18 or so months of Starship development, frequently suggesting that the first full-scale prototype of the spacecraft would be ready for a challenging flight test and maybe even its first orbital flights as early as 2019.
For a number of reasons, those ambitious targets were not met. To Musk’s credit, the executive is at least conscious of his tendency to be wildly optimistic when it comes to schedules and has effectively tacked on an asterisk that the schedules and deadlines he often publicizes tend more along the lines of “this time-frame is technically possible without breaking the laws of physics” than anything verging on pragmatism. With challenges as complex as those faced in spaceflight, let alone massive, fully-reusable rockets like Starship, it’s hard to be surprised that practical deadlines tend to be miles away from theoretically-possible minimums.
As such, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to feel a bit like the townspeople with a boy crying wolf, but there are arguably several reasons for optimism, this time around. Most importantly, as partially pictured above, SpaceX has completed four intentionally destructive tests with full-scale Starship hardware in just the last 2.5 months. Deemed unfit for flight, SpaceX pressurized Starship Mk1 with liquid nitrogen until it burst in November 2019, reaching an estimated 3-5 bar (45-75 psi).
SpaceX spent the following month upgrading both the methods and facilities used to build Starship prototypes in South Texas – a process that is still very much ongoing. However, two recent tests of Starship tanks built with some of those new methods and facilities have unequivocally proven that great progress is being made. The first ‘test tank’ managed 7.1 bar (105 psi) before it burst, while a second tank completed less than three weeks later reached 7.5 bar (110 psi) with water and 8.5 bar (125 psi) with liquid nitrogen on January 28th. Between those tests, Musk revealed that 6 bar was the bare minimum necessary for orbital Starship flights, while 8.5 bar would potentially offer the safety margins needed for crewed Starship flights.
In other words, SpaceX’s last two tank tests have effectively proved that – even with facilities and methods only partially upgraded – the company is ready to begin manufacturing the first truly flight-rated Starship prototypes. In response, Musk recently stated that he was going “max hardcore on” Starship design and production in Boca Chica and revealed that SpaceX would host a second South Texas jobs fair in three weeks to help rapidly staff its growing rocket factory.
Looking at the progress SpaceX has made in just the last week, it’s hard to fault Musk’s brimming enthusiasm. Now breaking in new semi-automated welding machines, upgraded production equipment, and two massive sprung structures (i.e. tents), SpaceX engineers and technicians are churning out improved steel rings, tank domes (bulkheads), smaller propellant tanks, and more at a breakneck pace relative to the last year of Starship work. Additionally, at least six of those new rings have been stacked together in two sections, likely representing the effective birth of the first flightworthy Starship – ‘SN01’.
With SpaceX’s new enclosed facilities, much of its South Texas work is now hidden. Still, from what’s visible, it’s safe to say that the company is well its way to completing the first flight – and possibly orbit – worthy Starship prototypes in the near future.
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Elon Musk
Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK
Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at Thursday’s White House summit.
Elon Musk is set to receive the highest honor the U.S. government gives to scientists and engineers.
President Donald Trump will present Musk with the National Medal of Science on Thursday at the White House’s Science: A New Golden Age Summit, Fox News Digital first reported on Wednesday. Google cofounder Sergey Brin, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Su will receive the same medal, while Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. A White House official later confirmed the list to Reuters.
“The Trump administration is grateful for the contributions of these incredible leaders in science and technology. These recipients are helping ensure America keeps leading the world in innovation,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told Fox News.
FIRST ON FOX: Trump will award Elon Musk the National Medal of Science at the White House Thursday.
Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang and Lisa Su will also receive the science medal, while Michael Dell and Satya Nadella will receive the technology medal.
It marks Trump’s first time presenting the awards across either administration.
Full story here https://t.co/omnrLV0EwS
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) October 7, 2026
It will be the first time Trump has presented either medal in his two terms. Congress created the National Medal of Science in 1959, and the National Science Foundation, which administers it, says 529 scientists and engineers have received it since. A presidential committee reviews nominees, but the president makes the final call.
Thursday’s group of medalists run or founded companies, and three of them sit at the center of the Super Intelligence hardware race that Musk competes in. Huang’s Nvidia supplies the GB300 chips filling SpaceX’s Colossus 2 cluster, while Su’s AMD is Nvidia’s biggest rival in data center GPUs.
Worth noting that Trump’s uncle, MIT physicist John G. Trump, received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan for his work on ionizing radiation and its uses in medicine and industry.
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
For Musk, the medal is the latest sign of how far his relationship with Trump has come since their 2025 split over the “Big Beautiful Bill” and his exit from DOGE. Last week, he sat at Trump’s left during a White House lunch where AI executives signed a voluntary safety accord, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named him to help lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian study on the future of warfare. Musk has also adopted the administration’s new vocabulary, saying on Sunday that SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI after Trump ordered federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” with “super intelligence.”
Musk has collected science honors before, including the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication in 2019.
Lifestyle
Tesla FSD changed its mind mid-intersection, and it may have saved a life
Tesla shares dashcam footage of FSD Supervised stopping mid intersection to avoid a T-bone crash.
Tesla is putting another Full Self-Driving save in front of its 24.8 million followers on X.
On Tuesday morning, Tesla’s main account shared a dashcam clip with the caption “FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash.” The footage came from an owner posting as TheNewGrid, who described what happened at a stop sign: “I looked at the car coming to the stop sign figured they would stop, my car went, then came to a stop mid intersection as they flew by. Had I been manually driving this would have resulted in a crash.”
The sequence is the notable part. FSD had already started crossing when the other driver ran the stop sign. Instead of pressing on, the car braked hard in the middle of the intersection and let the crossing vehicle pass in front of it. By the owner’s own account, they had made the same assumption the software initially made, that the other car would stop, and would not have corrected in time.
FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 6, 2026
The clip is the latest in a run of safety posts Tesla has amplified over the past several days. On Saturday, the company shared a video from Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim, who sold his Bentley for a Model Y and said he was buying Teslas with FSD for 10 of his employees. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla AI, followed up by writing that Tesla self-driving “reacts to other people cutting into your path with super-human response times.” On Monday, a Cybertruck owner posted footage of FSD moving across three lanes from a red light to clear a path for an ambulance approaching from behind.
This recent clip also lands a few weeks after Tesla began shipping Automatic Collision Evasion with FSD v14.3.9, a feature that can activate FSD on the driver’s behalf when a frontal collision is imminent or the driver appears distracted. Elluswamy said in September that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” are coming with v15, the release Tesla has tied to round the clock Robotaxi operation.
The safety messaging matters beyond social media. Tesla has said FSD Supervised was 4.1 times less likely to crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on European roads, and it has been putting those figures in front of regulators. Eight EU countries have now approved FSD Supervised, with Croatia the most recent, but the EU’s bloc-wide vote originally set for October 6 has been pushed to December at the earliest.
FSD Supervised is still a Level 2 system, and the driver remains responsible at all times. Even heavy users find reasons to step in. Teslarati’s Joey Klender, who uses FSD for about 76 percent of his driving, laid out five recurring issues on Tuesday that still prompt him to intervene. Clips like this one show the other column of that ledger: moments where the software caught a mistake a human was about to make.
Energy
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can now do what only Cybertruck could
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can power your home with Powerwall 3 during outages.
Tesla has turned its two top sellers into backup batteries for the house.
Tesla Energy announced on Tuesday that Powershare Home Backup is now available for new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles paired with a Powerwall 3, saying the car can “extend your home backup by over 2 days.” Minutes later, Tesla’s main account quoted the post with a broader pitch: “With Powerwall 3, every Tesla can now serve as your home’s backup battery.”
Until this week, the Cybertruck was the only Tesla that could send power back into a home, and that capability only began working alongside Powerwall 3 last month, after years of ambitious targets.
Tesla’s updated Powershare page says every Model 3 and Model Y ordered in the U.S. or Puerto Rico on or after October 1, 2026 can use the feature. Some, but not all, earlier cars also qualify. Owners can check on the touchscreen under Software, then Additional Vehicle Information, where a capable car shows “Powershare Support: Enabled.” As Electrek reported, bidirectional power on the two cars runs through an inverter Tesla calls PCS2 Lite, and the company has not said when that part entered production on each trim.
The home side is simpler. A house that already has a Powerwall 3 and either a Wall Connector 3 or Universal Wall Connector needs no additional equipment, and Tesla says compatibility is enabled through a software update. When the grid drops, the Powerwall and the car work together, with up to 11.52 kW of continuous power available. Tesla’s “over two days” estimate assumes a home using 30 kWh per day and a car starting at a 90 percent charge. Standard trims are rated for up to two days, while the Cybertruck adds more than three.
There are limits. Powerwall 2 and Powerwall+ support is listed as “coming soon.” Model S and Model X are not included, and Grid Support, the program that lets Cybertruck owners in Texas send power back to the grid during demand spikes for bill credits, is not available for Model 3 or Model Y.
The rollout also lines up with something Elon Musk said more than three years ago. At Tesla’s March 2023 Investor Day, Musk said, “I don’t think very many people are going to want to use bidirectional charging, unless you have a Powerwall.” Tesla has now shipped the feature for its volume cars with exactly that requirement attached.
The Powerwall pairing was the hard part on Cybertruck. Tesla told owners in December 2025 that Powershare with Powerwall had been pushed to mid 2026, and lead engineer Wes Morrill explained that two devices capable of forming a home’s grid have to negotiate which one leads during an outage, across multiple generations of hardware. With that work done for the truck, Tesla was able to extend it to the Model 3 and Model Y within a month.
Ford and GM have offered home backup from their EVs for several years, but both require a separate inverter and backup hardware. Tesla’s version leans on equipment many Powerwall 3 owners already have on the wall. Powershare for the two cars also ships as part of software update 2026.38.3, the same release that began delivering Halloween Mode on Tuesday.
Trump to hand Elon Musk a top honor that traces back to JFK
Tesla FSD changed its mind mid-intersection, and it may have saved a life
