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SpaceX fits Starship prototype with tank bulkheads as hop test pad progresses

Starhopper and SpaceX's spartan assembly facilities are pictured here, showing the inside of the aft section and a completed tank dome. (Austin Barnard)

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SpaceX workers have begun installing fuel and oxidizer tank bulkheads inside the first BFS/Starship prototype at the same time as the vehicle’s nearby ‘launch’ facility continues to sprout important infrastructure and slowly morph from a giant pile of dirt into something capable of supporting rocket hop tests.

Several observable characteristics of this project still do not immediately make sense but whatever the direction SpaceX is moving in, engineers and technicians are working around the clock to ensure that progress is steady.

Moreso than any other single part, the most confusing aspect of Starhopper has to be the apparent condition of its steel tank domes, distinctly covered with a patina of impurities like rust, dirt, dust, and grime. For a water tower or other miscellaneous storage tank, this would be completely acceptable. For aerospace-grade propellant tanks that will have to safely store dozens or even hundreds of tons of supercool liquid methane and oxygen to feed ultra-high-performance Raptor engines, the purity of ingested propellant and thus the cleanliness of the tanks holding it is going to be of paramount importance.

To use an example that applies to the rockets SpaceX currently flies, Falcon 9’s first and second stages are almost always drained and cleaned before and after their first static fire tests in McGregor, Texas to ensure that no unintended debris is ingested by Merlin turbopumps. This is necessary because Falcon rockets are currently built in an extremely large hangar that simply cannot feasibly be kept to cleanroom conditions, while SpaceX’s garment requirements are less strict than some old-guard aerospace companies, typically letting workers wear normal clothes (albeit with hairnets/beardnets) while working inside Falcon 9 tanks and structures. The improved work conditions and worker comfort comes at the cost of frequent tank cleaning.

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While SpaceX clearly has a great deal of experience with nontraditional methods of rocket production, the Hawthorne assembly line might be the cleanest cleanroom on Earth compared to Starhopper’s rusty tank domes and fully-outdoors assembly. Even odder is the apparent fact that SpaceX is actually installing (and maybe even welding) those tank domes without any cleaning at all, indicating that they either look far worse than they actually are, are not a real problem for Raptor or cryogenic propellant tanks, or will be scoured only after installation. Regardless, SpaceX is keeping close followers and those familiar with aerospace on the tips of their toes as Starhopper continues to be worked on.

(Launch) pad progress

Roughly one mile to the east of Starhopper’s assembly roost, SpaceX employees and contractors have been working to complete earthmoving and start outfitting a prospective Starhopper prototype launch pad with a stable concrete base and all the infrastructure needed to support a complex rocket and its propellant, electricity, and heat-resistant surface needs. However, despite recent statements from executives like CEO Elon Musk and COO/President Gwynne Shotwell, the ‘facility’ appears to be many, many months away from anything reminiscent of an actual launch pad like the three SpaceX currently operates in California and Florida.

Instead, it seems that the first BFR-related launch facility will be more of a Spartan, minimalist slab of concrete, a healthy berm, and a handful of propellant tanks and heat exchangers, much like the ‘pad’ that supported Falcon 9’s Grasshopper and F9R hoppers. Over the last few days, the pad construction crew has installed the first of those propellant tanks and heat exchangers and continue to refine the overall layout of the site, still primarily made of compacted dirt. Given the potential simplicity of a Grasshopper-style launch and landing pad, the facility could be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months away from completion.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years

Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.

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Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.

In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.

The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.

Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.

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This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.

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OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership

OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.

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OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.

In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.

That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.

Elon Musk breaks silence on OpenAI trial decision

SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.

Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.

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Elon Musk admits he was ‘clearly wrong’ about Anthropic

Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.

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Tesla Theater might be getting plenty more streaming platforms

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Credit: YouTube/Tesla Theater

The in-car Tesla Theater is among the most unique features available within the cars. When charging, parked, camping, or just hanging out, vehicle occupants can access a variety of streaming platforms on the large center screen, helping keep them entertained during downtime.

However, the Theater might be getting plenty more streaming platforms, something that owners have requested for some time.

Tesla owners recently discovered that visiting Apple TV in the vehicle browser can launch a fullscreen interface that looks and behaves like a dedicated application rather than an ordinary webpage:

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The experience drops the usual address bar and browser chrome, presenting catalogs, continue watching rows, and playback controls in the same window Tesla Theater already uses for its listed services. Independent testers soon found similar treatment for HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, Disney+, and Prime Video when those sites are opened from the car browser.

This shift is a plausible early signal that Tesla is widening Theater support without a formal software note. Theater has long been a set of web views rather than native applications, so recognizing extra domains and stripping the browser frame is a small server-side change that can expand the catalog quickly.

Owners still lack permanent Theater icons for the newly recognized services, and video remains limited to Park, yet the smoother launch is a meaningful step toward a broader lounge while charging.

Tesla Theater arrived with software version 10 in September 2019. The first video services were Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu, available only while parked and originally tied to WiFi. Spotify arrived in the same era as music rather than Theater video. Disney+ joined officially in July 2021 with the 2021.24 update, giving owners another major catalog on the center screen. Twitch and TikTok later appeared among the default Theater tiles, and Tesla Tutorials remained a persistent educational tile.

Not every addition stayed put. In December 2023, a Holiday software build removed the Disney+ tile for many United States owners after a public dispute involving advertising on X. Hulu stayed visible even though Disney owned it. Visiting disneyplus.com in the browser often restored the tile, which suggested the removal was a recognition list change rather than a complete block. Owners have also reported occasional blank Theater grids after updates, usually fixed by language toggles, resets, or later firmware.

Tesla axes Disney+ from vehicles with Musk-Iger rivalry, but there’s a workaround

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Code archives from 2024 listed many unused source names, including Apple TV and Prime Video, that never became official icons, which now looks like groundwork for the current fullscreen browser behavior.

Now that this hint toward an expanded Theater experience has been recognized, Tesla could follow through with these additional shortcuts as a sign that more streaming platforms are available in Teslas than ever before.

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