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SpaceX begins Starship launch mount installation at historic Pad 39A in Florida
At the same time as SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas team is working around the clock to prepare Starship Mk1 for several major tests, the company is building a second dedicated Starship launch complex at Pad 39A and as of November 4th, that construction effort has reached a symbolic milestone.
According to photos taken by local resident and famed rocket and ship photographer Julia Bergeron on a bus tour of Kennedy Space Center (KSC), SpaceX has officially begun to install a large steel structure at Launch Complex 39A, a pad the company has leased from NASA since 2014. Known as a launch mount, the massive structure will one day support SpaceX’s first East Coast Starship and Super Heavy static fires and test flights.
At SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas Starship facilities, the company has already made a huge amount of progress fabricating and outfitting a brand new launch mount that will soon support Starship Mk1’s first propellant loading, static fire, and flight tests. The spartan steel structure looks different from anything SpaceX has built in the past for Falcon 9 and is equally unrecognizable alongside the renders of a finished-product launch pad included in an updated Starship launch video.
What is undeniable, nevertheless, is the speed with which technicians have taken the Texas launch mount from a group of unconnected, partially-finished parts to a nearly complete structure with the business half of Starship Mk1 installed on top. SpaceX workers have built the mount, completed a large amount of plumbing to connect it to nearby liquid oxygen, methane, nitrogen, and helium reserves, and installed Starship on the mount in less than two months. The final integration of different prefabricated pieces began barely a month before Starship was moved to the pad, as pictured below.
Two pads, two approaches
Although Boca Chica’s launch mount is quite large, based on Julia’s photos of Pad 39A, Florida’s nascent launch mount is going to be significantly bigger. The section that SpaceX began installing in the first days of November appears already be much taller than the mount in Texas, and it also looks more like a rectangular corner than anything resembling part of Boca Chica’s hexagonal structure.
At the same time, the apparent rectangular corner being worked on in Florida would be a much better fit for the partially-enclosed launch mount structure shown in SpaceX’s official 2019 Starship launch video.
This is all to say that it looks like SpaceX is taking significantly different approaches with its two prospective Starship launch sites, which should come as no surprise in the context of the Starship program. SpaceX is already competitively building multiple Starship prototypes at two separate facilities in Boca Chica, Texas and Cocoa, Florida, a competition that has already produced visible differences between Mk1 and Mk2 prototypes. There’s a good chance that SpaceX intends to preserve that competitive atmosphere with Starship’s launch facilities, not just the rocket itself.
Additionally, it’s clear that Texas and Florida currently serve very different roles in the actual testing of Starship prototypes. Boca Chica has been active in that regard for more than half a year, ranging from the first Starhopper static fire in April to Starhopper’s 150-meter test flight in August. Florida has been almost entirely focused on iterating the build process itself and has already prefabricated nearly two dozen single-weld steel rings that will soon become Starship Mk4.
A step further, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made it clear that he is pushing for Starship’s first orbital launch to occur in the first half of 2020, an incredibly ambitious target given that the first Super Heavy booster prototype has yet to begin fabrication or assembly of any kind. Regardless, with that ambitious target in mind, SpaceX still needs to try to build a launch facility capable of standing up to a vehicle more powerful than Saturn V unfathomably quickly.
Head in the clouds
More likely than not, SpaceX’s Pad 39A Starship facilities will (attempt to) be that launch facility. An August 2019 environmental impact statement revealed that SpaceX would avoid Pad 39A’s massive flame trench and instead build a separate water-cooled thrust diverter, a technology SpaceX is extremely familiar with.
The diverter will likely have to be larger than anything SpaceX has ever attempted to build and will take a significant amount of time and money to fabricate, but the approach could potentially allow SpaceX to build Super Heavy-rated launch facilities from scratch in just 6-12 months. Put simply, however, SpaceX is not going to want to build a Starship-sized thrust diverter and launch mount in Florida if it will almost immediately have to build a second, larger replacement big enough for orbital launch attempts with Super Heavy.
All things considered, it’s thus reasonably likely that SpaceX’s first draft of Florida Starship launch facilities will immediately jump to something sized for Super Heavy static fires and launches, even if that means it will take much longer to complete. If the pace of launch pad development in Boca Chica is anything to go by, it’s entirely possible that SpaceX will go from breaking ground at Pad 39A (mid-September 2019) to a more or less complete Starship-Super Heavy launch mount in roughly half a year.
Even if it takes more than a year to build, SpaceX could still be ready to attempt Starship’s first orbital launch well before the end of 2020.
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Tesla is going to let you guide Full Self-Driving with Grok in 3 months, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
The response from Musk, which revealed Tesla plans to allow drivers to effectively control the car and its navigation more explicitly using Grok, puts the feature for about September.
A Tesla owner said that Full Self-Driving is great, but owners should be able to “converse with Grok like we can with an Uber driver.” She then used examples like, “Grok, turn right here,” and “Drop us off right here, we’ll walk due to traffic,” and finally,” Drop at entrance first, then park far away.”
Coincidentally, the final piece of dialogue would also mean features like Banish are potentially on the way soon.
This functionality will be there in about 3 months or so
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 18, 2026
Banish is also referred to as “Reverse Summon,” and would enable the car to self-park while dropping occupants off at their destination.
This would be a great way to improve the overall experience while supervising FSD. Navigation is already a major painpoint that many owners complain about. Manual overrides when a maneuver is requested or canceled (like using the turn signal stalk to override a navigation route), do not always work.
The feature could be especially useful in street parking scenarios in a city, where spots are sometimes tough to come by. Many of us who grab dinner in a more populated area will park a street or two over from wherever we’re going, because sometimes you know that’s the best you will get. If a driver using FSD could say, “Hey Grok, turn right here on Queen St. and park in that open spot on the right,” it could save a lot of confusion FSD might have on its own.
Musk teased that a similar feature was “coming” back in February:
Tesla Full Self-Driving set to get an awesome new feature, Elon Musk says
It is certainly surprising that Tesla is doing it at this point. The company’s more recent moves have been more evident of taking control and inputs away from humans and putting them in the AI’s hands more frequently. The biggest example of this was taking away Max Speed in AI4 cars, giving us Speed Profiles, and not having any input on the fastest speed the car will travel.
Of course, giving navigation preferences to Grok is availble already in Teslas, but not at the drop of a hat. Instead, you can suggest a certain route at the beginning of your drive.
Here’s an example of that from December:
🚨🏈 I am taking my parents and Fiancee to the @Ravens game next weekend and asked @Grok to help me route my @Tesla through a specific neighborhood to reach the correct Lot we will park in.
This is a great example of the new @grok nav integration with the Tesla Holiday Update: pic.twitter.com/rPp4I7q8Yv
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) December 13, 2025
Finally, the original post that Musk responded to mentioned a parking preference after dropping off the occupants, which describes the Banish feature that Tesla has teased for years.
We’re not sure if Musk was responding more to the ability to guide the car with Grok, or whether he also was including Banish in the three-month prediction timeframe.
A close-up image of a Cybercab engineering vehicle in Peabody, Massachusetts, reveals a compact triangular side repeater camera housing equipped with an integrated washer mechanism.
This seemingly small hardware addition could prove to be one of the most critical components for achieving reliable, unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) — not just for the dedicated Robotaxi but potentially for existing AI4-equipped vehicles as well.
The washer system’s importance cannot be overstated in Tesla’s vision-only autonomy approach. Cameras are the sole sensory input for the neural networks powering FSD, constantly interpreting the environment for safe navigation. In real-world conditions, however, lenses quickly accumulate rain, snow, mud, dust, or road spray.
Many of us Tesla owners, especially those who deal with any sort of winter weather at all, know the all-too-common alert that pops up when cameras are obstructed:
Even brief obstructions can drop perception confidence, trigger safety disengagements, or force the vehicle to pull over, although these are relatively rare. Instead, most of the time, the camera will need a wipe from the owner next time they stop the car.
But unlike human drivers who can manually clear their view, a Robotaxi operating 24/7 without a steering wheel or mirrors must maintain pristine vision autonomously. The Cybercab’s side repeater washer delivers targeted cleaning bursts precisely where needed for merging, lane changes, and blind-spot monitoring — functions that demand uninterrupted visibility from the external cameras:
And this is how the side camera and washer look like on a Cybercab. This is from an Engineering vehicle in Peabody MA. pic.twitter.com/Re8VknpmLM
— Tobias Goebel (Unsupervised) (@tpgoebel) June 17, 2026
This hardware directly tackles a known pain point in current FSD deployments. Owners frequently report camera-related alerts during inclement weather, which is understandable, but needs to be solved for a true autonomous experience.
For a production Robotaxi fleet aiming for high utilization and minimal downtime, robust washer systems represent a foundational reliability upgrade; essentially, they’re a must-have. Early sightings suggest the design may extend to rear cameras as well, creating a comprehensive cleaning architecture that keeps the entire vision suite operational in harsh environments.
Without it, even the most advanced neural nets struggle when their “eyes” are compromised.
What Does This Mean for AI4 Cars?
This Cybercab detail raises timely questions for AI4 cars already on the road. While Hardware 4 delivers superior compute and camera resolution compared to earlier versions, production models typically lack dedicated side and rear washers. Tesla has included them on Model Y robotaxis that it is using in the fleet:
Tesla Robotaxi has a highly-requested hardware feature not available on typical Model Ys
As Tesla refines unsupervised FSD for broader release, the gap in environmental resilience becomes evident. Software improvements can help mitigate issues, but they cannot fully replace physical cleaning in heavy rain or muddy conditions. Analysts and owners increasingly speculate that AI4 vehicles may eventually require similar washer retrofits — or a future AI4.5 variant — to match the Cybercab’s all-weather readiness and support the same level of autonomy.
As testing progresses, the Cybercab’s washer mechanism highlights Tesla’s pragmatic focus on real-world robustness. It may well become the hardware piece that determines how quickly and reliably FSD scales from prototypes to everyday vehicles.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk just upped his Tesla stake further fueling SpaceX merger conversation
Elon Musk just collected a $116 billion Tesla payday and the timing is eye-opening
Elon Musk quietly collected one of the largest single-transaction paydays in corporate history on Monday. A Form 4 filed with the SEC on June 17, 2026 disclosed that Musk exercised 303,960,630 Tesla stock options from his 2018 compensation package, with the transaction dated June 16. No shares were sold on the open market.
The numbers are straightforward but striking. Musk exercised the options at a split-adjusted strike price of $23.34, with Tesla closing at $404.66 that day, putting the spread at $381.32 per share and generating roughly $115.9 billion in paper gains in a single transaction. To cover the exercise cost, Tesla withheld 17,531,857 shares through a net share settlement, meaning Musk paid nothing out of pocket.
For perspective, in 2018, Elon Musk’s award was originally approved by Tesla shareholders on March 21, 2018, and structured entirely around performance milestones that many analysts at the time called unreachable. Every tranche eventually vested. The original grant covered 20,264,042 shares at $350.02, which after Tesla’s 5-for-1 split in 2020 and 3-for-1 split in 2022 adjusted to 303,960,630 shares at $23.34. A Delaware court rescinded the award in January 2024, ruling the board was conflicted. As Teslarati reported, Tesla shareholders voted to ratify the package anyway in June 2024 by a wide margin. The Delaware Supreme Court reversed the decision in December 2025, finding full cancellation too extreme, and Tesla’s board signed an Implementation Agreement on April 21, 2026 to formally deliver the shares.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
The timing and structure of the Form 4 filing carries more weight than a routine stock option exercise typically would. Musk exercised his 2018 Tesla award on June 16, a week into SpaceX completing its IPO and trading publicly, and giving SpaceX a public market valuation and share currency for the first time in the company’s history. A stock-for-stock merger between two companies requires the acquiring entity to have tradeable shares it can offer to the target’s shareholders, and SpaceX now has exactly that. At the same time, Musk just increased his direct Tesla voting power to approximately 20%, giving him greater influence over any shareholder vote that a merger would require. The restricted shares he received cannot be sold until 2033, which removes any near-term incentive to cash out and instead positions this stake as long-term structural collateral in a deal. Additionally, Musk’s two companies are already deeply intertwined through shared semiconductor fabrication at their joint TERAFAB facility in Austin, cross-company supply chain transactions, and Tesla’s $2 billion investment in xAI prior to the SpaceX-xAI merger.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has publicly placed the odds of a Tesla and SpaceX combination at 80% to 90% by early 2027. The Implementation Agreement that made Monday’s exercise possible was signed on April 21, 2026, roughly two months before the SpaceX IPO closed. That sequencing, building Musk’s Tesla ownership to its highest point ever immediately before SpaceX gains the public currency needed to acquire it, is either an extraordinary coincidence or a carefully staged foundation for the largest corporate merger in history.
Tesla teases greater Grok FSD integration and ‘Banish’ feature ‘in about 3 months’
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
