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SpaceX Starship launch pad upgraded as Elon Musk reveals rocket production milestone
SpaceX has begun to upgrade its South Texas Starship launch pad in anticipation of the completion of the next full-scale rocket prototype, photos of which CEO Elon Musk revealed just hours ago.
Working in parallel with efforts to repair damage caused by Starship serial number 1’s (SN1) violent February 28th test failure, SpaceX has managed to build, complete, and test an entirely separate ‘test tank’ and complete fabrication of a second full-scale Starship in a handful of weeks. Flexing the growing capabilities of the impressive Boca Chica, Texas Starship factory SpaceX has sprung up in just three months, the company is working around the clock to build not just one – but several – Starship prototypes simultaneously.
A successful March 9th tank test designed to prove a new thrust structure design managed to do just that less than two weeks after the same faulty part brought about Starship SN1’s demise. In the two weeks since that its test completion, SpaceX has been busy welding, stacking, welding, and stacking several separate sections of the next Starship prototype, known as SN3. Potentially a matter of days away from structural completion, focus has recently shifted to the launch pad the ship will be tested at. In the last few days, SpaceX technicians have begun to install a bizarre, new structural element on the mount Starship SN3 will be secured on top of, hinting at the goals of the rocket’s first test campaign.
Squeezing in alongside efforts to repair the propellant lines that run into the launch mount, upgrades began on March 24th as a SpaceX team worked to install what looked like an incredibly sturdy tripod (with four ‘legs’, of course). Thanks to familiar testing done with SpaceX’s most recent Starship tank prototype, the purpose of the launch mount’s newest appendage quickly became clear.
During the Starship SN2 tank’s thrust structure (‘thrust puck’, per Elon Musk) test campaign, SpaceX debuted the concurrent use of a beefy hydraulic jack to simulate the forces a Raptor engine static might produce. Capable of producing upwards of 200 metric tons (440,000 lbf) of thrust at full power, SpaceX will likely begin Starship static fire tests with a single Raptor engine. As soon as a Starship prototype completes one or several single-engine test fires, the plan is to install three sea level-optimized Raptor engines and repeat static fire tests.
Before that triple-engine static fire milestone, a first for the cutting-edge Raptor engine, SpaceX needs to verify that Starship’s thrust structure can stand up to the ~600 tons (~1.3M lbf) of force it will be subjected to during such a test. Sitting on a much smaller stand, Starship SN2 used a single hydraulic jack and temporary stand to simulate a single engine’s thrust. Starship SN3, sitting much higher above the ground, will need three jacks to simulate three Raptors.
As such, it looks likely that Starship SN3’s first cryogenic tank proof test – filling the vehicle with inert liquid nitrogen – will coincide with a second dedicated stress test of a Starship thrust structure, hopefully proving itself capable of surviving the force of three Raptor engines at full thrust. While orbital-class Starships will need three more vacuum-optimized Raptor engines, three sea-level engines are all SpaceX needs to begin flight tests with suborbital prototypes.
Based on an unofficial analysis of existing photos, it appears that every single major structural piece of Starship SN3 – excluding legs and fins – is nearing completion, even including the ship’s shiny nosecone. Likely to head to the launch pad for its first tests as soon as the tank section alone has been completed, just one stacking event remains before said tank section reaches its full height. Right now, both of those parts have been moved to a dedicated Vehicle/Vertical Assembly Building (VAB) and are probably no more than a day or two away from being joined*. Perhaps just a day or two after that milestone, SpaceX will likely transport the massive rocket to the launch pad to begin preparing for its first proof tests.
*Around 3am local time, SpaceX technicians stacked Starship SN3’s two main segments, completing its tank and engine section.
Elon Musk
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is now the centerpiece of the company’s newly revised Referral Program, which launched on October 29.
Instead of referring people to purchase vehicles and the referrer receiving $250 in Tesla Credit, the new program now incentivizes Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
If a Tesla owner is on an FSD trial and uses a referral code to subscribe to Full Self-Driving, the person whose Referral Link was used will receive one month of FSD (Supervised). Their code can be utilized 12 times per year, with January 1 marking the reset date.
Realistically, this means that if your Referral Code is used by 12 Tesla owners on an FSD trial, you will receive a full year of FSD for free.
🚨 Here is Tesla’s new Referral Program for Full Self-Driving (Supervised):
When someone subscribes to FSD using your link, you’ll get a month free. Up to a year of FSD is available to you for free!
If you’d like to use my link: https://t.co/g00IX9OCE3 https://t.co/GFBzEO2jjS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The previous program made it pretty difficult to get referrals; buying a vehicle is obviously a much larger financial strain than subscribing to Full Self-Driving for a month.
Of course, the previous Referral Program also offered a tangible benefit: $250 in credits you could use on Service, Supercharging, or anything in the Tesla Shop. It truly could pay for someone’s travel for a year. It recently bought me a new backpack and a T-shirt.
However, this new program is much more attainable for those who do not have a massive online presence of a slew of friends in the Tesla community who will use the code and max out subscriptions for vehicle purchases.
Woke up to maxed out Referrals! Thank you guys, that’s awesome!
Share your referral link below so others can use it! https://t.co/kesbwTcoTV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The Full Self-Driving suite will now be the keystone of the Referral Program, which makes it more inclusive and more fun for everyone with an awesome benefit.
It also gives the impression that Tesla is truly focused on FSD subscriptions, something that saw a tremendous increase in volume in Q3, as 75 percent of deliveries for the quarter came with an FSD subscription attached.
Full Self-Driving data is so instrumental to the suite’s improvement that this kind of program benefits Tesla as much as it does the consumer.
Elon Musk
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
Tesla’s quiet mode reaches Model Y Robotaxis, blacking out the screen for riders wanting rest.
Tesla’s quiet mode, the setting that blacks out the screen for riders who want to rest, has moved beyond the Cybercab. A video posted Thursday by Spencer (@scotsrule08) shows the feature running in a Model Y Robotaxi on a night ride that appears to be in Dallas.
New quiet mode now on @Robotaxi https://t.co/2cM2eM9NeN — Spencer (@scotsrule08) October 29, 2026
The rider taps a small crescent moon icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. The map, media player, app shortcuts and Grok prompt disappear, leaving a dark display with “Arriving soon,” the destination and a line reading “Tap display to exit quiet mode.” Controls a passenger may still need, including Pull Over, cabin temperature, volume and Support, stay visible. One tap anywhere brings the full map back.
Quiet mode first showed up in the Cybercab last week, which Teslarati reported alongside a new rear camera view. Tesla has been trimming cabin noise in other ways too. On October 25, Spencer reported that Robotaxi turn signals now chime for the first four blinks and then go silent. Tesla has not published release notes for either change.
Elon Musk has been pitching this use for more than a decade. In October 2014, he said that “maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,”
By 2017 he was setting a higher bar. Speaking at TED, Musk said the hard part was not making self-driving work 99.9 percent of the time, “because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.”
Owners asked for something similar in their own cars. In December 2019, a Tesla owner requested a Nap Mode that would keep the climate running and wake the occupant with an alarm, and Musk answered “Ok,” as Teslarati covered at the time.
The line returned when the Cybercab was unveiled at the We, Robot event in October 2024. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. On Tesla’s first quarter earnings call in April 2025, he called it the deciding measure: “The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year,”
Tesla has run driverless Model Y rides in Dallas and Houston since April, so a passenger dozing off on the way home is now a realistic use of the button. Tesla is also offering new riders a free first trip in both cities, according to an in-app screen shared by tracker Ethan McKanna, and said on its third quarter call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas next month.
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Tesla Full Self-Driving becomes main pillar of new Referral Program
