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SpaceX’s Starship rocket just took a big leap towards orbit with latest test success
A full-scale Starship rocket has passed a critical test for the first time ever, strongly suggesting that the next-generation launch vehicle could be much closer to orbital readiness than most would imagine.
To be clear, a huge amount of work remains before Starship can be deemed anywhere close to its first orbital flight tests, not the least of which is the fabrication and assembly of the first massive Super Heavy booster(s). However, after Starship SN4’s latest successful May 9th test, it’s hard to see any apparent showstoppers that can’t be handled with a combination of fairly routine testing and iterative progress, as well as time and money. There is certainly room for improvement throughout the program but SpaceX has effectively demonstrated that the biggest practical concerns about its approach to Starship are moot.
Captured live on May 9th and 10th by local resident and photographer Mary (bocachicagal) with the help of NASASpaceflight.com, SpaceX worked for about two days to reconfigure its fourth full-scale Starship prototype after two successful Raptor engine static fires and prepare it for a different kind of test. That work mainly involved removing said Raptor and replacing it with a hydraulic ram stand used to simulate the thrust of 1-3 engines without actually needing to perform a static fire test, further allowing SpaceX to simulate much longer engine operations than its spartan test pad could survive. Around 9pm CDT on May 9th (02:00 UTC, May 10), Starship SN4’s latest trial began.
Known as a cryogenic pressure and load test, it differed from a prior “cryo proof test” completed on April 26th, in which Starship was fully loaded with liquid nitrogen (more than twice as cold as dry ice), pressurized to a bit less than 5 bar (~70 psi), and stressed with hydraulic rams. About a week later, after installing a Raptor engine on a full-scale Starship prototype for the first time ever, Starship SN4 fired up said engine on May 5th – another historic first for the next-generation launch vehicle. 30 hours later, SpaceX performed another wet dress rehearsal (WDR) with liquid methane and oxygen and fired up Starship’s Raptor engine again.
After about 48 hours of reconfiguration, SpaceX moved on to a much more serious cryogenic test. As noted by CEO Elon Musk, the 4.9 bar the rocket previously reached was accepted as enough to perform a Raptor static fire test and possibly enough for a low-stress, low-altitude flight test to ~150m (500 ft). For orbital flight, however, Starship needs to withstand a minimum of 6 bar (~90 psi), while 8.5 bar (125 psi) is preferable to give the rocket the 1.4x safety factor optimal for human spaceflight.
This time, SpaceX – having successfully gathered data from two static fire tests and several wet dress rehearsals – was ready to risk Starship SN4 and pressurized it all the way to 7.5 bar (~110 psi). While ~12% shy of minimum human spaceflight standards, Starship SN4 successfully reached and maintained 7.5 bar while the ship stressed with hydraulic rams to simulate the thrust of three Raptor engines, all of which it survived fully intact. What 7.5 bar does offer, however, is a 1.25x safety factor – on the higher end of aerospace industry standards for uncrewed orbital spaceflight (i.e. cargo/satellite launches).
Ready for orbit?
Technically, this means that – pending much additional testing and verification with different serial prototypes and (likely) higher pressures – Starship’s stainless steel structure is effectively qualified for uncrewed orbital launches. Of course, reality is much more complex. To actually perform and survive orbital flights, SpaceX will first need to build and similarly qualify the first Super Heavy boosters and ensure that those unprecedentedly large rockets can survive and sustain ~20-30 Raptor engines firing simultaneously.
Aside from Super Heavy, it’s unknown if SpaceX has begun testing Raptor engines at the durations they will need to burn to booster Starships into orbit (TBD; likely 5-10 minutes of continuous operation). Along those lines, SpaceX also needs to build, test, and qualify Raptor’s vacuum-optimized sibling to complement the sea level version’s smaller, less-efficient nozzle. Still, Musk has already revealed that RaptorVac could be a matter of weeks from its first static fire and rocket engine development – while incredibly challenging – is more of a known quantity for SpaceX.
Perhaps the most important unknown is whether SpaceX’s recent May 2020 WDRs and static fires have used autogenous pressurization, a more efficient method of pressurizing rockets by using hot gas generated by their own engines. It’s extremely likely that SpaceX has been autogenously pressurizing Starship SN4 for its recent tests, but if that weren’t the case, it would be a big source of schedule uncertainty without significant redesign work.
Ultimately, SpaceX appears to have proven that orbital-class rockets can be built cheaply out of commodified steel in extraordinarily spartan production facilities. Many, many challenges remain but the biggest uncertainty and hurdle facing SpaceX’s Starship program and ambitions is well on its way to being fully put to rest.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Grok Bot is picking up the phone now, and the first calls are wild
Elon Musk wants Grok Bot users making phone calls, and one Comcast call saved $500.
Elon Musk is pushing Grok Bot users toward a feature that, until this week, few of them could actually use. “Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls!” Musk wrote on X Tuesday afternoon, quoting a demo from Sawyer Merritt that included audio from a live call.
Musk first announced calling on October 25, writing that the agent could “call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation.” There were no release notes at the time, and the feature only appeared in preview builds. That changed on Tuesday, when creator Peter Yang said all Grok Bot users should now be able to call US businesses. Musk reposted his demo.
Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2026
Yang’s call shows how far the feature goes. In his video, his bot dialed Comcast, worked through the phone menu, deflected small talk about the weather by saying it does not “have eyes on the sky,” turned down three upsells and used a cheaper fiber offer from competitor Sonic as leverage. His bill dropped from $84 to $45 per month on a faster plan, a savings of nearly $500 a year. The call ran about 25 minutes, and the bot paused to get Yang’s approval before accepting the final terms.
Merritt described what the user sees: a live transcript runs during the call, and when the business asks for something the bot does not know, an answer box pops up in the chat. The user types a reply and Grok relays it to the person on the line. Other users posted results Tuesday, including a $100 gift card recovered from Verizon Fios after a 51 minute call and a same day pediatric appointment, which Musk also shared. Not every call worked. One user said a rep refused to cancel a subscription once it was clear an AI was on the phone.
Grok @Bot can now call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 25, 2026
The Grok Bot terms require every call to identify itself as a virtual assistant calling on the user’s behalf and warn that calls may be recorded. Marketing, mass calling and impersonation are prohibited, and calling currently works only with US numbers.
The timing stands out. Days ago, users began hitting their weekly limits early, and Musk said the cost of serving Grok Bot was “unsustainably high relative to revenue,” as Teslarati reported. A call that spends most of its 25 or 50 minutes on hold is the kind of long running task that eats into usage, and SpaceXSI has not said how calls count against the weekly pool. Grok Bot is included from the $30 Premium tier of The X Subscription upward.
For Tesla owners, the agent has been in their cars since September 22 and is enabled across every Cybercab and Model Y Robotaxi. Musk has already pitched it for phone chores like scrubbing your number from spam call lists. Neither Tesla nor SpaceXSI has confirmed whether a bot can place one of these calls on request from inside the vehicle.
Tesla Full Self-Driving, which is now referred to in Europe as “Tesla Assisted Driving” (TAD), is getting hit with a handful of new changes at the hands of the Netherlands’ vehicle authority, the RDW (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer).
On 3 November, the RDW announced that it has assessed and approved a set of changes to Tesla’s FSD Supervised driver-assistance system. The updates introduce the official European name TAD and impose stricter controls on the system’s speed behaviour.
The new name will appear on the in-car display, in the owner’s manual, and in all other driver-facing information. The change applies to Tesla models equipped with Tesla Assisted Driving and hardware version 4.0 (HW4) or later.
Importantly, the RDW stressed that the name change does not alter the system’s fundamental operation: it remains a supervised driver-assistance feature that supports the driver in performing driving tasks. The driver stays fully responsible for controlling the vehicle at all times.
Beyond the rebranding, the most significant functional adjustments concern speed settings. Drivers will still be able to set a speed margin, a percentage by which the system may exceed the applicable speed limit when necessary for safety or traffic flow. However, the maximum allowable margin has been reduced from +50% to a maximum of +10%.
In addition, every time the vehicle is started, the speed-margin setting will default to 0% deviation, and other speed-related functions will be disabled by default. These changes will be delivered through an over-the-air (OTA) software update from Tesla.
Tesla requested the RDW’s review of these “minor changes.” After evaluating how the modifications were implemented and how the system behaves, the authority found no adverse or unintended effects on the system’s operation or the vehicle’s driving behaviour. Consequently, the existing type approval remains valid under the same conditions and for the same use; no amendment or extension of the approval is required.
The RDW has informed the nine EU member states that have already accepted its type approval—Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia—about the updates. Broader EU-wide approval is still under discussion within the European Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV). Those proceedings remain confidential, and the RDW has declined to comment on them.
The approved changes align with earlier discussions involving German authorities, which had advocated both for clearer naming to avoid misleading drivers and for a tighter speed offset.
By formally incorporating these adjustments while leaving the core type approval intact, the RDW has cleared the way for Tesla to roll out the updated TAD software via OTA to eligible vehicles in the Netherlands and the other countries that recognise the Dutch approval. The system continues to function strictly as supervised driver assistance, with the human driver remaining the responsible party.
Tesla has released a fresh point-of-view video capturing the next-generation Roadster’s headline stunt from its October 15 unveiling, giving fans a visceral look at the car as it jumps and rotates over its siblings within the company’s vehicle lineup.
Tesla posted the video on X today with the caption “POV you’re a flying car,” and the roughly 30-second clip reveals never-before-seen angles directly attached to the Roadster. It’s really unbelievable:
The sequence reveals the uncrewed prototype firing its cold-gas thrusters, lifting off the ground, and barrel-rolling fully inverted while sailing over a staged lineup that includes a Model 3, Model Y, Cybercab, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi.
Here’s an image of it that Tesla shared right after the unveiling event for a better perspective of what you’re looking at:
Credit: Tesla
There are also some other cool takeaways from the video, including the shift to the inverted-ramp demonstration. The Roadster uses its underbody suction-fan system to climb, then lock itself upside down on the ramp.
This generates multiple Gs of downforce, which then translates into the Roadster releasing these systems to enable a mid-air roll. The car then settles on its wheels gently as thruster vapor provides a perfect cushion.
All of the runs at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, test site, which is where the unveiling took place, were autonomous. Elon Musk stated this was a safety measure.
Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation
Tesla’s vehicle-engineering chief Lars Moravy dubbed the mid-air roll the “kickflip,” prompting Musk to quip that Tony Hawk would be proud and that the car could clear even more of the fleet. The thrusters, which use high-pressure compressed air and fast electric actuators, provide the precise, short-duration force needed for both the launch and the controlled rotation; the same hardware is intended for production versions of the higher-end Thrust and Rocket trims.
The second-generation Roadster, first teased in 2017, has been delayed repeatedly. Musk has indicated production is targeted for 2028.
While the company has yet to publish full pricing or independent performance verification, the combination of extreme acceleration, ground-effect suction, and limited flight capability has already positioned the car as one of the most theatrical EV reveals in years.
Musk has also said Tesla plans a dedicated Texas test track so future owners can experience the maneuvers themselves, far from public roads. The new POV clip simply lets everyone else feel a fraction of that experience from the car’s own cameras.
Elon Musk’s Grok Bot is picking up the phone now, and the first calls are wild
Tesla Full Self-Driving gets hit with some adjustments in Europe
