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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk confirms Q3 2021 target for first orbital Starship launch
Update: On the heels of a NASASpaceflight report, CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX has an internal target of Q3 2021 (possibly as early as July!) for Starship’s first orbital launch attempt.
NASASpaceflight reports that SpaceX wants to begin orbital Starship launch attempts as early as July 1st, 2021, less than four months from now.
In no uncertain terms, this is an internal target, meaning that it’s far likelier than not that SpaceX’s first orbital Starship launch attempt wont happen in July. Nevertheless, the target’s existence implies that SpaceX sees a real, viable path – however narrow – to launching Starship into orbit for the first time just four months from now.
Put a different way, SpaceX believes it has six months of margin to get through preliminary Super Heavy booster testing (possibly including one or several hops), qualify an upgraded Starship design (SN15 onwards), roughly complete an orbital launch complex, and deliver around two-dozen orbit-capable Raptor engines before the end of the year. While unclear, it’s also possible that the milestone would require SpaceX to qualify and ship the first flightworthy Raptor Vacuum engines – another major challenge.
On its own, completing any one of those major feats of engineering would be impressive. Completing all of them simultaneously – even if the effort suffers more than five months of delays – would be nothing short of extraordinary. As such, it’s fair to assume that SpaceX will fall well short of its incredibly ambitious development schedule, even if the company almost invariably does what it sets out to do.
In this case, that means that there is a very real chance that Starship reaches orbit before the end of 2021, achieving a target that both SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and COO/President Gwynne Shotwell have reiterated within the last several months.
Even after reaching orbit for the first time, SpaceX will likely continue Starship development largely unchanged, treating the orbital regime as just another sandbox to test and refine Starship prototypes with. Given all the extraordinary problems SpaceX will need to solve to reach orbit, there’s also a decent chance that Starship or Super Heavy’s first orbital launch attempt will fail. If the launch is initially successfully, it’s just as likely that Super Heavy will fail its first hypersonic launch and landing attempt.
If Starship itself reaches orbit in one piece, any number of issues could kill the vehicle in space. If it survives long enough complete a 90-minute orbit and line up for reentry, descent, and landing, Starship’s first orbital-velocity atmospheric reentry – one of the biggest challenges in aerospace engineering – could easily destroy the spacecraft. If Starship somehow makes it through reentry on its first try, the stresses of orbital spaceflight and that reentry could prevent its Raptor engines from performing nominally during its powered flip maneuver and landing burn.
This is all to say that even as SpaceX sets its sights on orbital flight, the trajectory is still a continuation of an ongoing test program and iterative development process. While orbit-capable Starships will likely be much more expensive than their suborbital brethren, the differences are small enough that SpaceX will undoubtedly continue to push the envelope and risk losing prototypes to uncover and fix bugs and design flaws as early as possible.
Along the way, there will undoubtedly be more SN8/SN9/SN10-style hiccups. Given Starship’s developmental history, however, it’s starting to look like nothing less than catastrophe will prevent SpaceX from launching Starship into orbit before the year is out.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
X’s updates to its updates
As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks.
“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.
The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.
xAI and X
X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award.
As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards.
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close.
MotorTrend reverses course
MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.
According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.
Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.
High cost and high capability
MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.
Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.
Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.
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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles.
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.
Grokipedia’s rapid growth
xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias.
At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.
Elon Musk’s ambitious plans
With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2.
Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos.
“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
