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SpaceX Starship pop test opens the door for 60,000 foot hop [update]
SpaceX has successfully destroyed a Starship ‘test tank’ for the fourth time, opening the door for the first high-altitude prototype to roll to the launch pad as soon as tomorrow.
The culmination of three nights and more than 20 hours of concerted effort, SpaceX was finally able to fill Starship test tank SN7.1 with several hundred tons of liquid nitrogen before dawn on September 23rd. With just an hour left in the day’s test window, SpaceX closed the tank’s vents, allowing its cryogenic contents to boil into gas and expand with no outlet. At 4:57 am CDT, SN7.1 burst, bringing its lengthy test campaign to a decisive end.
A handful of hours later, new road closure notices revealed SpaceX’s plan to roll Starship SN8 – the first full-size prototype and first ship meant for high-altitude testing – from its Boca Chica factory to the launch site.
Update: All road closures planned for Starship SN8’s roll to the launch pad (Sept 24) and first test campaign (Sept 27-29) have been canceled. Stay tuned for updates on the high-altitude prototype’s test schedule.
Short of new information from SpaceX or CEO Elon Musk, little is known about the results of SN7.1’s lengthy test campaign, but the fact that it survived two nights of nondestructive testing – including the use of hydraulic rams to simulate Raptor thrust – effectively clears Starship SN8 for suborbital testing. Based on a speculative, amateur analysis of the aftermath of SN7.1’s burst test, it can also be tentatively concluded that the tank failed almost exactly where one would expect it to: the in-situ weld attaching the upper tank dome to SN7.1’s steel ring hull.
SN7.1’s forward dome appears to have cleanly sheared off around much of its circumferential weld joint – exactly what one would theoretically expect from a good, uniform weld. Assuming that SN7.1 reached pressures well above 8.5 bar (~125 psi) before it burst, the tank’s final test can likely be deemed a success.
The very same day SpaceX kicked off what would become Starship SN7.1’s last burst test attempt, teams worked to install functional flaps on a full-scale Starship prototype (SN8) for the first time ever. Effectively answering the question of whether SpaceX would fully outfit the ship with a nosecone and flaps before its first acceptance tests, SN7.1’s successful pop was followed by road closure notices for SN8’s transport to the launch pad around dawn on September 24th and cryptic “SN8 Testing” as early as September 27th.
As of September 23rd, SN8’s twin aft flaps – large aerodynamic control surfaces meant to stabilize free-falling Starships – have been fully installed alongside ‘aerocovers’ that will protect each flap’s control mechanisms. The only hardware Starship SN8 is missing is a ~20m (~60 ft) tall nosecone, two smaller forward flaps, and the plumbing needed to access a smaller liquid oxygen “header” tank located in the tip of said nose.
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At the moment, SpaceX has installed one Starship nosecone prototype atop five unpressurized rings – creating a full nosecone stack. That particular prototype has no liquid oxygen header tank, however, meaning that SpaceX would likely need at least a day or two to weld one of the noses with a header tank atop one of several finished five-ring sections. In other words, to transport SN8 to the pad tomorrow, there’s almost no chance that SpaceX will have time to finish and install a proper nosecone on the prototype, meaning that the company has chosen to test the Starship before that milestone.
Doing so should reduce any inconvenience caused by vehicle failure in the event that Starship SN8’s acceptance test campaign doesn’t go as planned. In hindsight, the inclusion of Starship SN8’s aft flaps and aerocovers during the ship’s first major tests was likely a necessity, given that almost half of each flap and its support structure is installed directly to the skin of its liquid oxygen tank. Theoretically, when chilled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen or oxygen, the diameter of the stainless steel rings Starship SN8 is built out of could shrink by as much as 0.3% (~20 mm or ~0.8 in).
Only half of Starship SN8’s aft flaps will be directly subject to that tank contraction, resulting in a relatively complex environment for such a large, high-stress mechanical system. As such, testing flap actuation under cryogenic loads is likely a critical part of SN8’s cryogenic proof test, otherwise meant to demonstrate the structural integrity and functionality of Starship’s propellant tanks. If SN8 rolls to SpaceX’s launch facilities on schedule, the Starship’s first cryogenic proof test could begin as early as 9pm CDT (UTC-5) on Sunday, September 27th.
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Elon Musk is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.
Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.
Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.
He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.
Given that AI from 2 years ago feels so old that it should be in a museum, then obviously AI 2 years from now will be mind-blowing https://t.co/TcsKZ8o8OE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2026
This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:
The progression in AI of Will Smith eating spaghetti (2023 – 2026) pic.twitter.com/VDv82mB5gs
— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) February 10, 2026
This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.
Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.
Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.
But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.
Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.
In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.
10 million vehicles produced globally.
Congrats to all Tesla teams! pic.twitter.com/JkcraR63bs— Tesla Manufacturing (@gigafactories) July 30, 2026
Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.
The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.
Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.
This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.
Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.
Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years
Tesla just built it 10 millionth car
