SpaceX
SpaceX workers cap Starship with tank dome as Raptor arrivals and hop tests near
SpaceX employees and local contractors continue to outfit the aft section of the first full-scale BFR prototype with a variety of important components, recently culminating in the installation of the Starship hopper’s top propellant tank dome,
Critical to the arrival and installation of its Raptor engines and the craft’s first hop tests, this work continues despite the premature demise of Starhopper’s apparently fragile nose cone (fairing), toppled on January 22nd when fairly mild winds of around 50 mph (80 km/h) encountered the shoddy rigging meant to keep the huge but lightweight hardware on its concrete stand.
Meanwhile, in Boca Chica: A crane is making offerings to the Starship Hopper propulsion element to distract it from the ongoing surgery taking place on its fairing/nosecone inside the adjacent SpaceX medical tent.#Dramatized 😉
📸NSF's BocaChicaGal https://t.co/yAb43bfD06 pic.twitter.com/l85a180Daa
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) January 25, 2019
As photos and the media fervor that ensued generally illustrate, the nose section certainly was not effectively held to its concrete stand, causing the insufficient rigging to break and the large sheet metal structure to unceremoniously collapse and fold in half under its own weight. While 50 mph (90 km/h) gusts are not insignificant, they are also fairly common, especially when located on the unprotected edge of the South Texas Coast in the middle of the winter.
Put in a slightly more direct fashion, building a complex structure outside without ensuring that it will be able to withstand the region’s average inclement weather would be an embarrassing oversight for even the most basic construction project, no less SpaceX’s first Starship prototype. It’s also possible that local construction contractors are being leaned on to complete an aerospace-ish project they would likely have little practical experience with, in which case run-of-the-mill workplace miscommunication or a failure to double-check work (rigging) could have easily led to the fairing’s demise.
Regardless, what is done is done and whatever lessons were learned the hard way will hopefully prevent a repeat and encourage better workmanship throughout the project.
- Starhopper’s nose section seen a few days before completion, Jan 4. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
- Starhopper is pictured here as its nose and aft sections were successfully joined for the first time, Jan 8. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
- Starhopper’s ring of nose holes is particularly visible in overcast conditions. Too small for worker access, they may be intended for RCS thrusters. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
- RIP nose cone, 1/04/2019-1/22/2019 3 (NASASpaceflight - bocachicagal)
- A few days after the nose cone’s demise, SpaceX workers began the process of installing Starhopper’s topmost tank dome. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
Capping the Starhopper
With the crumpled fairing section now beginning repairs under SpaceX’s lone on-site tent, SpaceX workers and contractors got back to the (available) tasks at hand and took another step towards Starhopper’s completion, installing the craft’s topmost propellant tank dome and effectively ‘capping’ the most important segment of the prototype.
I just heard. 50 mph winds broke the mooring blocks late last night & fairing was blown over. Will take a few weeks to repair.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 23, 2019
Recently described by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as a “fairing”, the upper section of Starhopper can presumably be compared with Falcon fairings, while the aft half – to feature two common-dome propellant tanks and an engine section with three Raptors – is likely roughly equivalent with Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy boosters. For Falcon, fairings are dramatically less valuable than boosters (or upper stages) and far easier to produce. Aside from a collection of holes cut around its base, the nose section does appear to be more of an aerodynamic cap than anything with an active function, lending some credence to Musk’s claim that it “will take a few weeks to repair.”
After capping Starhopper’s tank and engine section, additional tank segments continued to be craned inside the aft section through the top dome’s large header gap, presumably allowing workers to finish up work while the craft is quite literally built around them, an undeniable method of saving time.
1-24-19 #spacex pic.twitter.com/rwjS3Uklz9
— Austin Barnard🚀 (@austinbarnard45) January 24, 2019
Up next, the most obvious milestone for Starhopper will be the static firing of its Raptor engines at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test facilities, followed soon after by the delivery of the first flight-worthy engines to Boca Chica for installation on the Starship prototype. Given Musk’s January 5th estimate that SpaceX was 4 to 8 weeks away from the first hop test and the Jan. 23rd addition of “a few weeks” to repair the craft’s nose section, it’s probably safe to expect Starhopper’s first hop tests to begin no earlier than (NET) mid-March. This should also give construction workers a welcome influx of time to complete the Falcon 9-class hopper’s first rough launch pad.
News
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
SpaceX’s Crew-13 Dragon reached the ISS in under eight hours, and NASA confirmed a record.
SpaceX now owns every spot on the list of the five fastest trips a U.S. spacecraft has ever made to the International Space Station, and its newest entry beat the old mark by more than four hours.
Crew Dragon Grace docked to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. ET on October 1, just 7 hours and 55 minutes after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. NASA confirmed the milestone in a space station blog update, writing that the flight “marked the fastest launch‑to‑docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the history of the International Space Station.”
The previous U.S. record also belonged to Dragon. SpaceX’s uncrewed CRS-31 cargo mission reached the station in a little over 12 hours in November 2024. The fastest crewed trip before last week was Crew-11, which took 14 hours and 43 minutes in August 2025, according to Space.com.
A post that Elon Musk reposted on Monday filled out the rest of the ranking. Behind Crew-13, CRS-31 and Crew-11 sit Axiom’s Ax-2 mission at 15 hours and 35 minutes and NASA’s Crew-4 at 15 hours and 44 minutes. All five flew on Dragon.
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
Crew-13 carried NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. NASA had projected a docking around 8 p.m. ET, as Teslarati reported the day before launch, and Dragon arrived nearly an hour early. Our launch day coverage noted that the flight was lined up to be the quickest Crew Dragon transit yet.
The speed came from timing more than hardware. SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman said the station “was in an opportune spot in space,” which let Dragon start closing the gap almost immediately after reaching orbit. “This is close to the fastest it could be,” she added. Most Crew Dragon flights still take close to a day, using a series of Draco thruster burns to raise and phase their orbit before arrival.
Dragon’s next job at the station is a departure. NASA said Monday it is targeting 8:05 a.m. ET on Wednesday, October 7, for Crew-12 to undock, setting up a splashdown off the coast of California around 11:34 a.m. on Thursday. Clearing that port makes room for CRS-35, a cargo Dragon carrying the final set of iROSA solar arrays.
Dragon remains NASA’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner stays grounded, and the agency recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming
Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.
Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.
In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”
The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”
Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner
SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.
Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.
The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.
It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”
The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.




