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SpaceX’s Starship prototype is looking increasingly rocket-like as hop test pad expands
As SpaceX’s South Texas operations continue full steam ahead in pursuit of the first integrated hop tests of a full-scale Starship prototype, the company’s Starhopper and its complementary launch/hop pad are dramatically and visibly evolving on a daily basis.
This week’s progress has been signified by the installation of familiar rocket hardware on the Ship and a burst of construction – centered around pipelaying, plumbing, foundation work, and berm-building – at its pad. Just a few hundred miles north of Boca Chica, SpaceX’s team of propulsion engineers and technicians reached their own dramatic milestone, conducting the first static fire of a finalized version of the Raptor engine set to power Starship and Super Heavy (formerly BFR).
2-4-2019#SpaceX #TheFuture pic.twitter.com/0YBxk5QXD3
— Austin Barnard🚀 (@austinbarnard45) February 5, 2019
A pad fit for a Starhopper
In the last ~10 days alone (Jan 24-Feb 4), SpaceX pad construction workers and contractors transformed the former dirt mound from a generally flat, planed surface with a spattering of shipping containers and building materials into a hive of welding rigs, propellant and water tanks, major plumbing progress, shaped earth, and the beginnings of new concrete foundations. Thanks to local student Austin Barnard’s reliable drone photography, that pad-specific progress can be more properly visualized.
Taken on January 24th and February 4th respectively, the devil is definitely in the details when it comes to SpaceX’s prospective Starhopper pad development. Most notable is the progress made with the rapidly developing propellant plant and ground systems infrastructure in the left half of the images, marked by hundreds of feet of freshly-installed piping meant to support the process of fueling Starhopper with liquid methane and oxygen. For a rocket as powerful as Starhopper (even with just three Raptor engines), cooling both the propellant and the concrete launch and landing pad is no less important, visible in the shape of three large water tanks (lefthand foreground) and a smaller radiator stack (just to the right of two taller, skinnier white tanks.
Aside from the rapid rise of the first BFR propellant farm and its supporting equipment, SpaceX has progressed into the installation of a trio of concrete foundations just to the right of the dirt berm and propellant tank area. Standing as close as it is to said propellant tanks, it seems unlikely that the new foundation-laying is related to the pad (or a stand) meant to support early Starhopper hop tests, although SpaceX’s Falcon 9-era Grasshopper and F9R hop test vehicles operated about the same distance from its propellant infrastructure. SpaceX’s South Texas site also features a sort of satellite pad at its east end (the right side in attached photos) that could have a future as an integration hangar or a secondary landing zone to allow for Starhopper to perform divert tests.
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- Rockets are perhaps even more capital intensive. (SpaceX)
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- BFR’s booster is at least three times more powerful still than BFS at liftoff. (SpaceX)
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- BFR (2018) breaks through a cloud layer shortly after launch. (SpaceX)
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- (SpaceX)
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- BFR’s booster, now known as Super Heavy. (SpaceX)
Depending on whether SpaceX actually intends to develop the land shown above into an actual full-scale launch facility for BFR (Super Heavy and Starship), it could also remain generally unchanged until Starhopper’s hop test program has been run to completion, at which point everything seen above would likely be rebuilt from scratch to accommodate for any drastic changes in function. SpaceX’s Boca Chica might simply be too small to support a pad capable of launching Super Heavy (nearly twice as powerful as Saturn V at full thrust), measuring in at considerably less than ~10 acres of usable area compared to LC-40’s ~20 acres and Pad 39A’s ~50+ acres. CEO Elon Musk has also hinted at using a giant floating platform for early orbital BFR launches, although that might prove even harder (and more costly) than building a traditional land-based pad.
Becoming a rocket
Meanwhile, the aft engine/fin/tank section of SpaceX’s Starship prototype (unofficially nicknamed Starhopper) has experienced a stream of hardware additions and improvements, modifying its relatively awkward and unfinished steel base with what appear to be Falcon 9-sized quick-disconnect umbilical panels, a functional propellant tank header, and mounting hardware for carbon-overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs). By using hardware that is proven and easy to manufacture, SpaceX can save a huge amount of time that would otherwise need to be spent engineering subassemblies that (at risk of undervaluing the challenge) are generally known-quantities – more a matter of time and effort than an actual technical hurdle.
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- B1048’s second umbilical panel (blue for oxygen). (Pauline Acalin)
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- Falcon 9 B1048 displays one of two umbilical panels (red for kerosene) after its first launch. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Starhopper’s partially completed umbilical panel as of Feb. 4th. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
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- A SpaceX technician or contractor is pictured here cutting out sections of Starhopper’s steel hull to route umbilical panel piping. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal, 02/03/19)
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- Starhopper also had a tank header installed on February 5th, complete with pressure regulation and propellant feeding hardware. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
While they are clearly still in a rough, unfinished form, Starhopper’s umbilical panels are already easy to recognize when compared alongside Falcon 9’s iconic red and blue panel pairs. In essence, whereas Starhopper has been a largely unknown quantity with no familiar aspects since it began to come together late last year, the Starship prototype has recently had hardware installed that is finally revealing subtle SpaceX signatures in its design and assembly.
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Tesla got its largest order for the all-electric Class 8 Semi yet, a 500-unit order from Einride AB, a Swedish trucking company.
Einride made the announcement this morning following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said it plans to use 500 Tesla Semi units on its fleet intelligence platform, called Saga AI. The deployments will serve large companies like Amazon and will extend Einride’s electric freight network across logistics routes in California, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.
🚨 Tesla has received a MASSIVE order from Swedish freight company Einride AB, which placed an order for 500 Tesla Semi trucks
Tesla’s biggest order for the Semi yet! pic.twitter.com/PrtLp5yzvh
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 18, 2026
The deployment is being carried out in several phases over the next two years as Tesla ramps production of the Semi at its dedicated production facility in Sparks, Nevada. Einride will receive its first Semi units in September.
Saga AI
Saga AI is Einride’s dedicated fleet intelligence platform. It enables scaled adoption of electric trucks for freight use and allows shippers to integrate electric capacity without the operational burden or capital risks of managing a fleet. This helps integrate cost-efficient logistics and makes budgeting and forecasting much more accurate.
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Tesla Semi’s Adoption
The Tesla Semi is now gathering large-scale clients past those who have helped the company operate a Pilot Program to gain initial information and feedback from real-world drivers.
Perhaps the biggest and most notable is that of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo., who have worked with Tesla for the past several years to dial in the finer details of the truck, including its efficiency and operation-related components.
Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno
There has been tremendous progress in that time, and it even catalyzed Tesla to make some design changes, which were unveiled earlier this year.
But Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli says his company’s partnership with Tesla will continue to push those things forward:
“This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand. Working closely with Tesla to bring next-generation Semis into active operations quickly and at scale is a testament to the strength of that partnership, and how quickly this technology is maturing from promise to daily operations.”
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Additionally, Dan Priestley, the Director of the Semi Program at Tesla, said the partnership is ideal due to Einride’s focus on sustainable transport:
“Einride is at the forefront of sustainable freight, and we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with them through this order of 500 Semis. EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks. These savings increase further through operational efficiency when deploying EV trucks at scale, and we are excited that Einride recognizes this and look forward to supporting their deployments.”
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
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Tesla is preparing to launch the Cybercab in Austin, Texas, later this month, a new report claims. Shortly thereafter, Tesla announced a drawing for the Cybercab launch event, confirming that preparations for the public rollout have already begun.
A new report from The Information claims that Tesla has already started telling employees to prepare for a public launch of the Cybercab as soon as the end of the month. The vehicle will launch publicly to riders in Austin initially.
The two-seater has no pedals or steering wheel, and will rely completely on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to operate.
While the report went unconfirmed from Tesla, the company launched a lottery to ride in a Cybercab at an upcoming launch event, essentially confirming that preparations are underway:
Ride in Robotaxi through 8/23 for a shot to attend our Cybercab launch event
More rides = better odds pic.twitter.com/NxA4H9sWF2
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) August 18, 2026
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Cybercab entered production at Gigafactory Texas back in April, with initial units being test mules for the company as it has put the car in a variety of environments and climates. Tesla has sent Cybercab to many states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Washington, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
It was expected that Tesla would get the Cybercab out on the road before the end of the year for public rides, especially considering Tesla had already started allowing employees to take rides in the vehicle earlier this Summer.
Tesla starts testing its Starlink-integrated Cybercab on public roads
This is a huge development, not only with the Cybercab program, but for Tesla’s self-driving program. Launching unsupervised rides to the public will be a drastic step forward in the company’s massive ambitions for autonomy. It is a long time coming, too. Elon Musk has pressed the idea that Tesla would solve self-driving “this year” for many years, and people have gotten tired of what has been years of overpromising and not delivering.
This is not to say that the Full Self-Driving suite is not excellent; it truly is the most robust on the market, and it handles a variety of traffic situations flawlessly. It definitely has its faults, but generally, it is fantastic.
Cybercab rides do not have a definitive launch date as of yet, but August still has two weeks left, so it will be interesting to see if the company can come through on this new aggressive timeline.
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Tesla Semi gets its largest order yet
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
