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SpaceX Starship rocket could move to the launch pad today
SpaceX has finished stacking its fourth full-scale Starship prototype and public schedules show that the rocket could be moved to a nearby launch and test pad as early as April 20th.
Known as Starship serial number 4 (SN4), the rocket will be the third full-scale vehicle completed since the start of serial production, while Starship Mk1 – the first full-scale prototype – was built far more slowly and with different methods. Mk1 was destroyed during one of its first cryogenic liquid nitrogen ‘proof’ tests in November 2019, nearly nine months after assembly began in February. After Mk1’s failure, SpaceX spent about two months rapidly expanding and upgrading its Boca Chica, Texas Starship factory.
Around the end of January 2020, SpaceX kicked off the production of its first serial prototype – logically deemed SN1. Less than a month after its first steel rings were stacked and welded together, SpaceX transported the completed prototype to the launch pad. On February 28th, what CEO Elon Musk later described as a fault in its engine section “thrust puck” destroyed Starship SN1 during one of its first cryogenic proof tests. Barely a month later and after SN2 was modified into a “thrust puck” test tank and successfully tested, Starship SN3 rolled to the launch pad and was destroyed by operator and test design errors on April 3rd. Now, barely two weeks after SN3, Starship SN4 is about to begin testing.
By all appearances, work on Starship SN4 began around March 23rd, continuing a production schedule that has been consistently completing a full-scale rocket prototype every four or so weeks. While SpaceX has taken the unprecedented step of reusing a section of a prototype (SN3) destroyed during testing, every other aspect of the rocket is new and built more or less from scratch.
Just two days after Starship SN3’s salvaged skirt and SN4’s new engine section and aft liquid oxygen tank dome were stacked and welded together, SpaceX technicians attached a crane to the upper two-thirds of the rocket’s tank section and stacked it on top of the newly-finished engine section. 24 hours later, SpaceX teams have completed at least one circumferential seam weld, with a second soon to be finished.
Once that last weld is complete and passes inspections, Starship SN4 will be ready to be lifted onto a transporter and rolled down the road to SpaceX’s dedicated launch and test facilities. Of course, like SN3 and SN1 before it, SpaceX will likely still have a few days of work to get Starship SN4 ready for testing once it’s been moved to the pad.
Using Starship SN3’s timeline, Starship SN4 could be transported to the pad as early as April 19th or 20th and ready for testing by April 24th or 25th. This meshes well with a publicly-available road closure schedule, required because SpaceX often needs to close a public highway for certain Starship transport and testing operations. Per Cameron County’s website, SpaceX has a transport-related closure planned on April 20th. The first testing-related closure begins on Sunday, April 26th and lasts from 9am to midnight, with backups on Monday and Tuesday.
As always, delays should come as no surprise with prototype testing, and schedules are always fluid and liable to change at any second. Regardless, it looks like Starship SN4 is perhaps just a week from its first round of testing.
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.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
Tesla is expanding its Robotaxi service hours by pushing the time back by one hour, keeping the ride-hailing service operational until 11 p.m., one hour later than previously.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed the change and offered a specific reason the expansion has been gradual: the system still needs to reliably avoid small pets that are difficult to see after dark, as they commonly blend into the color of the road, especially when they’re grey.
The latest adjustment restores only a fraction of the operating window the service once held. When paid Robotaxi rides began in Austin on June 22, 2025, vehicles ran from 6 a.m. to midnight.
In September 2025, Tesla lengthened the day to a 2 a.m. close, producing a 20-hour window that stayed in place for most of the following year. By early August of this year, the cutoff had already been pulled back; an August 26 update formalized hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. across Austin and several other markets.
The October move to 11 p.m. therefore leaves the Austin day one hour shorter than the original launch schedule and three hours shorter than the 2025 peak.
Musk addressed the constraint directly after the announcement. “The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night,” he wrote. “Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.”
Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm.
The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The example points to a low-contrast perception problem in which a small animal can blend into the road surface under limited lighting.
Tesla’s vehicles rely on cameras and neural-network processing rather than lidar; Musk has previously argued that advanced vision software can extract useful information even in low light by analyzing photon counts, but the pet-detection case remains the stated limiter in later hours.
The modest schedule change arrives alongside faster growth in the purpose-built Cybercab fleet. Texas registration data tracked by observers showed the Austin Cybercab count rising sharply in recent weeks, reaching 169 vehicles after more than 100 were added in a short span.
Tesla has indicated that a broader shift toward 24-hour operation is tied to the upcoming FSD v15 software release expected this month on Robotaxi vehicles. Until that capability is validated for the edge cases Musk described, the company continues to add service time incrementally rather than jumping straight to overnight coverage.
The one-hour extension gives Austin riders a later option for evening trips while the underlying detection work continues.
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Tesla reveals early Robotaxi charging strategy, showing scrappy DNA
