News
Elon Musk talks upgrades after SpaceX Starship launches, explodes in midair
SpaceX has completed its fourth Starship test flight in as many months, offering the latest glimpse into the often frustrating reality of a highly iterative, hardware-rich rocket development program.
Right on schedule, SpaceX Starship prototype serial number 11 (SN11) lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas at exactly 8am CDT (UTC-5) – all but completely cloaked in a thick layer of fog. While unfortunate for any unofficial observers (and possibly SpaceX’s own desire to gather video footage of a test flight), SpaceX has experience launching rockets (namely Falcon 9) in thick fog thanks to its Vandenberg Air Force Base launch site on the California coast.
As such, fog theoretically poses no fundamental threat to rockets like Starship, but SN11 still took the opportunity to explore new and exciting failure modes shortly before touchdown. CEO Elon Musk himself didn’t take long to weigh in and has even offered some details and a schedule for upgrades planned for SpaceX’s next-generation launch vehicle – upgrades hoped to alleviate whatever issues led to Starship SN11’s premature demise.
First and foremost, due to the fog, the general public saw virtually nothing throughout the launch attempt. Remote streaming cameras set up near SpaceX’s launch facilities – now, excitingly, with the company’s own permission – did manage to catch some level of detail, providing the bare minimum level of insight needed to speculate on SN11’s failed landing attempt.
Per an official webcast and NASASpaceflight’s unofficial “Danger-Close Camera,” installed a few hundred feet from the launch site with SpaceX’s permission, Starship lifted off at exactly 8am and had a seemingly nominal ascent, reaching a familiar 10 km (6.2 mi) apogee around four minutes later. SN11 then arced over onto its belly and free-fell for ~100 seconds. Aside from a few intermittent fires burning on some of the rocket’s three Raptor engines, not an uncommon sight since SN8 first flew, nothing appeared particularly out of the ordinary.
At T+5:49, however, things rapidly went wrong. Still belly-down, Starship SN11 attempted to reignite all three of its Raptor engines to propulsively flip into a vertical landing position. After at least one seemingly successful reignition, SpaceX immediately lost onboard video and telemetry feeds. Based on NASASpaceflight’s pad-adjacent camera, a substantial explosion followed one or two seconds after that attempted ignition, ending Starship SN11’s test flight around 20 seconds earlier than any of its three late siblings.
Debris began to visibly hit the ground another 5-10 seconds after that explosion was first heard, all but guaranteeing that Starship SN11 exploded in midair. At this time, it’s impossible to know what exactly went wrong, but there are two clear possibilities. Starship SN11 could have failed to reignite two or even all three Raptor engines, triggering onboard flight termination system (FTS) explosives designed to prevent the rocket from straying beyond a safe zone of operations. More likely, Starship suffered a substantial failure during that reignition and flip attempt, triggering an almost immediate explosion that tore the rocket apart around half a kilometer (~1500 ft) above the pad and landing zone.
Shortly after, Musk said that Raptor “engine #2 had issues on ascent” that were notable but not enough to explain a violent midair failure and confirmed that whatever went wrong came “shortly after landing burn start.”
Musk offers Starship upgrade schedule, details
Having suffered a failure a bit less than six minutes after launch, Starship SN11 – the fourth three-engine, high-altitude prototype – was ironically the farthest from a successful landing before something went wrong: one step forward, two steps back. While unfortunate, SpaceX still got some amount of data and uncovered one or several new failure modes – arguably the two of the most important primary goals of any developmental flight test program.
Further, Musk revealed that SpaceX intends to complete and roll Starship SN15 to the launch pad just “a few days” from now – certainly earlier than expected. While the SpaceX CEO didn’t go much into detail, he reaffirmed that SN15 would bring substantial upgrades, stating that “it has hundreds of design improvements across structures, avionics/software, & engine[s].”
Musk also touched on SpaceX’s near-term plans after SN15’s upgrade path, confirming that Starship prototypes from SN20 onwards will be “orbit-capable” with even more improvements. That seemingly delineates three clear ‘blocks’ of Starship prototypes, beginning with SN8 through SN11, proceeding with SN15 through SN19, and (nominally) gearing up for true orbital-class test flights with prototype SN20 and its successors. All told, SN11’s midair demise appears likely to be just a small blip in front of a jam-packed, well-structured series of Starship upgrades and flight tests just over the horizon.
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
