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SpaceX’s upgraded Starship set for test flight despite sore NASA contract losers
Within the last week, while SpaceX has been diligently working to ready an upgraded Starship prototype for its first launch, former competitors Blue Origin and Dynetics – both of which recently lost a historic NASA Moon lander contract to SpaceX – have filed “protests” and forced the space agency to freeze work (and funds).
That means that NASA is now legally unable to use funds or resources related to its Human Lander System (HLS) program or the $2.9 billion contract it awarded SpaceX on April 16th to develop a variant of Starship to return humanity to the Moon. However, just like SpaceX has already spent a great deal of its own time and money on Starship development and – more recently – a rapid-fire series of launches, the company appears to have no intention of letting sore losers hamper its rocket factory or test campaign.
Instead, on the same two days Blue Origin and Dynetics loudly filed official protests with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), SpaceX performed two back-to-back static fire tests with a Starship prototype and Raptor engines outfitted with “hundreds of improvements.” Technical challenges and unsavory weather conditions forced SpaceX to call off a launch planned sometime last week but the company now appears to be on track to launch Starship prototype SN15 as early as Tuesday, May 4th.
In principle, the ability for companies to protest US government contracting decisions is a necessity and (nominally) a net good but it can easily be misused – and often in damaging ways. In the case of Blue Origin and Dynetics, it’s difficult not to perceive both protests as examples of the latter.
Blue Origin effectively disagrees with every single major point made and conclusion drawn by NASA’s Source Selection Authority (Kathy Lueders) and a separate panel of experts – often to the point that the company is strongly implying that it understands NASA’s contracting process better than the space agency itself. Blue Origin partners Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are both partially or fully responsible for several of their own catastrophic acquisition boondoggles (F-35, Orion, SLS, James Webb Space Telescope, etc.) and are part of the military-industrial complex primarily responsible for turning US military and aerospace procurement into the quagmire of political interests, quasi-monopolies, and loopholes it is today.
The primary argument is generally shared by both protestors. In essence, Dynetics [p. 23; PDF] and Blue Origin [PDF] believe that it was unfair or improper for NASA to select just a single provider from the three companies or groups that competed. They argue that downselecting to one provider in lieu of budget shortfalls changed the procurement process and competition so much that NASA should have effectively called it quits and restarted the entire five-month process. Blue Origin and Dynetics also both imply that they were somehow blindsided by NASA’s concerns about a Congressional funding shortfall.
In reality, NASA could scarcely have been clearer that it was exceptionally sensitive about HLS funding and extremely motivated to attempt to return humans to the Moon by 2024 with or without the full support of Congress – albeit in fewer words. As Lueders herself noted in the HLS Option A award selection statement, the solicitation Blue, Dynetics, and SpaceX responded to states – word for word – that “the overall number of awards will be dependent upon funding availability and evaluation results.”
Additionally, implications that NASA somehow blindsided offerors with its lack of funding are woefully ignorant at best and consciously disingenuous at worse. Anyone with even the slightest awareness of the history of large-scale NASA programs would know that the space agency’s budget is all but exclusively determined by Congress each year and liable to change just as frequently if political winds shift. Short of blackmailing members of Congress or wistfully hoping that other avenues of legal political influence and partnership actually lead to desired funding and priorities appearing in appropriations legislation, NASA knows the future of its budget about as well as anyone else with access to the internet and a rudimentary awareness of history and current events.
It became clear that Congress was likely to drastically underfund NASA’s HLS program as early as November 2020 – weeks before HLS Option A proposals were due. The latest appropriations bill was passed on January 3rd, 2021, providing NASA $850 million of the ~$3.4 billion it requested for HLS. Historically, NASA’s experience with the Commercial Crew Program – public knowledge available to anyone – likely made it clear to the agency that it could not trust Congress to fund its priorities in good faith when half a decade of drastic underfunding ultimately delayed the critical program by several years. That damage was done by merely halving NASA Commercial Crew budget request from 2010 to 2013, whereas Congress had already set itself on a path to provide barely a quarter of the HLS funds NASA asked for in the weeks before Moon lander proposals were due.
Ultimately, the protests filed by Blue Origin and Dynetics are packed to the brim with petty axe-grinding, attempts to paint SpaceX in a negative light, and a general lack of indication that either company is operating in good faith. Instead, their protests appear all but guaranteed to fail while simultaneously forcing NASA to freeze HLS work and delay related disbursements for up to 100 days. Given that SpaceX is now technically working to design, build, qualify, and fly an uncrewed Lunar Starship prototype by 2023 and a crewed demonstration landing by 2024, 100 days represents a full 7-10% of the time that’s available to complete that extraordinary task.
Ironically, the protests made by Blue Origin and Dynetics have already helped demonstrate why NASA’s decision – especially in light of unambiguous budgetary restrictions – to sole-source its HLS Moon lander contract to SpaceX was an astute one. Had a victorious Blue Origin or Dynetics been in a similar position to SpaceX, it’s almost impossible to imagine either team continuing work to a significant degree in lieu of NASA funding or direction. SpaceX, on the other hand, hasn’t missed a beat and looks set to continue Starship development, production, and testing around the clock regardless of NASA’s capacity to help.
In other words, with a little luck, the actual schedule impact of a maximum 100-day work and funding freeze should be a tiny fraction of what it could have been if NASA had selected an HLS provider more interested in profit margins and stock buybacks than creating a sustainable path for humanity’s expansion beyond Earth.
Tesla’s launch of the “Emergency Drive Away” function a few months back offered owners a safe option to evacuate an area if they were in reasonable danger. The function finally got its first use in the real world, but it appears it was by mistake.
A video shared by u/Joshalander in the r/TeslaLounge subreddit recorded the instance from his vehicle and said the incident took place in Austin this past weekend during the city’s F1 Race.
“Was charging around 6 AM this past Sunday in Austin before heading to the F1 race and heard a pop. Looked over and saw the new emergency drive-away feature in action. Genuinely felt bad for the dude when he got out and realized what happened, since he looked exhausted and only seemed to half-read the prompts.”
🚨 Here’s the first look at Tesla’s Emergency Drive Away function in action:
Apparently this driver accidentally enabled it and drove forward; you can see the Supercharger pull with the car.
Tesla said previously this would cost up to $25k if not used properly. https://t.co/B4qQRrsO6B
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 28, 2026
Emergency Drive Away unlatches the Supercharger connector from the vehicle, but still causes damage to both the car and the Supercharger. Tesla has said that it will cost up to $25,000 in repairs to have everything fixed back to normal.
Additionally, the company said that if it were not used in an emergency situation, the driver of the vehicle who activated the Emergency Drive Away feature would be responsible for all repair costs.
Tesla constitutes the following situations as reasonable justifications for activating the feature:
- You face an immediate threat to your life or personal safety.
- You must leave the area immediately.
- Exiting the vehicle is unsafe.
- Unplugging the charge connector would unreasonably delay your departure or expose you to a risk to your personal safety.
After using the feature, Tesla requires the driver to schedule Service so the car can be inspected.
News
Tesla’s Cybercab battery design could make robotaxis even cheaper
Tesla built the Cybercab’s battery pack with spare room for a future switch to LFP.
Tesla built the Cybercab’s battery pack with empty space inside it on purpose, and the reason points to a cheaper robotaxi down the road.
Robert Sumpf, Tesla’s director of mechanical design engineering for battery modules and packs, said the extra room beside and beneath the Cybercab’s modules was left there so the company can move to lithium iron phosphate cells later. “So, we protected this pack to go to an even lower energy dense chemistry as we scale and need to bring LFP into the platform,” Sumpf said in a Cybercab deep dive with Munro Live.
The Cybercab runs on Tesla’s own 4680 cells with a nickel chemistry today. LFP cells store less energy for their size, so a straight swap would cut range. The reserved space lets Tesla add more LFP cells to make up the difference. In return, Tesla would get cells that cost less, run cooler and survive more charge cycles. LFP became the most used EV battery chemistry in the world last year.
Not all of that room was planned for a chemistry change. Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, said part of it exists because “we didn’t need as many batteries as we thought we did.” Tesla told Sandy Munro in early 2025 that it was targeting a Cybercab pack under 50 kWh with close to 300 miles of range.
The pack also breaks from the structural design Tesla used in some Model Y and Cybertruck builds. Instead of potting hundreds of cells into one block, the Cybercab uses four separate, individually sealed modules, so a bad module can be replaced without scrapping the whole pack. Sumpf was blunt about the older approach, giving the Model Y structural battery “a grade D” because it was hard to build and nearly impossible to repair. He estimated a fully structural pack gains about 10% more cell volume, but said “the issue is the service cost.”
That cost matters more for a car that rarely sits parked. Cybercab chief engineer Eric Earley said replacing an entire pack “before half a million miles is a killer on cost,” which is why remanufacturing and serviceability were built into the design from the start.
The same Munro Live tour produced Moravy’s admission that the Cybercab line at Giga Texas is now outpacing Robotaxi deployments, along with a look at the robotaxi’s unorthodox paint process. Tesla is aiming to deliver the first Cybercabs to outside customers by the end of 2026, though Elon Musk has said the vast majority will stay owned by Tesla and run as a transport service.
Sumpf did not give a date for an LFP version, name a cell supplier or say how a chemistry change would affect range. For now, the 4680 cars keep piling up: Texas DMV records from Tuesday list 544 Cybercabs authorized for Tesla’s Robotaxi fleet, more than the 507 Model Ys on the same roster for the first time.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said that SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet is its leading competitive advantage in the U.S. airline industry. However, in recent comments, while he described the service as “the biggest competitive advantage” the carrier currently holds, he also acknowledged that the edge is temporary.
“…everybody eventually is going to have high-speed low earth orbit internet connectivity. It’s going to be a must-have. We are going to have a few years of being the only airline that has it at scale, and that’s our mission,” Kirby said. Until everyone has it, United aims to capitalize on its head start by converting trial users into long-term loyal customers.
🚨 United CEO Scott Kirby calls Starlink “the biggest competitive advantage,” but says it’s temporary.
“I think it’s the biggest competitive advantage. And it’s temporary. Like it’s not, everybody eventually is going to have high speed low earth orbit internet connectivity. It’s going to be a must-have. But we are going to have a few years of being the only airline that has it at scale, and that’s our mission.”
“I think we’re going to convince customers that United is the best airline and we’re going to get customers to switch their loyalty, to get our credit card, switch their loyalty to United. Not because of Starlink. They’re going to try us for Starlink and they’re going to stay with all the other technology, and everything else is better, and the technology in particular is so much better than technology other, and it’s accelerating because we’ve got the right tech stack, and because we’re like, our gap is getting wider and wider with our technology every day.”
Next: LAX becomes United’s first 100% Starlink hub in the first half of next year, and the United app will show your Starlink odds for each flight. https://t.co/hToyFWaWj7
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 27, 2026
United has moved faster than its rivals on Starlink installations. As of mid-to-late October 2026, the system was on roughly 43 percent of its fleet, with plans to reach 61 percent by year-end, 87 percent by June 2027, and full fleet coverage by the end of next year.
The airline already operates more Starlink-equipped flights than the rest of the U.S. industry combined. Los Angeles International Airport is scheduled to become United’s first 100 percent Starlink hub in the first half of 2027, and the carrier’s app will display the likelihood that any given flight has the service.
Kirby has pointed to early evidence that the offering influences booking decisions. Some passengers loyal to other airlines are already switching flights for Starlink connectivity, something the airline, along with American Airlines, has tried to leverage against competing airlines. Both companies used status-match programs, and some of those customers are pursuing company-specific credit cards, which signals an intent to stay.
Once onboard, these customers encounter the airline’s broader investments in aircraft, larger seat-back screens, oversized bins, connection tools, and a mobile app that Kirby says outperforms competitors. Wi-Fi satisfaction scores on Starlink-equipped planes have been reported to be nearly double those on aircraft with other systems.
Competitors are moving slowly to do the same. Southwest Airlines began installations in 2025 and expects to complete them soon. Delta is pursuing Amazon’s Leo system, while American expects to start Starlink work in early 2027 and has not yet detailed regional-fleet plans. This timeline gap gives United a multi-year window in which it remains the only major U.S. carrier offering Starlink at scale.
Kirby has framed the strategy as pressing that advantage while simultaneously widening gaps in other technology areas so that customers who try United for the Wi-Fi remain for the overall experience.
The approach reflects a calculated bet that superior in-flight connectivity can accelerate share gains and support longer-term financial targets, including a 10 percent pre-tax margin goal.
High-speed internet is particularly valued by premium and business travelers who can work or stream reliably. As low-Earth-orbit service becomes ubiquitous, the temporary nature of the pure connectivity edge means United’s retention will depend on whether its other product and operational improvements keep pace.
Tesla’s ‘Emergency Drive Away’ function gets its first use in the real world
Tesla’s Cybercab battery design could make robotaxis even cheaper
