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[Update: not so fast…] SpaceX retires brand new Starship to focus on orbital launch buildup
SpaceX has moved its newest finished Starship straight from its Boca Chica, Texas factory to a nearby ‘rocket garden,’ all but guaranteeing an early retirement.
Built as the first of several planned backups to Starship SN15, which debuted a number of significant upgrades in April and May, it appears that Starship serial number 16 (SN16) has been retired to a display stand after its only sibling became the first full-size prototype to successfully survive a launch and landing on May 5th. SN16 actually reached its full height before SN15 lifted off and was more or less complete by May 10th. Since then, the prototype has remaining more or less untouched, seemingly waiting for SpaceX to decide its fate in lieu of Starship SN15’s major success.
Ultimately, with SN16 now sitting side by side with SN15 at what will likely become a sort of open-air SpaceX museum, it appears that the company has made up its mind.
Once SN15 touched down, safed itself, and remained standing after a near-flawless 10 km (6.2 mi) test flight, questions about Starship SN16’s fate almost immediately arose. From the outside looking in, replicating that spectacular success was judged a logical next step by many in light of the four variously unsuccessful Starship launches that closely preceded it. If SpaceX could land SN15 and then successfully recover an entirely separate Starship weeks later, it would all but eliminate the possibility that – much like several different failure modes popped up on SN8 through SN11 – the first total success was a fluke.
Given that SN16 was quite literally completed within days of SN15’s launch and landing, it seemed an almost foregone conclusion that SN16 would fly. For a few weeks, it even looked possible that SpaceX would attempt to reuse Starship SN15. However, SpaceX appeared to decide against reuse and rolled its first flight-proven full-size Starship from the pad to a plot of land expected to host a future ‘garden’ for retired SpaceX rockets.
After its three intact flight-proven Raptor engines – valuable in their own right – were removed, Starship SN15 was seemingly retired around May 26th. Three weeks later, SN16 has (quite literally, to an extent) followed in SN15’s footsteps, bowing to an apparently virulent desire within (or at least atop) SpaceX to launch Starship into space and orbit as quickly as possible. From that perspective, assuming enough data was gathered by Starship SN15 to encourage significant confidence that its survival wasn’t an ‘accidental success,’ reusing Starship SN15 or flying Starship SN16 would only really benefit a line of prototypes that had just made itself obsolete.
Much like Starship SN15 debuted “hundreds of improvements” across the board, CEO Elon Musk revealed that Starship SN20 would also involve a “major technology [revision]” to produce the first prototypes with full heat shields, a stage separation mechanism, vacuum-optimized Raptor engines, and more. In fact, that process may still be ongoing, which could explain why SpaceX has yet to begin assembling Starship SN20 – various subsections and components of which have already been completed in Boca Chica.
Confirmed by Musk in March, SpaceX has been working towards a target of no later than July 2021 for Starship’s first orbital test flight. Given that Starship SN20 has yet to enter the assembly phase and that Super Heavy “Booster 2” (BN3) will be the first of its kind and likely need to pass several major tests on its own, July is no longer within reach. Of course, an orbital launch attempt anytime in 2021 would still be a staggering achievement for SpaceX, beating the likes of Vulcan Centaur, New Glenn, and Ariane 6 to the punch despite Starship’s superior performance, unprecedented design challenges, and grander ambitions.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy celebrated Christmas Eve by sharing personal experiences with Robotaxi vehicles that had no safety monitor or occupant in the driver’s seat. Musk described the system’s “perfect driving” around Austin, while Elluswamy posted video from the back seat, calling it “an amazing experience.”
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Elon and Ashok’s firsthand Robotaxi insights
Prior to Musk and the Tesla AI Director’s posts, sightings of unmanned Teslas navigating public roads were widely shared on social media. One such vehicle was spotted in Austin, Texas, which Elon Musk acknowleged by stating that “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Based on his Christmas Eve post, Musk seemed to have tested an unmanned Tesla himself. “A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving,” Musk wrote in his post.
Elluswamy responded with a 2-minute video showing himself in the rear of an unmanned Tesla. The video featured the vehicle’s empty front seats, as well as its smooth handling through real-world traffic. He captioned his video with the words, “It’s an amazing experience!”
Towards Unsupervised operations
During an xAI Hackathon earlier this month, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla owed be removing Safety Monitors from its Robotaxis in Austin in just three weeks. “Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks,” he said. Musk echoed similar estimates at the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call.
Considering the insights that were posted Musk and Elluswamy, it does appear that Tesla is working hard towards operating its Robotaxis with no safety monitors. This is quite impressive considering that the service was launched just earlier this year.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
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NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
