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SpaceX begins building upgraded Starship prototype

After many unconfirmed signs, a Starship part confirms that SpaceX has begun work on a significantly upgraded prototype. (NASASpaceflight - bocachicagal)

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A Starship part spotted on July 20th confirms that SpaceX is already well into the process of building a significantly upgraded full-scale prototype.

Following in the footsteps of five or six full-scale ships before it, information published by NASASpaceflight.com suggests that Starship SN8 will be a substantial departure from its predecessors. Thanks to data gathered by testing the Starship SN7 test tank to destruction on June 24th, SpaceX has determined that a different alloy – known as 304L – is superior to the 301 stainless steel all Starship prototypes have been built out of up to now.

SN8 is SpaceX’s response to that discovery. As usual, the company has performed smaller tests before deciding to build a full-scale Starship prototype – identical to all previous SNx prototypes beyond the alloy change – out of 304L stainless steel. As a result, Starship SN8 – once complete – may have the most potential of any prototype built thus far, but its fate will also be more uncertain than most of its predecessors.

(NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
After many signs, a Starship part spotted on July 20th oconfirmed that SpaceX has begun work on a significantly upgraded prototype. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)

On June 24th, SpaceX destroyed the SN7 Starship test tank as part of a controlled cryogenic proof test – essentially a pressure test at cryogenic (ultra-cold) temperatures. Departing from routine, CEO Elon Musk never commented on the test, leaving its results shrouded in mystery. According to NASASpaceflight, however, SN7 “achieved a record pressure before it failed.”

Designed to test a different formulation of stainless steel, that success implies that SN7 proved that the 304L alloy will not only be more malleable and forgiving at cryogenic temperatures – but is also more capable overall compared to 301 steel. To beat the record set by the second or third Starship test tank in January or March 2020, SN7 would have had to reach pressures of ~8.6 bar or higher – effectively icing on the cake for the already-demonstrated ~140% safety factor.

The Starship SN7 test tank pictured during its successful cryo proof test. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
An early grave is just part of the job. (NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)

A full-scale Starship has yet to survive proof tests at those pressures but Starship SN4 did become the first to complete a full cryo proof, sustaining ~7.5 bar (~110 psi) before it was safely depressurized. Currently on the pad and preparing for an imminent static fire and hop test debut, Starship SN5 is unlikely to put pressure on that record unless that it aces both of the aforementioned trials. Built entirely out of the 304L alloy already proven to be superior to 301, SN8 may well be the golden goose of prototypes.

“The vehicle will feature major upgrades over previous Starship prototypes. SN8 will be built out of 304L stainless steel versus 301 and will receive a fairing, aerosurfaces, and three Raptor engines to allow for a higher-altitude test flight.”

NASASpaceflight.com — July 15th, 2020

The appearance of SN8’s labeled common dome – the dome separating Starship’s liquid oxygen and methane tanks – implies that a variety of other parts spotted over the last few days are also meant for the next full-scale rocket. Mounted on a stand purpose-built for the task, the SN8 common dome will soon be ‘sleeved’ by one or several stacked steel rings, after which it can be welded to the rest of the Starship’s tank. An engine section and thrust structure – likely SN8’s – in the late stages of assembly was spotted three days prior, while an upper tank dome that could be for either SN8 or test tank SN7.1 was captured in the same photos.

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(NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
(NASASpaceflight – bocachicagal)
(NASASpaceflight – Nomadd)

In the last photo, taken on July 13th, there’s even signs of what could be Starship SN9 – hinted at by the appearance of two Starship engine sections signified by the pattern of welds on their exteriors. Those welds are incontrovertible signs of the stringers used to strengthen Starship engine sections and they haven’t been used anywhere else on past prototypes.

Based on the sheer number of steel rings and domes currently floating around SpaceX’s Boca Chica, Texas Starship factory, SN8 could be a just a week – or even less – away from final stacking operations. If SN5 leaves the pad intact and completes its wet dress rehearsal, static fire, and flight debut without issue, SN8 could be up to bat much sooner than later.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla and SpaceX merger talks hit a new stage, and one hurdle remains

Tesla and SpaceX merger talks are reportedly advancing, and a deal could arrive by December.

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Tesla and SpaceX are moving closer to a combination, with a deal announcement possible as soon as December, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The companies have also discussed a scenario in which the announcement slips into early 2027.

Boards and advisers on both sides are now working through the terms of the deal and the governance structure of the combined company, according to the report. One open item is how many SpaceX shares Tesla investors would receive. Bloomberg had previously reported that the two companies were aiming to announce a deal in the first half of next year and close it before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, so a December announcement would pull that schedule forward by months.

Tesla shares rose as much as 1.9% to $398.35 after the report, while SpaceX gained 0.6% to $140.63. SpaceX carries a market value of about $1.9 trillion following its June IPO, and Tesla is valued at about $1.55 trillion, which would make a combination the largest corporate deal on record. Neither company responded to requests for comment.

The talks became official on October 20, when Elon Musk said on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call that both companies had formed special committees of independent directors to study a merger, as Teslarati reported. Musk said he could not take part because he is “a conflicted party” and called the process “an odd kabuki dance.” He also noted that Tesla would need approval from 50 percent of all outstanding shares, a bar the company missed in 2025 when a board declassification proposal won support from only 39.4 percent.

China remains the biggest structural problem. Bloomberg’s sources said the companies still need to work out how to isolate Tesla’s large and profitable manufacturing business in China from SpaceX’s U.S. government and defense contracts. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta described those two factors last month as “key dynamics that are at odds with each other” for regulatory and shareholder approval. Musk has repeatedly said Tesla has no plans to separate its China business, a position he restated in August after ARK Invest predicted a merger announcement before the end of the year.

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Washington adds another layer. Democrats took control of Congress in this month’s midterms and have pledged to investigate Musk’s business and political activities, which could bring added scrutiny to a deal involving one of the Pentagon’s most important launch and satellite contractors.

The report also lands three weeks before Tesla’s December 3 annual meeting at Giga Texas. That ballot has only three items, led by the re-election of Musk, board chair Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel, and includes no merger proposal. Any deal announced in December would likely require a separate special meeting for Tesla shareholders to vote on it.

The two companies already share a growing list of projects, including the Terafab semiconductor plant in Texas. Tesla’s next generation Roadster, which uses cold gas thrusters built on SpaceX hardware, turned up on display at SpaceX headquarters last month and has become one of the clearest public examples of that overlap.

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SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big

SpaceX puts a $50 billion price on its Arizona supercompute campus ahead of December’s hearing.

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SpaceX has put a price tag on the supercomputer campus it wants to build in the southern Arizona desert. In a statement Thursday, the company said it is pursuing a roughly $50 billion supercompute campus in Cochise County, about 80 miles east of Tucson. Together with a separate facility planned at Starbase, Texas, the two projects add up to more than $74 billion in planned investment.

The Arizona figure had not been disclosed before. SpaceX’s involvement only became public on November 4, when company representatives hosted a packed town hall at Cochise Elementary School for an application filed under the name Tombstone Resources LLC. A SpaceX representative told residents the filing used another name because putting SpaceX on it “draws attention” from outside the county, local station KVOA reported.

The application describes a 747-acre site near the Willcox Playa with up to nine buildings of about 493,000 square feet each. SpaceX plans to bring the campus online in four phases of roughly 1.5 GW, reaching 6 GW at full build, backed by a 24 GWh battery system and about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades. At that size, it would draw about 2.5 times more power than every data center in Maricopa County combined, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.

SpaceX says the project will create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, and that it could cut electricity bills for members of the local cooperatives by up to 20 percent. The campus would use dry cooling with no industrial groundwater use. Its application estimates ongoing water needs of 7 to 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 homes consume.

Power is the bigger question. The site sits next to the Apache Generating Station, a coal and natural gas plant with about 1 GW of capacity that had been slated to retire by 2028. SpaceX told residents its investment could expand the station to more than 6 GW.

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Local opposition is organized. A petition asking the county to deny the permit has gathered about 2,400 signatures, and the nearby playa is a landing spot for federally protected sandhill cranes, which SpaceX says its design accounts for. The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, with written comments due November 27. If approved, construction could start in March 2027.

The Texas project faces a vote the same day. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement for SpaceX’s $24 billion gas plant and supercompute facility at its own December 9 hearing, as Teslarati reported. SpaceX said Thursday the Starbase site has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs, and it committed $220 million to Brownsville’s water and wastewater systems, $40 million of which has been paid.

Both campuses would expand a footprint still centered on the Memphis area, where SpaceX’s Colossus data centers run largely on gas turbines and the company won a permit for a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi earlier this year. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute. The Arizona campus alone, at full build, would be more than three times that size.

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Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer

Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.

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Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.

On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.

Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.


Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.

Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.

The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.

The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.

Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.

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