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SpaceX Starship boosters could forgo landings entirely, says Elon Musk

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that Starship’s Super Heavy boosters could forgo landings entirely, relying instead on a wild crane-based solution to recover the world’s largest rocket stage.

Starship’s Super Heavy booster prepares to boost back to the pad after launch. (SpaceX)

As previously discussed on Teslarati, the Super Heavy booster tasked with carrying a ~1400-ton (~300,000 lb) Starship around 25% of the way to orbit will be the largest rocket stage ever built – and by a large margin.

“Standing about as tall as an entire two-stage Falcon 9 rocket at 70 meters (230 ft) tip to tail, the Super Heavy booster tasked with getting Starship about a quarter of the way to orbit will be the largest rocket stage ever built. Outfitted with up to 28 Raptors capable of producing more than ~7300 metric tons (~16.2 million lbf) of thrust at liftoff, Super Heavy will also be the most powerful rocket ever built, respectively outclassing Saturn V and SpaceX’s own Falcon Heavy by a factor of more than two and three.”

Teslarati.com – December 29th, 2020

Prior to today, December 30th, SpaceX’s plan was to more or less recover Super Heavy boosters in a similar fashion to Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, landing them either far downrange on an ocean-based platform or returning to touch down as close as possible to the launch pad. Ever since the first iteration of SpaceX’s Mars rocket was publicly revealed in 2016, SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk have also maintained a consistent desire to land Super Heavy boosters directly on top of the launch mount after a great deal of refinement.

Launch mount recovery would require unprecedented precision and accuracy and add a new element of risk or a need for extraordinarily sturdy pad hardware. However, the benefits would be equally significant, entirely eliminating the need for expensive recovery assets, time-consuming transport, and even the time it would take to crane Super Heavy boosters back onto the launch mount from a pad-adjacent landing zone.

Instead, Musk says that SpaceX might be able to quite literally catch Super Heavy in mid-air, grabbing the booster before it can touch the ground by somehow slotting an elaborate “launch tower arm” underneath its steel grid fins. Although such a solution sounds about as complex and risky as it gets, it would technically preclude the need for any and all booster recovery infrastructure – even including the legs Super Heavy would otherwise need.

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While true, catching Super Heavy by its grid fins would likely demand that control surfaces and the structures they attach to be substantially overbuilt – especially if Musk means that the crane arm mechanism would be able to catch anywhere along the deployed fins’ 7m (23 ft) length. Even more importantly, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that such a complex and unproven recovery method could be made to work reliably on the first one or several tries, implying that early boosters will still need some kind of rudimentary landing legs.

In other words, much like direct-to-launch-mount landings, mid-air-crane-catch recovery is probably not a feature expected to debut on Super Heavy v1.0.

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 begins Robotaxi certification push in Arizona: report

Tesla seems serious about expanding its Robotaxi service to several states in the coming months.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has initiated discussions with Arizona transportation regulators to certify its driverless Robotaxi service in the state, as per a recent report from Bloomberg News. The move follows Tesla’s launch of its Robotaxi pilot program in Austin, Texas, as well as CEO Elon Musk’s recent comments about the service’s expansion in the Bay Area.

The Arizona Department of Transportation confirmed to Bloomberg that Tesla has reached out to begin the certification process for autonomous ride-sharing operations in the state. While details remain limited, the outreach suggests that Tesla is serious about expanding its driverless Robotaxi service to several territories in the coming months.

The Arizona development comes as Tesla prepares to expand its service area in Austin this weekend, as per CEO Elon Musk in a post on X. Musk also stated that Tesla is targeting the San Francisco Bay Area as its next major market, with a potential launch “in a month or two,” pending regulatory approvals.

Tesla first launched its autonomous ride-hailing program on June 22 in Austin with a small fleet of Model Y vehicles, accompanied by a Tesla employee in the passenger seat to monitor safety. While still classified as a test, Musk has said the program will expand to about 1,000 vehicles in the coming months. Tesla will later upgrade its Robotaxi fleet with the Cyercab, a two-seater that is designed without a steering wheel.

Sightings of Cybercab castings around the Giga Texas complex suggests that Tesla may be ramping the initial trial production of the self-driving two-seater. Tesla, for its part, has noted in the past that volume production of the Cybercab is expected to start sometime next year.

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In California, Tesla has already applied for a transportation charter-party carrier permit from the state’s Public Utilities Commission. The company is reportedly taking a phased approach to operating in California, with the Robotaxi service starting with pre-arranged rides for employees in vehicles with safety drivers.

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Tesla sets November 6 date for 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting

The automaker announced the date on Thursday in a Form 8-K.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has scheduled its 2025 annual shareholder meeting for November 6, addressing investor concerns that the company was nearing a legal deadline to hold the event. 

The automaker announced the date on Thursday in a Form 8-K submitted to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The company also listed a new proposal submission deadline of July 31 for items to be included in the proxy statement.

Tesla’s announcement followed calls from a group of 27 shareholders, including the leaders of large public pension funds, which urged Tesla’s board to formally set the meeting date, as noted in a report from The Wall Street Journal

The group noted that under Texas law, where Tesla is now incorporated, companies must hold annual meetings within 13 months of the last one if requested by shareholders. Tesla’s previous annual shareholder meeting was held on June 13, 2024, which placed the July 13 deadline in focus.

Tesla originally stated in its 2024 annual report that it would file its proxy statement by the end of April. However, an amended filing on April 30 indicated that the Board of Directors had not yet finalized a meeting date, at least at the time.

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The April filing also confirmed that Tesla’s board had formed a special committee to evaluate certain matters related to CEO Elon Musk’s compensation plan. Musk’s CEO performance award remains at the center of a lengthy legal dispute in Delaware, Tesla’s former state of incorporation.

Due to the aftermath of Musk’s legal dispute about his compensation plan in Delaware, he has not been paid for his work at Tesla for several years. Musk, for his part, has noted that he is more concerned about his voting stake in Tesla than his actual salary.

At last year’s annual meeting, TSLA shareholders voted to reapprove Elon Musk’s compensation plan and ratified Tesla’s decision to relocate its legal domicile from Delaware to Texas.

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Grok coming to Tesla vehicles next week “at the latest:” Elon Musk

Grok’s rollout to Tesla vehicles is expected to begin next week at the latest.

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Credit: Tesla China

Elon Musk announced on Thursday that Grok, the large language model developed by his startup xAI, will soon be available in Tesla vehicles. Grok’s rollout to Tesla vehicles is expected to begin next week at the latest, further deepening the ties between the two Elon Musk-led companies.

Tesla–xAI synergy

Musk confirmed the news on X shortly after livestreaming the release of Grok 4, xAI’s latest large language model. “Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest,” Musk wrote in a post on social media platform X.

During the livestream, Musk and several members of the xAI team highlighted several upgrades to Grok 4’s voice capabilities and performance metrics, positioning the LLM as competitive with top-tier models from OpenAI and Google.

The in-vehicle integration of Grok marks a new chapter in Tesla’s AI development. While Tesla has long relied on in-house systems for autonomous driving and energy optimization, Grok’s integration would introduce conversational AI directly into its vehicles’ user experience. This integration could potentially improve customer interaction inside Tesla vehicles.

xAI and Tesla’s collaborative footprint

Grok’s upcoming rollout to Tesla vehicles adds to a growing business relationship between Tesla and xAI. Earlier this year, Tesla disclosed that it generated $198.3 million in revenue from commercial, consulting, and support agreements with xAI, as noted in a report from Bloomberg News. A large portion of that amount, however, came from the sale of Megapack energy storage systems to the artificial intelligence startup.

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In July 2023, Musk polled X users about whether Tesla should invest $5 billion in xAI. While no formal investment has been made so far, 68% of poll participants voted yes, and Musk has since stated that the idea would be discussed with Tesla’s board.

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