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SpaceX installs Super Heavy booster on launch mount with giant robot arms
SpaceX has transported the most powerful rocket booster ever assembled to its Starbase orbital launch site (OLS) and used giant robotic arms to install it.
It’s not the first such trip for Starship’s Super Heavy first stage in general, nor for this specific booster, which is known as Booster 7 or B7. Booster 7 first headed to the pad on March 31st and successfully completed two major cryogenic proof tests, but was then severely damaged during a subsequent structural stress test. After a few weeks of repairs back at the factory, B7 rolled to the pad a second time and completed a third cryoproof test and returned to the factory on May 14th, where it stayed until June 23rd.
After almost six weeks of additional work, Booster 7 rolled to the launch pad for the third time – possibly its last trip.
Even Booster 7’s first rollout wasn’t unprecedented, however. In September 2021, Booster 4 – an earlier prototype with fewer engines, less thrust, and several other differences – arrived at the launch site with 29 Raptor V1 engines installed. Over the next six months, SpaceX slowly finished the booster, conducted a handful of proof tests, and eventually performed three ‘full-stack’ tests with Starship S20. For awhile, SpaceX hoped to eventually fly B4 and S20 on Starship’s first orbital launch attempt, but that plan never came close to fruition.
Booster 4 was particularly underwhelming and never even attempted a single static fire despite having all 29 of its engines fully installed and encased inside a shell-like heat shield. Thankfully, Booster 7 appears to have a much better chance of at least attempting one or several static fires, even if there’s no guarantee that it will make it through that test campaign in good enough condition to support Starship’s orbital launch debut.
SpaceX used the six weeks Booster 7 spent back in a factory assembly bay to finish installing aerocovers, surfaces known as chines or strakes, car-sized grid fins, Starlink internet dishes, and – most importantly – 33 upgraded Raptor V2 engines. Combined, Booster 7 should be able to produce up to 7600 metric tons (~16.8M lbf) of thrust – 41% more thrust than Booster 4 was theoretically capable of. Crucially, SpaceX also finished installing Booster 7’s Raptor heat shield in the same period, completing in six weeks work that took Booster 4 more like half a year.
That is likely because testing Booster 4, for whatever reason, just wasn’t a priority for SpaceX. Preparing Booster 7 for static fire testing, however, is clearly a front-and-center priority in 2022. With its heat shield and all 33 Raptors installed, Booster 7 will be ready to kick off static fire testing almost as soon as it’s installed on Starbase’s orbital launch mount.
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According to CEO Elon Musk, Booster 7 will start by igniting just one or a few Raptor engines. SpaceX has never ignited more than six Raptor V1 engines simultaneously and never tested more than three engines at a time on a Super Heavy booster. That plan could have easily changed, however. Either way, Super Heavy B7 will be treading significantly new ground. Even before actual static fires begin, Booster 7 will also need to complete one or more wet dress rehearsals (WDRs), a test that exactly simulates a launch but stops just before the moment of ignition.
If SpaceX attempts a full wet dress rehearsal, in which the booster would be filled with more than 3000 tons (~6.6M lb) of liquid oxygen (LOx) and liquid methane (LCH4), it would be a first for Super Heavy and just as big of a test of the orbital launch site. Booster 7 will also need to test out its autogenous pressurization, which replaces helium with hot oxygen and methane gas to pressurize the rocket’s propellant tanks.
Several hours after Super Heavy B7 arrived (for the third time) at the orbital launch site, SpaceX used two giant arms attached to the pad’s launch tower to lift the ~70-meter (~230 ft) tall rocket onto the launch mount. While Musk says that the ultimate goal is to use those arms to catch Starship and Super Heavy out of mid-air, their current purpose is to take the place of the tall and unwieldy crane that would otherwise need to be used to lift either stage. The arms are an extremely complex solution but they do allow SpaceX to lift, install, and remove Starship stages remotely and insulate those processes from wind conditions, which cranes are sensitive to.
Once fully secured by the mount’s 20 hold-down clamps, the booster will be connected to ground systems and SpaceX can prepare B7 to start the next stage of preflight testing as early as Monday, June 27th.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
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The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
