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SpaceX rapidly stacks Starship and Super Heavy with ‘Mechazilla’

Full Stack Round 3. (NASASpaceflight)

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4 years ago

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For the second time ever, SpaceX has used Starbase’s ‘Mechazilla’ tower and arms to stack a Starship upper stage on top of a Super Heavy booster.

This time around, though, SpaceX clearly learned a great deal from its second February 9th Starship stack and was able to complete the stacking process several times faster on March 15th. During the second attempt, depending on how one measures it, it took SpaceX around three and a half hours from the start of the lift to Starship fully resting on Super Heavy. With Stack #3, however, SpaceX was able to lift, translate, lower, and attach Starship to Super Heavy in just over an hour.

Oddly, SpaceX managed that feat without a claw-like device meant to grab and stabilize Super Heavy during stacking operations. For Stack #2, all three arms were fully in play. First, a pair of ‘chopsticks’ – giant arms meant to grab, lift, and even recover Starships and boosters – grabbed Ship 20, lifted it close to 100 meters (~300 ft) above the ground, rotated it over top of Super Heavy, and briefly paused. A third arm – known as the ship quick-disconnect or umbilical arm – swung in and extended its ‘claw’ to grab onto hardpoints located near the top of Super Heavy. Once the booster was secured, the ‘chopsticks’ slowly lowered Ship 20 onto Booster 4’s interstage and six clamps joined the two stages together.

A few hours after the two were clamped together, an umbilical device located on the swing arm extended and connected to Ship 20. It’s unclear if the panel was actually used in any way but the umbilical is designed to connect Starship to ground systems to supply propellant, power, communications, and other consumables. Regardless, the device did appear to connect to Starship. Prior to Stack #3, however, SpaceX removed both of the swing arm’s ‘claws,’ meaning that it had no way to grab onto Super Heavy. That diminished capability clearly appeared to have zero impact on the ease or speed of the stacking process given that it was completed a full three times faster than Stack #2.

SpaceX removed the umbilical arm’s claws prior to Stack #3. (Richard Angle)

That could imply that the claw is either completely unnecessary or only needed when attempting stacking operations in extreme winds. What is clear is that the claw removal likely only shaved a handful of minutes off of the full stacking process. What really saved time on Stack #3 was a faster lift and fewer pauses throughout – especially while lowering Starship the last several meters onto Super Heavy. During Stack #2, SpaceX took close to an hour and a half to fully lower Ship 20. The same sequence took just ~20 minutes during Stack #3.

Still, after the impressively rapid one-hour stack, it then took SpaceX close to two hours to connect the swing arm’s umbilical to Starship, leaving plenty of room for improvement. Ultimately, assuming SpaceX can speed up the start of the stacking process and replicate its Starship success with Super Heavy, which will also need to be grabbed and installed on an even more complex launch mount, it’s possible that Starbase’s orbital launch integration system is already capable of supporting multiple Starship launches per day. Of course, SpaceX has yet to demonstrate that the orbital launch site can be turned around in a matter of hours after being subjected to the violence and stresses of a Starship launch.

More significantly, SpaceX has never even attempted an orbital Starship launch, recovery, or reuse. That leaves the company in the unusual position of building and testing expensive, specialized support equipment before it actually knows that the rocket that equipment is designed to support is in any way capable of taking advantage of it. For an orbital spacecraft the size of Starship, only the Space Shuttle comes anywhere close and NASA’s all-time record for orbiter turnaround was 54 days. SpaceX has technically flown two Falcon 9 boosters twice in 27 days but no matter how impressive that feat is, reusing a far smaller suborbital booster is vastly easier than reusing a massive orbital spacecraft.

At the end of the day, it’s not really SpaceX’s fault that it’s still waiting for permission to attempt orbital test flights. Nonetheless, the growing gap in maturity between Starship and Super Heavy and the orbital launch site designed to support them continuously raises the risk that SpaceX will have to extensively redesign the rocket, its support equipment, or both if significant problems arise during orbital test flights.

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Up next, there’s a chance that SpaceX could attempt to cryoproof Starship while on top of Super Heavy – or perhaps both stages at once. While SpaceX has performed more than half a dozen cryoproofs of Ship 20 and Booster 4 using the orbital launch site’s propellant storage and distribution system, it hasn’t fully tested the hardware needed to route hundreds of tons of propellant hundreds of feet into the air – essential for full-stack testing and launch operations.

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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 Full Self-Driving v14.3.7 early review: FSD saved me from an accident

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6 hours ago

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August 2, 2026

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Credit: Teslarati

Tesla released Full Self-Driving version 14.3.7 yesterday, and after about 90 miles of testing today, it is evident there are some definite fixes from version 14.3.6, which I wrote about last week and called a regression.

Within the first 40 minutes of my drive on v14.3.7, it saved me from getting into an accident with an unaware Dodge Charger driver, and some of the things Tesla seemed to miss in v14.3.6 were definitely improved. All in all, the release so far has some really great performance, and I’m looking forward to testing it further.

For now, here’s everything I noticed with v14.3.7:

Overall Improvement

Just generally speaking from a ride perspective, this was a really great experience. A lot of the hesitancy I experienced on v14.3.6 was gone. There were no instances of brake-stabbing, wheel-jerking, or any uncertain or unconfident movements. It was void of anything that I felt made it timid with v14.3.6.

The one thing I do hope to see down the road is a smaller need to adjust Speed Profiles so often. Because Tesla calls FSD “Supervised,” I’m okay with needing to hit the scroll wheel a few times a drive.

However, I hope that things can be incrementally improved upon with speed. Sometimes it’s too fast; other times it’s too slow. It’s a difficult thing to hone in and refine, but I hope it eventually gets there.

I didn’t notice any significant left lane camping or any behaviors that were completely out of line. I am hopeful that this opinion does not change, but after driving a few days with this version and putting it in a variety of different situations, you are exposed to more behaviors, some of which are not necessarily what I’d prefer.

The big things to notice, at least in my experience thus far, are that the major issues with previous versions — meaning the braking stabbing and wheel jerking — simply weren’t there. That’s enough to already consider this progress compared to .6.

Manual Signal Override is More Responsive

On .6, I had quite a few issues with FSD ignoring my manually input turn signals. If Tesla wants to call it “Supervised,” then the car should not ignore any input the driver gives. If I touch the accelerator on FSD, the car speeds up.

The car did a great job of obeying my turn signals when I wanted it to change lanes, which is welcome.

Parking Lot Performance

Before .6, I traditionally took over in nearly every parking lot my car entered, because I knew it would not park somewhere that I wanted, and usually, it was just a tad too timid in this setting.

The one bright spot of .6 was how well it handled parking lots. This continued with v14.3.7:

 

I’m always really happy to see progress at all, but once parking preferences come to FSD, as long as this performance is still around, that could potentially be the biggest improvement I’ve seen in FSD in the year I’ve been using it personally on a daily basis.

Full Self-Driving Averts Disaster

A Dodge Charger changed into my lane without checking if I was there, running me off the road. FSD made the initial avoidance maneuver; I grabbed the wheel out of instinct, looked in my side mirror to ensure I had nobody following closely behind, hit the brake, and straightened the car back up to avoid a curb:

There have been quite a few responses to this video stating that I should never have grabbed the wheel. To be honest, I really wish I had not done so, because I do believe FSD would have avoided any sort of collision with anything, including the car or the curb.

However, this was the first time I had ever been this close to being hit while using FSD. My natural reaction was to take over. I think if I had had something like this happen before, my reaction might have been different.

Hitting the brake avoided hitting the curb, while FSD swerved to avoid the car. My concern after the car was clear of my front end was the curb. All in all, I’m really happy with how things turned out, and I think anyone could be a critic of how I handled it. I only had a split second to really make a decision, and thankfully, any damage was avoided.

It is clear FSD managed to avoid the car coming down before I was able to. I truly credit FSD for avoiding the collision.

What Needs to Improve

Better Recognition of Potholes, Uneven Roads, Sharp Changes in Roadway/Bumps

On Friday, my Fianceè and I were in the car, and FSD was driving us. We crossed over a roadway that has a traffic light, and FSD was traveling at 40 MPH on Standard, 5 MPH over the speed limit. Everything was more than reasonable.

However, the road we were crossing at the light has a major bump both as you start and finish crossing it. Without a speed reduction, your car can go airborne. The Tesla did just this on Friday on v14.3.6; it was an uncomfortable bounce that pretty much confirmed I would not ever let FSD go over again unless we were sitting at that intersection when there is a red light.

I even tried scrolling down into Sloth quickly, but I ended up just taking over:

A few people have said it remains related to the vision-based approach and its difficulty comprehending 3D. This is a huge issue because this can cause serious damage at certain speeds.

Navigation

Nothing new here. I still turn off “Online Routing” quite frequently to get the car to take logical routes from time to time.

Auto Wipers

Auto Wipers are just plain bad. I really hope Tesla just uses a rain sensor. I thought they had improved at one point, but I still get dry wipes, Speed 4 on a drizzle, and Speed 2 on a steady rain. In reality, these should be switched.

You can watch our full review of Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.7 below:

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Elon Musk

SpaceX’s biggest test yet arrives this week and it’s not a rocket launch

Published

24 hours ago

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August 1, 2026

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SpaceX will report second quarter results after the market closes on Tuesday, August 4, marking the first time the company has opened its books to the public since its record IPO in June. Management will host a live audio only webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET, streamed on X, with no dial in option.

The debut carries more weight than a typical first quarter as a public company. Two trading days after the release, on August 6, the first tranche of SpaceX’s lockup expires, freeing roughly 911.5 million insider and employee shares, worth well over $100 billion at current prices and the largest such release in Wall Street history. A second, larger tranche tied to the stock trading 30 percent above its $135 IPO price never triggered, since shares have spent most of July trading below that price.

Wall Street’s models point to revenue near $6.9 billion for the quarter, up sharply from the $4.69 billion SpaceX reported in the first quarter, with a narrower per share loss than the $1.27 posted three months earlier, according to estimates compiled by Motley Fool. Those numbers will be the first look at how SpaceX’s three segments, Starlink, launch and AI, are performing independently.

SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

Investors heading into the call have a specific list of questions. How many net new Starlink subscribers did SpaceX add after ending March with 10.3 million, and is average revenue per user holding up as the service expands into lower income markets. How much of the AI segment’s revenue reflects contract signings with Anthropic, Google and Reflection AI this year, deals that combined could annualize to nearly $28 billion if fully ramped. Whether capital expenditures, which nearly doubled in the AI segment alone between 2024 and 2025, are still accelerating or starting to plateau. And whether management offers any forward guidance at all, something SpaceX has never done publicly.

The report will also land days after Elon Musk publicly denied a Wall Street Journal report describing internal planning to separate Tesla’s China business ahead of a potential Tesla-SpaceX merger. Whether Musk or SpaceX executives address that speculation on the call, even indirectly, maybe something investors will be listening for on Tuesday.

As Teslarati reported after Musk’s own warning to short sellers last week, the CEO has made clear he expects skeptics to be proven wrong over time. Tuesday will be the first chance for the numbers themselves to make that case.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX’s Starship just got filmed by its own cargo

SpaceX released new footage of Starship in space captured by the Starlink satellites it deployed.

Published

1 day ago

on

August 1, 2026

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SpaceX released a new video Friday evening showing Starship from an angle showcased by its own Starlink satellites, watching the rocket drift away in orbit.

The 65 second clip, posted on X, stitches together footage from four cameras mounted on a single Starlink V3 satellite. It opens with a close view of Starship’s 171 foot upper stage, still catching sunlight, then pulls back as the two spacecraft separate.

The footage comes from Starship’s 13th flight test, which launched July 24 from Starbase after a scrubbed attempt and an abort caused by an engine issue the week before. When Flight 13 finally flew, it carried the first batch of functional Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever deployed, twenty of them, with six equipped with cameras meant to scan the ship’s heat shield during reentry.

Flight 13 checked most of its boxes. Starship deployed all 20 satellites, relit a Raptor engine in space, and splashed down softly in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia. Musk’s longer term plan calls for a Starlink V3 constellation of 100,000 satellites, according to a recent FCC filing, with Starship as the only vehicle capable of launching them at the volume that requires. Each Starship flight is designed to carry up to 60 V3 satellites once the vehicle reaches routine service, well beyond what Falcon 9 can carry in a single mission.

Starship is next expected to fly with an attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower’s mechanical arms, a maneuver SpaceX has so far reserved for the Super Heavy booster.

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