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SpaceX to replace Falcon 9’s titanium grid fins with steel on Starship’s Super Heavy booster
Following a question on Twitter about how SpaceX intends to manufacture the truly massive grid fins shown in renders of Starship’s Super Heavy booster, CEO Elon Musk revealed that SpaceX will build them out of welded steel.
For the first several years of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy booster recovery operations, SpaceX built grid fins – used for maneuvering the rockets at high speeds – out of aluminum. With Falcon 9 Block 5, aluminum grid fins were phased out entirely in favor of larger titanium fins, necessitated by exceptionally high-speed reentries that nearly melted through the aluminum fins on several occasions. Now, SpaceX wants to move from titanium to steel fins for its next-generation Starship launch vehicle.
Welded steel— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2019
In response to the Twitter user’s question, Musk simply stated that Super Heavy’s grid fins would be manufactured out of “welded steel”, certainly keeping with the CEO’s now well-known love for the material. In October 2018, Musk finally managed to convince most of the senior engineers reporting to him that – despite years of work and full-scale testing – SpaceX needed to radically redesign Starship.
Prior to this radical change, SpaceX had spent at least 2-3 years on a Starship design (formerly Big F_____ Spaceship; BFS) made almost entirely out of carbon fiber composites, an extremely lightweight material that can be optimized for high strength. However, as Musk ultimately concluded in late 2018, although carbon composites are undeniably light and strong (optimal for spaceflight), they have extremely low heat tolerance and can react violently with supercooled liquid oxygen. Built almost entirely out of aluminum alloys with similarly low melting points, Falcon 9 has also struggled with the challenges posed by material choices, made far more difficult by the need to recover and reuse orbital-class rocket stages.
Musk ultimately decided that redesigning Starship with steel (alloys with particularly high melting points and good strength) was the right way to go. According to Musk, the high-quality carbon fiber composites SpaceX was originally pursuing cost something like $130,000 per metric ton, translating to a truly gobsmacking cost – accounting for unavoidable wastage – of $400M-$500M or more just to buy the materials needed to build a single Starship and Super Heavy booster. Steel, on the other hand, is quite literally 50 times cheaper, costing SpaceX around $2500 per ton, or as little as $10M in structural materials for each ship/booster pair.
Man of Stainless Steel
Speaking at a September 28th presentation on the 2019 status of Starship’s design, CEO Elon Musk couldn’t praise his decision to move to stainless steel enough, describing it as likely being the single best design decision he has ever made. It remains to be seen if the eccentric self-taught engineer’s decision was the correct one, but the progress SpaceX has made in just 10-11 months is undeniable. SpaceX has gone from a nearly blank slate to Starhopper’s 150m (500ft) test flight in ~6 months and gone from nothing to Starship Mk1 in another 6 or so months.
According to Musk, the properties of stainless steel – mainly a high melting point/working temperature and a tendency to strengthen at cryogenic temperatures – mean that the relatively heavy material is able to produce a launch vehicle that could eventually be far lighter and higher-performance than one made with carbon composites (BFR) or aluminum alloys (Falcon 9). Thanks to those properties, Starship/Super Heavy will become much stronger when filled with cold propellant and will also require little to no external heat shielding on its leeward half, whereas a reusable Al/composite rocket would require major thermal protection on nearly all exposed surfaces.
As part of the move to remove any ultra-expensive nonessential materials from the designs of Starship and Super Heavy, Musk has apparently also turned his gaze on the booster’s grid fins. As described at the top of this article, SpaceX replaced Falcon 9’s aluminum grid fins with titanium fins, requiring the company to create the largest single-piece titanium casting in the world. Musk has repeatedly indicated that each grid fin is extremely expensive.
In light of their expense, Musk (or SpaceX) has seemingly decided that future (larger?) SpaceX rockets will try to avoid large, titanium castings. Super Heavy nevertheless still needs massive grid fins: official renders published by SpaceX last month revealed a new diamond shape for the booster’s fins, and Musk later took to Twitter to reveal that they would be made out of welded steel instead of titanium.
Based on SpaceX’s official 2019 Super Heavy renders, the booster’s grid fins measure approximately 7m by 3m (23 ft by 10 ft), dwarfing Falcon 9’s titanium fins (perhaps 2m by 1.2m) with something like 8-10 times the surface area. Although 301-series stainless steel has a melting point and heat capacity roughly 15% lower than Grade 5 titanium, its strength characteristics are otherwise similar, while also remaining mechanically functional at almost three times the working temperature of titanium (840C vs. 330C).
Most importantly, not only is 301 steel roughly 15-20 times cheaper than titanium, but the process of fabricating large steel components – particularly with welding instead of casting – is dramatically faster, easier, and cheaper than working with and forming titanium. With their reasonably similar properties and the increased size of Super Heavy, it’s likely that steel grid fins would exhibit little to no ablation during even the hottest atmospheric reentries, and it would nevertheless be extremely easy and cheap to either repair or replace fins in the unlikely event of damage.
Given just how quickly and relatively easily SpaceX has built full-scale flight hardware out of steel and assuming there are no technical showstoppers caused by changing scales, it wouldn’t be surprising in the slightest to see SpaceX fabricate and test welded steel grid fins on Falcon 9 boosters in the near future.
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Tesla is updating Cybertruck owners on its timeline of a massive feature that has yet to ship: Powershare with Powerwall.
Powershare is a bidirectional charging feature exclusive to Cybertruck, which allows the vehicle’s battery to act as a portable power source for homes, appliances, tools, other EVs, and more. It was announced in late 2023 as part of Tesla’s push into vehicle-to-everything energy sharing, and acting as a giant portable charger is the main advantage, as it can provide backup power during outages.
Cybertruck’s Powershare system supports both vehicle-to-load (V2L) and vehicle-to-home (V2H), making it flexible and well-rounded for a variety of applications.
However, even though the feature was promised with Cybertruck, it has yet to be shipped to vehicles. Tesla communicated with owners through email recently regarding Powershare with Powerwall, which essentially has the pickup act as an extended battery.
Powerwall discharge would be prioritized before tapping into the truck’s larger pack.
However, Tesla is still working on getting the feature out to owners, an email said:
“We’re writing to let you know that the Powershare with Powerwall feature is still in development and is now scheduled for release in mid-2026.
This new release date gives us additional time to design and test this feature, ensuring its ability to communicate and optimize energy sharing between your vehicle and many configurations and generations of Powerwall. We are also using this time to develop additional Powershare features that will help us continue to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”
Owners have expressed some real disappointment in Tesla’s continuous delays in releasing the feature, as it was expected to be released by late 2024, but now has been pushed back several times to mid-2026, according to the email.
Foundation Series Cybertruck buyers paid extra, expecting the feature to be rolled out with their vehicle upon pickup.
Cybertruck’s Lead Engineer, Wes Morrill, even commented on the holdup:
As a Cybertruck owner who also has Powerwall, I empathize with the disappointed comments.
To their credit, the team has delivered powershare functionality to Cybertruck customers who otherwise have no backup with development of the powershare gateway. As well as those with solar…
— Wes (@wmorrill3) December 12, 2025
He said that “it turned out to be much harder than anticipated to make powershare work seamlessly with existing Powerwalls through existing wall connectors. Two grid-forming devices need to negotiate who will form and who will follow, depending on the state of charge of each, and they need to do this without a network and through multiple generations of hardware, and test and validate this process through rigorous certifications to ensure grid safety.”
It’s nice to see the transparency, but it is justified for some Cybertruck owners to feel like they’ve been bait-and-switched.
Tesla has opened its northernmost Supercharger in Fairbanks, Alaska, with eight V4 stalls located in one of the most frigid cities in the U.S.
Located just 196 miles from the Arctic Circle, Fairbanks’s average temperature for the week was around -12 degrees Fahrenheit. However, there are plenty of Tesla owners in Alaska who have been waiting for more charging options out in public.
There are only 36 total Supercharger stalls in Alaska, despite being the largest state in the U.S.
Eight Superchargers were added to Fairbanks, which will eventually be a 48-stall station. Tesla announced its activation today:
North America’s northernmost Supercharger Fairbanks, AK (8 stalls) opened to public. https://t.co/M4l04DZ6B5 pic.twitter.com/zyL6bDuA93
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) December 12, 2025
The base price per kWh is $0.43 at the Fairbanks Supercharger. Thanks to its V4 capabilities, it can charge at speeds up to 325 kW.
Despite being the northernmost Supercharger in North America, it is not even in the Top 5 northernmost Superchargers globally, because Alaska is south of Norway. The northernmost Supercharger is in Honningsvåg, Norway. All of the Top 5 are in the Scandanavian country.
Tesla’s Supercharger expansion in 2025 has been impressive, and although it experienced some early-quarter slowdowns due to V3-to-V4 hardware transitions, it has been the company’s strongest year for deployments.
🚨🚨 Tesla Supercharging had a HUGE year, and they deserve to be recognized.
🍔 Opened Tesla Diner, a drive-in movie theater with awesome, Chef-curated cuisine
🔌 Gave access to Superchargers to several EV makers, including Hyundai, Genesis, Mercedes-Benz, Kia, Lucid, Toyota,… pic.twitter.com/yYT2QEbqoW
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) December 10, 2025
Through the three quarters of 2025, the company has added 7,753 stations and 73,817 stalls across the world, a 16 percent increase in stations and an 18 percent increase in stalls compared to last year.
Tesla is on track to add over 12,000 stalls for the full year, achieving an average of one new stall every hour, an impressive statistic.
Recently, the company wrapped up construction at its Supercharger Oasis in Lost Hills, California, a 168-stall Supercharger that Tesla Solar Panels completely power. It is the largest Supercharger in the world.
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Tesla shocks with latest Robotaxi testing move
Why Tesla has chosen to use a couple of Model S units must have a reason; the company is calculated in its engineering and data collection efforts, so this is definitely more than “we just felt like giving our drivers a change of scenery.”
Tesla Model S vehicles were spotted performing validation testing with LiDAR rigs in California today, a pretty big switch-up compared to what we are used to seeing on the roads.
Tesla utilizes the Model Y crossover for its Robotaxi fleet. It is adequately sized, the most popular vehicle in its lineup, and is suitable for a wide variety of applications. It provides enough luxury for a single rider, but enough room for several passengers, if needed.
However, the testing has seemingly expanded to one of Tesla’s premium flagship offerings, as the Model S was spotted with the validation equipment that is seen entirely with Model Y vehicles. We have written several articles on Robotaxi testing mules being spotted across the United States, but this is a first:
🚨 Tesla is using Model S vehicles fitted with LiDAR rigs to validate FSD and Robotaxi, differing from the Model Ys that it uses typically
Those Model Y vehicles have been on the East Coast for some time. These Model S cars were spotted in California https://t.co/CN9Bw5Wma8 pic.twitter.com/UE55hx5mdd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) December 11, 2025
Why Tesla has chosen to use a couple of Model S units must have a reason; the company is calculated in its engineering and data collection efforts, so this is definitely more than “we just felt like giving our drivers a change of scenery.”
It seems to hint that Tesla could add a premium, more luxury offering to its Robotaxi platform eventually. Think about it: Uber has Uber Black, Lyft has Lyft Black. These vehicles and services are associated with a more premium cost as they combine luxury models with more catered transportation options.
Tesla could be testing the waters here, and it could be thinking of adding the Model S to its fleet of ride-hailing vehicles.
Reluctant to remove the Model S from its production plans completely despite its low volume contributions to the overall mission of transitioning the world to sustainable energy, the flagship sedan has always meant something. CEO Elon Musk referred to it, along with its sibling Model X, as continuing on production lines due to “sentimental reasons.”
However, its purpose might have been expanded to justify keeping it around, and why not? It is a cozy, premium offering, and it would be great for those who want a little more luxury and are willing to pay a few extra dollars.
Of course, none of this is even close to confirmed. However, it is reasonable to speculate that the Model S could be a potential addition to the Robotaxi fleet. It’s capable of all the same things the Model Y is, but with more luxuriousness, and it could be the perfect addition to the futuristic fleet.
Tesla updates Cybertruck owners about key Powershare feature
Tesla’s northernmost Supercharger in North America opens
