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SpaceX destacks “420” Starship, Super Heavy pair for the third time
Update: Shortly before SpaceX CEO Elon Musk revealed that Super Heavy booster B4 and Starship S20 are no longer assigned to the rocket’s orbital launch debut, the company ‘destacked’ the pair for the third time.
Ship 20 was removed from Booster 4 on March 19th, two days before Musk’s tweets. That’s not unusual: it was actually Ship 20’s third removal from Super Heavy. However, almost as soon as the Starship was rolled out of the way, SpaceX began making visible preparations to also remove Super Heavy B4 from Starbase’s orbital launch mount. As of March 24th, the booster has been attached to a large crane for more than a day and a newly upgraded transport stand has been rolled into place beside the launch mount. It’s somewhat odd that the booster hasn’t already been removed but that step could happen at almost any moment, now – albeit likely in daylight.
Once both Ship 20 and Booster 4 have been removed, it’s hard to imagine that they will ever return to the orbital launch mount. In fact, at minimum, Super Heavy B4 will probably be retired almost immediately. Super Heavy B7 – a superior, refined, and upgraded prototype by almost every measure – is already almost fully assembled and could likely begin basic testing within a week or two.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that Super Heavy Booster B4 and Starship S20 are no longer scheduled to support the first orbital-class test flight of the world’s largest rocket.
Rumors, signs, and reports of the significant change have been flowing among unofficial spaceflight communities for months. Booster 4 and Ship 20 were first confirmed by Elon Musk to be the pair assigned to Starship’s orbital test flight (OTF) in the summer of 2021. When the pair first rolled out to the launch pad in early August, Musk seemed confident that they could be ready for an orbital launch attempt within a month or two. The same was true in November 2021, when Musk stated that the same Starship and Super Heavy pair could be ready for their first launch as early as January or February 2022.
Musk’s latest update on Starship’s orbital test flight continues that schedule optimism but also introduces several major changes – changes that could easily take several months to fully work through.
Crucially, Musk revealed that the first Starship to attempt an orbital-class launch will now feature upgraded Raptor V2 engines – engines that require an entirely new thrust structure design. That already all but guaranteed that B4 and S20 had been overtaken but Musk also explicitly confirmed that they would be replaced with a new pair in a later tweet.
That new pair – widely assumed to be Super Heavy B7 and Starship S24 – feature a wide range of design changes, including substantially modified header tanks, an entirely new nosecone design, new layouts for secondary systems (pressurization, avionics, heat exchangers, etc.), and more. Most importantly, their thrust structures – giant ‘pucks’ machined out of steel – have been tweaked to support new Raptor V2 engines instead of the Raptor V1 and V1.5 engines that have been installed and tested on all Starship and Super Heavy prototypes to date.
Musk believes that SpaceX will be able to build (and presumably qualify) all 39 of the Raptors Ship 24 and Booster 7 will need before the end of April and fully install them – as well as all the heat shield components that must be fitted around them – by the end of May 2022. It’s unclear if the SpaceX CEO is accounting for the extensive proof testing Ship 24 and Booster 7 will likely need to complete before being qualified for flight, including cryogenic proof tests, wet dress rehearsals, and at least a few static fire tests.
In fact, SpaceX has only performed a single three-engine static fire test with a fully outdated Super Heavy prototype. Before the company is confident in its booster design, it’s practically a certainty that one or more prototypes will be put through a lengthy test campaign that gradually evolves from igniting a few engines to igniting all 29 or 33 Raptors. That may actually be one of the reasons SpaceX appears to be retiring Booster 4 without a single static fire or flight test – performing all the requisite work may have ultimately been perceived as a dead-end when every future Starship and Super Heavy prototype will feature a heavily redesigned engine.
This is to say that much like Musk’s last few Starship OTF schedule estimates, May 2022 also appears to be extremely optimistic. Booster 7 could potentially be ready for cryogenic proof testing any day now but Ship 24 is still in five large pieces and probably at least a month from any form of test readiness. Still, there are some reasons for optimism. If Booster 7 actually does start basic proof testing this month or early next without waiting for its Raptor engines or for heat shield installation, SpaceX could theoretically complete cryoproofing, begin installing one or a few new Raptors at a time, and iteratively progress from static firing a few to all 33 engines as the engines are arriving at Starbase.
At a minimum, even if that razor-sharp test schedule isn’t possible, Booster 7 would at least have a month or so of extra testing over Ship 24, minimizing the disproportionate amount of testing each prototype will likely need to be qualified for flight. Unlike Booster 4, Ship 20 has completed several static fires and cryoproofs without any apparent issue.
For now, SpaceX continues to prepare Ship 24 sections for stacking and appears to be buttoning up Booster 7, which could easily be ready to roll out for basic testing within a few weeks – and maybe sooner.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
SpaceX targets September 22 for Starship Flight 14, its first attempt to reach real orbit.
SpaceX has set September 22 as the target date for Starship’s 14th test flight, and this one carries a different goal than any of the 13 that came before it. Every previous Starship mission has intentionally flown a suborbital arc, reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launched. Flight 14 is designed to send the craft into a genuine orbit around Earth for the first time.
The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central time at Starbase in South Texas and runs for 75 minutes, pending regulatory approval, according to SpaceX’s mission description published Tuesday. If the flight goes as planned, Starship will circle the planet roughly six times at an altitude near 275 kilometers over about ten hours before a deorbit burn sends it toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a departure from the Indian Ocean recoveries used on the last several flights.
The mission also marks the first attempt to put a working batch of Starlink V3 satellites into actual service. Flight 13 carried 20 of the new satellites in July, but because that mission never left a suborbital trajectory, the payload reentered along with the ship instead of separating into orbit.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Each V3 satellite is rated for roughly one terabit per second of downlink capacity, so a successful deployment on Flight 14 would be SpaceX’s largest single jump in network bandwidth since Starlink began flying on Falcon 9.
Flight 13 still did the heavier lifting on the technical side. That July mission flew a deliberately more stressful reentry profile to test Starship’s heat shield, and the ship survived its softest splashdown yet, intact enough for drone inspections shortly after landing. Elon Musk said the flight delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some,” a result Teslarati covered in detail when he later said SpaceX had solved the vehicle’s biggest reusability challenge. Flight 14 is where SpaceX starts spending that confidence on an actual orbital insertion rather than another controlled fall back to Earth.
One thing Flight 14 will not attempt is a tower catch of the ship. Musk floated the idea right after Flight 13, but walked the timeline back in August, saying a catch attempt was more likely “in a few months.” The Super Heavy booster will still aim for its own recovery, targeting an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America, the same approach used on recent flights.
September 22 is SpaceX’s own target, not a locked date. Starship’s schedule has slipped before over hardware readiness and FAA sign off, and the company has said as much in its own mission notes. But the plan itself represents the clearest marker yet that Starship is moving from a suborbital test program into something meant to carry paying payloads and, eventually, people.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.
Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.
Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.
He said:
“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”
Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:
It’s out of this world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Excitement guaranteed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 13, 2026
Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.
Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.
However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
