News
SpaceX to move Starship and Super Heavy production to Texas as hop tests near [updated]
SpaceX announced today that plans to ultimately build BFR (now known as Starship/Super Heavy) in the Port of Los Angeles have at least initially been replaced with a decision to move that development to South Texas, although details about the new facilities and their timelines remain have yet to be shared.
Drawn to one possible conclusion, this could mean that SpaceX no longer intends to build a BFR factory in the Port of Los Angeles, while all Falcon 9/Heavy, Merlin, and Raptor manufacturing will remain in the company’s Hawthorne, CA headquarters for the foreseeable future. However, the statements do not preclude the possibility that SpaceX still plans to develop an oceanside factory in the near future for Super Heavy, Starship, or both.
SpaceX will not longer be manufacturing its Mars spaceship and rocket booster at the Port of Los Angeles. Instead, the work will be done in South Texas. https://t.co/LqBfPawiZf
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 16, 2019
Update: CEO Elon Musk stated on Twitter that the Los Angeles Times’ original report and a partial miscommunication on behalf of SpaceX misconstrued an official statement that early-stage Starship and Super Heavy prototype construction and development would stay in South Texas for the time being. It appears that SpaceX’s Port of LA plans remain largely unchanged.
The source info is incorrect. Starship & Raptor development is being done out of our HQ in Hawthorne, CA. We are building the Starship prototypes locally at our launch site in Texas, as their size makes them very difficult to transport.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2019
“To streamline operations, SpaceX is developing and will test the Starship test vehicle at our site in South Texas. This decision does not impact our current manufacture, design, and launch operations in Hawthorne and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Additionally, SpaceX will continue recovery operations of our reusable Falcon rockets and Dragon spacecraft at the Port of Los Angeles.” – SpaceX, January 16th, 2019
In early 2018, SpaceX announced that it had required a new berth in Port of San Pedro with the specific intention of building a brand-new BFR factory. By keeping BFR production in Los Angeles and locating it directly adjacent to its transportation mode of choice (a barge from California to Texas), the official hope was to retain the best aerospace talent in the US (generally centered around central California) and ensure that its main Hawthorne factory was just a short drive away while still being able to relatively affordably transport massive 9m/30 foot-diameter BFR spaceships and boosters between California and Texas.
Also speaking in 2018, COO and President Gwynne Shotwell noted that the estimated cost of moving a BFR-sized object from its main Hawthorne factory to Port of LA would average $5M for a one-way trip. For context, that is almost 10% of the list price of an entirely new Falcon 9 rocket ($62M) just to perform basic, necessary logistics. As a result, SpaceX decided to build a permanent factory at a Port of LA dock, where the company had already sprung a giant tent to begin prototype fabrication. Known as Berth 240, it’s now unclear whether SpaceX will retain and still develop the Port of San Pedro plot into a permanent facility, estimated to cost a few tens of millions of dollars to complete.
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- SpaceX currently uses Berth 240 as fairing recovery vessel Mr. Steven’s base of operations. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Most of the Berth 240 plot features decrepit but historic buildings from the early 20th century – SpaceX is required by its EIS to help preserve them and can only demolish one small hangar. (Pauline Acalin)
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- Over the last six months, SpaceX has VERY gradually prepared the foundation of its prospective Berth 240 factory, although barely any visible progress has been made. (Pauline Acalin, 11/30/18)
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- Blueprints of the proposed BFR factory at Berth 240. (SpaceX)
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- Renders of the proposed BFR factory at Berth 240. (SpaceX)
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- An overview of the two planned stages of BFR factory construction, March 2018. (SpaceX)
In the company’s approved environmental impact assessment, the implication was that the BFR factory could double as dedicated post-recovery processing and refurbishment facility for regular Falcon 9 missions and provide a far more spacious dock for drone ship Just Read The Instructions and support vessel NRC Quest. That sort of facility could easily still provide significant value to SpaceX, although it may be the case that it would not earn its keep nearly well enough to account for the redundancy of refurbishing at Port of LA instead of simply shipping recovered Falcon 9 boosters to the main Hawthorne factory, which can already host the refurbishment of at least two Falcon 9 boosters simultaneously.
Starship Hopper has been taken apart again (for the installation of the bulkhead etc.)
📸NSF's BocaChicaGalhttps://t.co/DlTj9Qiijz
NSF Overview News Article by Thomas Burghardt @TGMetsFan98 for those catching up:https://t.co/rgliFAkBMC pic.twitter.com/DzSJzjSvoI
— NSF – NASASpaceflight.com (@NASASpaceflight) January 15, 2019
SpaceX may also still want to have LA facilities capable of affordably supporting Starship and Super Heavy structures development and production in the event that some of its excellent staff of engineers and technicians are not interested in moving from Los Angeles to the sparsely-populated southeast tip of Texas. In the meantime, the company continues to work towards the completion of its first flightworthy(ish) Starship prototype at its rapidly expanding South Texas facilities, with CEO Elon Musk indicating that hop tests of the vehicle could begin as early as February or March 2019.
Expect a new article on the recent Starship hopper progress very soon!
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship Version 3 booster crumples in early testing
Photos of the incident’s aftermath suggest that Booster 18 will likely be retired.
SpaceX’s new Starship first-stage booster, Booster 18, suffered major damage early Friday during its first round of testing in Starbase, Texas, just one day after rolling out of the factory.
Based on videos of the incident, the lower section of the rocket booster appeared to crumple during a pressurization test. Photos of the incident’s aftermath suggest that Booster 18 will likely be retired.
Booster test failure
SpaceX began structural and propellant-system verification tests on Booster 18 Thursday night at the Massey’s Test Site, only a few miles from Starbase’s production facilities, as noted in an Ars Technica report. At 4:04 a.m. CT on Friday, a livestream from LabPadre Space captured the booster’s lower half experiencing a sudden destructive event around its liquid oxygen tank section. Post-incident images, shared on X by @StarshipGazer, showed notable deformation in the booster’s lower structure.
Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk had commented as of Friday morning, but the vehicle’s condition suggests it is likely a complete loss. This is quite unfortunate, as Booster 18 is already part of the Starship V3 program, which includes design fixes and upgrades intended to improve reliability. While SpaceX maintains a rather rapid Starship production line in Starbase, Booster 18 was generally expected to validate the improvements implemented in the V3 program.
Tight deadlines
SpaceX needs Starship boosters and upper stages to begin demonstrating rapid reuse, tower catches, and early operational Starlink missions over the next two years. More critically, NASA’s Artemis program depends on an on-orbit refueling test in the second half of 2026, a requirement for the vehicle’s expected crewed lunar landing around 2028.
While SpaceX is known for diagnosing failures quickly and returning to testing at unmatched speed, losing the newest-generation booster at the very start of its campaign highlights the immense challenge involved in scaling Starship into a reliable, high-cadence launch system. SpaceX, however, is known for getting things done quickly, so it would not be a surprise if the company manages to figure out what happened to Booster 18 in the near future.
News
Tesla FSD (Supervised) is about to go on “widespread” release
In a comment last October, Elon Musk stated that FSD V14.2 is “for widespread use.”
Tesla has begun rolling out Full Self-Driving (Supervised) V14.2, and with this, the wide release of the system could very well begin.
The update introduces a new high-resolution vision encoder, expanded emergency-vehicle handling, smarter routing, new parking options, and more refined driving behavior, among other improvements.
FSD V14.2 improvements
FSD (Supervised) V14.2’s release notes highlight a fully upgraded neural-network vision encoder capable of reading higher-resolution features, giving the system improved awareness of emergency vehicles, road obstacles, and even human gestures. Tesla also expanded its emergency-vehicle protocols, adding controlled pull-overs and yielding behavior for police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances, among others.
A deeper integration of navigation and routing into the vision network now allows the system to respond to blocked roads or detours in real time. The update also enhances decision-making in several complex scenarios, including unprotected turns, lane changes, vehicle cut-ins, and interactions with school buses. All in all, these improvements should help FSD (Supervised) V14.2 perform in a very smooth and comfortable manner.
Elon Musk’s predicted wide release
The significance of V14.2 grows when paired with Elon Musk’s comments from October. While responding to FSD tester AI DRIVR, who praised V14.1.2 for fixing “95% of indecisive lane changes and braking” and who noted that it was time for FSD to go on wide release, Musk stated that “14.2 for widespread use.”
FSD V14 has so far received a substantial amount of positive reviews from Tesla owners, many of whom have stated that the system now drives better than some human drivers as it is confident, cautious, and considerate at the same time. With V14.2 now rolling out, it remains to be seen if the update also makes it to the company’s wide FSD fleet, which is still populated by a large number of HW3 vehicles.
News
Tesla FSD V14.2 starts rolling out to initial batch of vehicles
It would likely only be a matter of time before FSD V14.2 videos are posted and shared on social media.
Tesla has begun pushing Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.2 to its initial batch of vehicles. The update was initially observed by Tesla owners and veteran FSD users on social media platform X on Friday.
So far, reports of the update have been shared by Model Y owners in California whose vehicles are equipped with the company’s AI4 hardware, though it would not be surprising if more Tesla owners across the country receive the update as well.
Based on the release notes of the update, key improvements in FSD V14.2 include a revamped neural network for better detection of emergency vehicles, obstacles, and human gestures, as well as options to select arrival spots.
It would likely only be a matter of time before FSD V14.2 videos are posted and shared on social media.
Following are the release notes of FSD (Supervised) V14.2, as shared on X by longtime FSD tester Whole Mars Catalog.
Release Notes
2025.38.9.5
Currently Installed
FSD (Supervised) v14.2
Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.2 includes:
- Upgraded the neural network vision encoder, leveraging higher resolution features to further improve scenarios like handling emergency vehicles, obstacles on the road, and human gestures.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, in a Parking Garage, or at the Curbside.
- Added handling to pull over or yield for emergency vehicles (e.g. police cars, fire trucks, ambulances.
- Added navigation and routing into the vision-based neural network for real-time handling of blocked roads and detours.
- Added additional Speed Profile to further customize driving style preference.
- Improved handling for static and dynamic gates.
- Improved offsetting for road debris (e.g. tires, tree branches, boxes).
- Improve handling of several scenarios including: unprotected turns, lane changes, vehicle cut-ins, and school busses.
- Improved FSD’s ability to manage system faults and improve scenarios like handling emergency vehicles, obstacles on the road, and human gestures.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, in a Parking Garage, or at the Curbside.
- Added handling to pull over or yield for emergency vehicles (e.g. police cars, fire trucks, ambulances).
- Added navigation and routing into the vision-based neural network for real-time handling of blocked roads and detours.
- Added additional Speed Profile to further customize driving style preference.
- Improved handling for static and dynamic gates.
- Improved offsetting for road debris (e.g. tires, tree branches, boxes).
- Improve handling of several scenarios, including unprotected turns, lane changes, vehicle cut-ins, and school buses.
- Improved FSD’s ability to manage system faults and recover smoothly from degraded operation for enhanced reliability.
- Added alerting for residue build-up on interior windshield that may impact front camera visibility. If affected, visit Service for cleaning!
Upcoming Improvements:
- Overall smoothness and sentience
- Parking spot selection and parking quality
SpaceX Starship Version 3 booster crumples in early testing
Tesla FSD (Supervised) is about to go on “widespread” release
