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SpaceX preps Starship, Super Heavy for another week of Raptor testing
SpaceX continues to work around the clock to prepare its latest Starship and Super Heavy booster prototypes for another week of testing – likely focused on firing up the Raptor engines installed on each vehicle.
Known as Booster 7 and Ship 24, SpaceX has been slowly testing both prototypes for approximately four months, beginning in April and May, respectively. Only in early August did the company cautiously begin attempting to ignite their Raptor engines as part of a process known as static fire testing – by far the most difficult and important part of qualifying both vehicles for flight.
Thanks to progress made in 2021, SpaceX already has significant experience testing an earlier orbital-class Starship prototype on the ground, but the process of testing Ship 24 is still fresh and unfamiliar for a number of reasons. For Booster 7, the challenges are even greater.
On top of major design changes made to Starship and Super Heavy over the last year as SpaceX continues to refine the rocket, the company also developed a substantially different version of its Raptor engine. Compared to Raptor V1, Raptor V2 almost looks like a new engine and can produce around 25% more thrust (230 tons versus 185 tons). SpaceX has also tweaked how the engine operates, particularly around startup and shutdown, further weakening the value of past experience testing Raptor V1 and V1.5 engines on Ship 20 and Boosters 3 and 4.
In other words, with Ship 24 and Booster 7 engine testing, it’s possible that SpaceX is effectively starting from scratch. Many aspects of testing – propellant conditioning, thermal characteristics, tanking, detanking, certain test stands – are likely mostly unchanged, but almost every aspect of a rocket is affected by its engines.
Before SpaceX began testing Raptor V2 engines on Starship and booster prototypes, it wasn’t clear if the changes between V1.5 and V2 would invalidate a lot of prior testing. After the start of Booster 7 and Ship 24 static fire testing, it’s now clear that a lot of that earlier work has to be redone. It’s also clear that despite some of the simplifications in Raptor V2’s design, operating the engine on Starship and Super Heavy is much harder get get right.
Since mid-July, SpaceX has completed around 15-20 ‘spin-prime’ tests between Ship 24 and Booster 7 – more of that kind of test than any other prototype in the history of Starbase has performed. Spin-prime tests flow high-pressure gas through Raptor’s pumps to spin them up without igniting anything. It’s unclear why so many of those tests are being done, what SpaceX is gaining from it, or why the company appears to have completely stopped conducting preburner tests (a more life-like spin-prime with partial combustion).
Regardless, eight weeks after the start of engine testing, Booster 7 has only performed three static fires (two with one engine, one with a max of three or four engines), and Ship 24 has only completed one static fire with two engines. Before either vehicle can be considered ready for flight, a day that could easily never come, each will likely need to conduct multiple successful static fires with all of their Raptor engines (6 on S24 and 33 on B7).
If the pace of Booster 7 testing doesn’t change, the vehicle could be months away from a full 33-engine static fire attempt – perhaps the single most important and uncertain test standing between SpaceX and Starship’s first orbital launch attempt. Ship 24’s path to flight readiness should be simpler, but it appears to be struggling almost as much.
According to CEO Elon Musk, “an intense effort is underway” to ensure that Super Heavy B7’s Raptor engines are well contained during anomalies, so that one engine violently failing won’t damage or destroy the booster, other engines, or the launch pad. That could certainly complicate the process of testing Booster 7, and it’s likely that SpaceX is taking some of the same actions to protect Ship 24.
In early September, after a partially successful Booster 7 static fire (its first multi-engine test) and numerous additional Ship 24 tests that failed to achieve ignition, SpaceX replaced engines on both vehicles. Booster 7 had one of 13 Raptor Center engines swapped out, while Ship 24 had one of its three Raptor Vacuum engines replaced.
On September 5th, SpaceX distributed a safety alert to Boca Chica’s few remaining residents, confirming that it wants to restart testing as early as Tuesday, September 6th. Especially as of late, that alert guarantees nothing, but it does at least open the door for SpaceX if Ship 24, Booster 7, and the positions of the stars happen to be in the right mood between 8am and 8pm CDT. Additional opportunities are available on September 7th, 8th, 9th, and 12th.
Elon Musk
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
Tesla’s quiet mode reaches Model Y Robotaxis, blacking out the screen for riders wanting rest.
Tesla’s quiet mode, the setting that blacks out the screen for riders who want to rest, has moved beyond the Cybercab. A video posted Thursday by Spencer (@scotsrule08) shows the feature running in a Model Y Robotaxi on a night ride that appears to be in Dallas.
New quiet mode now on @Robotaxi https://t.co/2cM2eM9NeN — Spencer (@scotsrule08) October 29, 2026
The rider taps a small crescent moon icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. The map, media player, app shortcuts and Grok prompt disappear, leaving a dark display with “Arriving soon,” the destination and a line reading “Tap display to exit quiet mode.” Controls a passenger may still need, including Pull Over, cabin temperature, volume and Support, stay visible. One tap anywhere brings the full map back.
Quiet mode first showed up in the Cybercab last week, which Teslarati reported alongside a new rear camera view. Tesla has been trimming cabin noise in other ways too. On October 25, Spencer reported that Robotaxi turn signals now chime for the first four blinks and then go silent. Tesla has not published release notes for either change.
Elon Musk has been pitching this use for more than a decade. In October 2014, he said that “maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,”
By 2017 he was setting a higher bar. Speaking at TED, Musk said the hard part was not making self-driving work 99.9 percent of the time, “because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.”
Owners asked for something similar in their own cars. In December 2019, a Tesla owner requested a Nap Mode that would keep the climate running and wake the occupant with an alarm, and Musk answered “Ok,” as Teslarati covered at the time.
The line returned when the Cybercab was unveiled at the We, Robot event in October 2024. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. On Tesla’s first quarter earnings call in April 2025, he called it the deciding measure: “The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year,”
Tesla has run driverless Model Y rides in Dallas and Houston since April, so a passenger dozing off on the way home is now a realistic use of the button. Tesla is also offering new riders a free first trip in both cities, according to an in-app screen shared by tracker Ethan McKanna, and said on its third quarter call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas next month.
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FCC green lights SpaceX’s move to a showdown with Verizon and AT&T
The FCC advanced plans opening 482 MHz to satellite phone service, boosting SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile.
The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to move forward with a proposal that would open an additional 482 MHz of spectrum to satellite service beamed directly to ordinary phones, a step that could widen the road for SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile to compete with the country’s largest wireless carriers.
The commission adopted the notice of proposed rulemaking at its October open meeting in Washington, Reuters reported. The proposal would raise the number of bands eligible for Supplemental Coverage from Space from five to 13, according to the FCC fact sheet. Commissioners also advanced a companion item proposing an auction of 25 MHz in the 1675 to 1695 MHz and 2020 to 2025 MHz bands, which could be used for terrestrial service, direct to device service or both.
Thursday’s vote does not hand any spectrum to SpaceX. It opens a public comment period, and final rules will come later. Under the draft, comments would be due 60 days after the notice is published in the Federal Register. The FCC had not released the adopted text at the time of writing, so it is not yet clear whether any bands were changed before the vote.
That question is where the fight now moves. AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, through industry group CTIA, asked the FCC to drop the 2.5 GHz and 3.45 GHz bands, which make up 290 MHz of the 482 MHz on the table, as Teslarati reported ahead of the vote. T-Mobile argued satellite interference could wipe out up to 96% of a cell site’s uplink coverage area. SpaceX asked the commission to go the other way and add the 902 to 928 MHz band.
The rule change that matters most to SpaceX may be a structural one. Today, a satellite operator must lease spectrum from every carrier holding co-channel licenses across an entire region such as the contiguous United States. The proposal would replace that with a certification that the operator has coexistence agreements covering only the areas it plans to serve, or that it holds the terrestrial licenses itself.
SpaceX has spent this year building that second path. It bought EchoStar’s AWS-4 and H-block licenses in a deal worth roughly $17 billion, and earlier this month agreed to acquire Grain Management’s nationwide 800 MHz portfolio, which the company said would pave the way for Starlink to become a major US mobile carrier. The FCC approved SpaceX’s purchase of three unused AWS-3 licenses from Tristar on October 21, and cleared its plan for 15,000 next generation direct to cell satellites on October 6.
The regulator has not always sided with SpaceX. In April, the FCC dismissed a SpaceX petition seeking access to Mobile Satellite Service spectrum held by incumbents, and it rejected 2.5 GHz for satellite coverage when it first adopted the framework in 2024.
The carriers are also building their own defenses. In May, the three companies agreed in principle to form a joint venture pooling spectrum for satellite service, and T-Mobile remains SpaceX’s US launch partner for Starlink Mobile even as it leads the push to keep satellites out of 2.5 GHz. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has said service on SpaceX’s own airwaves is targeted for early 2028.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s Roadster appearance at SpaceX has merger watchers talking
Tesla’s next generation Roadster was spotted at SpaceX’s Hawthorne headquarters, two weeks after its unveiling.
Tesla’s next generation Roadster turned up at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California on Wednesday, less than two weeks after the car flew off a ramp at its unveiling in Texas.
Photos shared on X by SpaceX Engineer (@DeannaRiceSPCX) show the new Roadster parked outdoors beside the famed Falcon 9 that stands outside company headquarters at the corner of Crenshaw Boulevard and Jack Northrop Avenue. Rocket B1019 was the first orbital-class booster ever to land after a launch on December 21, 2015 after it sent 11 Orbcomm satellites to orbit and then flew back to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral, which would be the first landing in what became SpaceX’s reusable rocket program. SpaceX chose not to fly it again. After a test fire in Florida, the booster was shipped to Hawthorne and raised upright as a permanent monument in August 2016, as Teslarati reported at the time. Putting the Roadster, which flies on SpaceX cold gas thrusters, next to the rocket that started SpaceX’s landings is symbolic in itself.
Small car, big rocket ambitions 🚀🚗 #roadster #falcon9 #spacex #tesla https://t.co/H32xUSXoCl
— Deanna Rice (@DeannaRiceSPCX) October 29, 2026
The Thrust and Rocket versions of the Roadster use cold gas thrusters fed by composite overwrapped pressure vessels, the same type of tank SpaceX flies on Falcon 9, and Elon Musk described the car as the work of Tesla and SpaceX engineers working together. Tesla lists 0 to 60 mph in under 0.9 seconds for Thrust and under 0.59 seconds for Rocket, while the base Performance model relies on a fan and ground sealing system for grip, as Teslarati detailed in its breakdown of the three Roadster configurations.
Tesla has kept the car in the spotlight since the October 15 event near Waco. Last week, the company posted a video of the Roadster’s fighter jet inspired cockpit, including a Track Mode screen with a “Thruster · 5,500 PSI” readout, which we covered in our look at the Roadster’s center display. Musk also said owners will be able to ask the car to perform the stunts autonomously, and promised a looping track at Tesla’s Texas headquarters.
The visit comes as special committees at Tesla and SpaceX weigh a possible merger, a step Musk confirmed on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call. The Roadster, built on SpaceX hardware, has become one of the clearest examples of the two companies already building products together.
Musk said at the unveiling that Roadster production will begin in 2028. Reservations are open with a $50,000 payment, Thrust is listed as a limited release and Rocket is invite only. Tesla says the car is not approved for public road use.
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
FCC green lights SpaceX’s move to a showdown with Verizon and AT&T
