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SpaceX sets target on rapid Starship development as Mars gains focus

Photo: SpaceX

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On May 30, SpaceX did something no other private company has: launch astronauts on its own rocket to the International Space Station. The aerospace company was founded 18 years ago, with the goal of sending people into space. It’s president and CEO, Elon Musk, constantly talks about his dreams of making humanity a multi-planet species.

To that end, Musk has charged SpaceX with building a rocket capable of carrying as many as 100 people beyond low-Earth orbit. The craft, known as Starship, is the latest and great in Musk’s increasing larger rockets. Engineers have been busy working on designing new engines as well as increasingly more complex prototypes to put the burgeoning craft through a rapid development process.

Now that SpaceX has achieved human spaceflight, and (if all goes according to plan) should receive certification for regular flights to the space station, Musk is turning his sights back to Mars.

As such, he is focusing more of the company’s efforts on Starship development. In an email obtained by CNBC, Musk wrote, “Please consider the top SpaceX priority (apart from anything that could reduce Dragon return risk) to be Starship.”

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The first Starship appeared on the flat Texas landscape in early 2019. Eagle-eyed onlookers near the company’s facilities in South Texas spotted the craft and have been monitoring its development process. For a while, Musk had dueling prototypes under construction, tasking a team in Florida to compete with the team in Texas for a little intra-company competition.

That was short-lived, as now SpaceX is keeping its Starship construction efforts confined to Texas. During a recent dramatic test firing of the craft’s attached raptor engine, the company’s fourth major prototype (dubbed SN4), went out in a blaze of glory. This lucky prototype had survived more rounds of testing than previous iterations, but still, the loss of the craft is a bit of a setback for SpaceX.

SN4 did not survive an explosion that occurred during a routine static fire test. Credit: NASASpaceflight/BocaChicaGal

On Saturday, Musk tweeted out a photo showing the company’s Starship facilities in Boca Chica, saying that more would soon be added, including a massive bay that rivaled NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building.

Starship has already snagged a coveted NASA contract that will send humans to the lunar surface in 2024, but to do so, it must get off the ground. Perhaps a more concentrated effort will enable the craft to do so.

An early prototype, called Starhopper, took flight in August, but ever since, the company has failed to produce a new design that can fly. They came very close to SN4. It’s predecessor, SN5, is close to being finished, and the company is already working on SN6, so perhaps we will soon see a Starship fly.

 

 

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I write about space, science, and future tech.

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Elon Musk

The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”

The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.

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The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”

The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.

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Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.

Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.

The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.

The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.

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Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”

SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.

It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.

Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.

Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:

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There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.

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Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened

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(Credit: The Boring Company)

Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.

The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.

The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel

The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.

Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.

Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.

A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.

The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.

Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.

Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.

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There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.

The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.

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