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SpaceX’s Starship to return humanity to the Moon in stunning NASA decision

SpaceX - and only SpaceX - has won a competitive NASA contract to land a Starship - and eventually astronauts - on the Moon. (NASA)

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4 years ago

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In one of the biggest NASA contracting surprises in years, the space agency has chosen SpaceX – and only SpaceX – to return humans to the surface of the Moon with its next-generation Starship rocket.

The Washington Post’s Christian Davenport broke the news a few hours before NASA’s scheduled announcement and teleconference, revealing that SpaceX beat out Dynetics and a Blue Origin-led “National Team” for a sole-source contract to build, launch, and land a custom version of Starship on the Moon for $2.89 billion. If that uncrewed testing is successful, SpaceX and Starship will be tasked with landing the first astronauts on the Moon in half a century as early as the in the mid-2020s.

While a Human Landing System (HLS) announcement was fully planned and expected to happen this month, virtually everyone following the process believed that NASA would continue to lean on the rationale behind selecting multiple providers for its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) and Commercial Crew (CCP) programs. Having multiple distinct providers, spacecraft, and rockets available to accomplish the same tasks fundamentally insulates NASA (and the International Space Station that depends on those programs) from losing the ability to transport crew or cargo in the event that any one provider is delayed or suffers a major failure.

With a goal as complex as landing humans back on the Moon for the first time since the 1970s, redundancy and multiple distinct solutions would obviously be even more desirable. Entirely contrary to expectations, NASA instead announced that it had exclusively contracted with SpaceX alone for next phase of HLS development. Though SpaceX may have been the only competitor already testing something approximating real integrated flight hardware, NASA’s decision to sole-source HLS to Starship represents a significant gamble.

Simultaneously, though, the move is also extraordinarily pragmatic and indicates that one or several major decisionmakers at NASA have taken less positive lessons from its commercial cargo and crew programs to heart. Crucially, over the first several years of the Commercial Crew Program (CCP), Congress systematically underfunded the development of two commercial crew spacecraft – one from Boeing and the other from SpaceX. As a direct result, the launch debuts of both spacecraft were delayed by several years, forcing NASA to to continue relying on Russian Soyuz launches well into the 2020s to get its astronauts to the ISS.

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Additionally, SpaceX – an unequivocal underdog and newbie next to Boeing in the mid-2010s – has drastically outperformed its traditional aerospace counterpart, beating Boeing to the punch and launching astronauts first. Boeing’s Starliner is now at least 18 months behind Crew Dragon despite costing almost 60% more.

In its first year on the books, almost mirroring NASA’s Commercial Crew experience, Congress aggressively underfunded the HLS program, allotting $850M – just 25% – of the $3.4B NASA requested. In other words, NASA seems to be proceeding with HLS under the assumption that Congress – as it did with CCP – will continue to chronically underfund the lunar lander program for years to come. If that’s the case, NASA appears to have made an uncharacteristically astute decision to structure HLS not on its preferred budget – but on what the agency believes Congress will pony up.

Put in a slightly different way, NASA is basically telling Congress that its lack of commitment has forced the agency to sole-source its lunar lander contract to SpaceX, putting the impetus on Congress to properly fund the HLS program if it wants redundant providers. All told, while NASA is undoubtedly taking a risk selecting SpaceX and Starship to return both it and humanity to the Moon, the space agency has now made it abundantly clear that it’s fully committed to the program and goal, whether or not Congress is willing to do its job.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Tesla plant manager tips off affordable model production

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4 hours ago

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October 6, 2025

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Credit: @Gf4Tesla/X

A plant manager at a Tesla factory just tipped off the fact that the company will begin production of an affordable model in the coming weeks, all but confirming that a new car will be unveiled tomorrow.

Tesla has been teasing some kind of product unveiling for October 7 on its social media accounts. It has now dropped two separate indications that a new product is coming on its X account.

Fans have been anticipating two things: either the company’s planned affordable model, which has been codenamed “E41,” or the Roadster, a long-awaited vehicle that Tesla has kept under wraps for much longer than it would likely care to admit.

Tesla all but confirms that affordable Model Y is coming Tuesday

André Thierig, Tesla’s plant manager at the German production plant Gigafactory Berlin, tipped off what is likely coming tomorrow at the product unveiling as he revealed during an internal event today that a light version of the Model Y will begin series production and deliveries “in a few weeks.”

Thierig’s revealing of plans was reported by Handelsblatt, a German media outlet.

The description of a “light version of the Model Y” aligns with what CEO Elon Musk said earlier this year, as well as what we have seen on public roads, both covered and uncovered.

Last week, we finally saw an uncovered version of what the affordable model likely is, as it was cruising around near Gigafactory Texas, just outside of Austin.

Tesla coding shows affordable model details, including potential price

Musk said earlier this year, candidly during an Earnings Call, that the affordable model Tesla planned to release was a Model Y.

“It’s just a Model Y. Let the cat out of the bag there,” Musk said.

The images of what we assumed to be the affordable model lined up with Musk’s candid statement:

Tesla is expected to unveil its affordable model tomorrow during the planned event, which has been teased twice. Pricing and other details are still pending, but the company is expected to reveal this information tomorrow.

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Three things Tesla needs to improve with Full Self-Driving v14 release

These are the three things I’d like to see Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 improve.

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9 hours ago

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October 6, 2025

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As Tesla plans to release Full Self-Driving version 14 this week after CEO Elon Musk detailed a short delay in its rollout, there are several things that continue to plague what are extremely well-done drives by the suite.

Tesla Full Self-Driving has truly revolutionized the way I travel, and I use it for the majority of my driving. However, it does a few things really poorly, and these issues are consistent across many drives, not just one.

Tesla Full Self-Driving impressions after three weeks of ownership

Musk has called FSD v14 “sentient” and hinted that it would demonstrate drastic improvements from v13. The current version is very good, and it commonly performs some of the more difficult driving tasks well. I have found that it does simple, yet crucial things, somewhat poorly.

These are the three things I’d like to see Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 improve.

Navigation, Routing, and Logical Departure

My biggest complaint is how poorly the navigation system chooses its route of departure. I’ve noticed this specifically from where I Supercharge. The car routinely takes the most illogical route to leave the Supercharger, a path that would require an illegal U-turn to get on the correct route.

I managed to capture this yesterday when leaving the Supercharger to go on a lengthy ride using Full Self-Driving:

You’ll see I overrode the attempt to turn right out of the lot by pushing the turn signal to turn left instead. If you go right, you’ll go around the entire convenience store and end up approaching a traffic light with a “No U-Turn” sign. The car has tried to initiate a U-turn at this light before.

If you’re attempting to get on the highway, you simply have to leave the convenience store on a different route (the one I made the vehicle go in).

It then attempted to enter the right lane when the car needed to remain in the left lane to turn left and access the highway. I manually took over and then reactivated Full Self-Driving when it was in the correct lane.

To achieve Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, such as navigating out of a parking lot and taking the logical route, while also avoiding illegal maneuvers, is incredibly crucial.

Too Much Time in the Left Lane on the Highway

It is illegal to cruise in the left lane on highways in all 50 U.S. states, although certain states enforce it more than others. Colorado, for example, has a law that makes it illegal to drive in the left lane on highways with a speed limit of 65 MPH or greater unless you are passing.

In Florida, it is generally prohibited to use the left lane unless you are passing a slower vehicle.

In Pennsylvania, where I live, cruising in the left lane is illegal on limited-access highways with two or more lanes. Left lanes are designed for passing, while right lanes are intended for cruising.

Full Self-Driving, especially on the “Hurry” drive mode, which drives most realistically, cruises in the left lane, making it in violation of these cruising laws. There are many instances when it has a drastic amount of space between cars in the right lane, and it simply chooses to stay in the left lane:

The clip above is nearly 12 minutes in length without being sped up. In real-time, it had plenty of opportunities to get over and cruise in the left lane. It did not do this until the end of the video.

Tesla should implement a “Preferred Highway Cruising Lane” option for two and three-lane highways, allowing drivers to choose the lane that FSD cruises in.

It also tends to pass vehicles in the slow lane at a speed that is only a mile an hour or two higher than that other car.

This holds up traffic in the left lane; if it is going to overtake a vehicle in the right lane, it needs to do it faster and with more assertiveness. It should not take more than 5-10 seconds to pass a car. Anything longer is disrupting the flow of highway traffic.

Parking

Full Self-Driving does a great job of getting you to your destination, but parking automatically once you’re there has been a pain point.

As I was arriving at my destination, it pulled in directly on top of the line separating two parking spots. It does this frequently when I arrive at my house as well.

Here’s what it looked like yesterday:

Parking is one of the easier tasks Full Self-Driving performs, and Autopark does extremely well when the driver manually chooses the spot. I use Autopark on an almost daily basis.

However, if I do not assist the vehicle in choosing a spot, its performance pulling into spaces is pretty lackluster.

With a lot of hype surrounding v14, Tesla has built up considerable anticipation among owners who want to see FSD perform the easy tasks well. As of now, I believe it does the harder things better than the easy things.

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Elon Musk teases previously unknown Tesla Optimus capability

Elon Musk revealed over the weekend that the humanoid robot should be able to utilize Tesla’s dataset for Full Self-Driving (FSD) to operate cars not manufactured by Tesla.

Published

11 hours ago

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October 6, 2025

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Credit: @heydave7/X

Elon Musk revealed a new capability that Tesla Optimus should have, and it is one that will surely surprise many people, as it falls outside the CEO’s scope of his several companies.

Tesla Optimus is likely going to be the biggest product the company ever develops, and Musk has even predicted that it could make up about 80 percent of the company’s value in the coming years.

Teasing the potential to eliminate any trivial and monotonous tasks from human life, Optimus surely has its appeal.

However, Musk revealed over the weekend that the humanoid robot should be able to utilize Tesla’s dataset for Full Self-Driving (FSD) to operate cars not manufactured by Tesla:

FSD would essentially translate from operation in Tesla vehicles from a driverless perspective to Optimus, allowing FSD to basically be present in any vehicle ever made. Optimus could be similar to a personal chauffeur, as well as an assistant.

Optimus has significant hype behind it, as Tesla has been meticulously refining its capabilities. Along with Musk’s and other executives’ comments about its potential, it’s clear that there is genuine excitement internally.

This past weekend, the company continued to stoke hype behind Optimus by showing a new video of the humanoid robot learning Kung Fu and training with a teacher:

Tesla plans to launch its Gen 3 version of Optimus in the coming months, and although we saw a new-look robot just last month, thanks to a video from Salesforce CEO and Musk’s friend Marc Benioff, we have been told that this was not a look at the company’s new iteration.

Instead, Gen 3’s true design remains a mystery for the general public, but with the improvements between the first two iterations already displayed, we are sure the newest version will be something special.

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