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SpaceX’s successful debut of Falcon 9 Block 5 heralds the future of reusable rocketry

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Following a brief software bug-triggered abort during the first attempt, SpaceX has successfully debuted its first Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, marking the true beginning of a new era of highly reusable commercial rocketry, as well as Bangladesh’s official entry into satellite communications with the Bangabandhu-1 satellite.

Followed minutes later by the first landing of its next-generation booster aboard the ocean-going drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), many more Falcon 9 Block 5 launches can now be expected to follow later this year as SpaceX ramps up the manufacture and shipment of new boosters, upper stages, and payload fairings to its test and launch facilities.

Fundamentally, this launch is a historic achievement for SpaceX. According to CEO Elon Musk, barring unforeseen discoveries during the pathfinder booster’s post-recovery teardown, Falcon 9 Block 5 as it stands today is nearly capable of ushering in a new era of truly reusable rockets, and is designed to (nominally) fly as many as ten times in a row with the barest minimum of refurbishment. While it is all but guaranteed that small optimizations and upgrades will continue to be made throughout the launch vehicle, today’s mission – the 25th successful booster landing and 55th launch of Falcon 9 – by all appearances successfully flight-tested almost every single one of the rocket’s dramatically upgraded systems, ranging from entirely new avionics to uprated and upgraded Merlin engines and landing legs.

Somewhat fittingly, the only problem visible on the company’s webcast of the rocket’s critical debut was with the webcast itself, in the form of some odd shaking and connectivity issues on the first stage (and the second stage to a lesser degree). Thankfully, this “bug” is skin-deep – its only negative impact was mild annoyance among the many thousands watching live, a small price to pay to such an extraordinary show. Falcon 9 B1046 and its upper stage performed nominally, landing aboard the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You and flawlessly placing Bangladesh’s first geostationary communications satellite into a transfer orbit.

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With its debut complete, SpaceX’s first Block 5 booster will now head back to Port Canaveral after being safely secured by everyone’s favorite rocket-grabbing robot. After its return to land, it’s extremely likely that SpaceX will choose to transport the rocket back to either Hawthorne or McGregor to conduct an extremely thorough teardown analysis of the booster, checking to ensure that each component and system made it through a high-energy reentry with minimal impact. While small changes are all but guaranteed, this teardown will hopefully confirm SpaceX’s extensive modeling and ground-testing – in other words, Block 5’s design will hopefully be shown to be ready for rapid reusability and extreme reliability. More likely than not, B1046 will then be reassembled, perhaps followed by extensive static-fire testing in Texas, after which it will likely return to SpaceX’s operational rocket fleet, potentially conducting dozens of launches over the next several years. Perhaps SpaceX will choose to turn it into a new historic monument after several reflights.

Finally, congratulations to Bangladesh on the successful launch of their first geostationary communications satellite.

Launch photographer Tom Cross is planning to be there in person for OCISLY and B1046’s arrival in Port, and will hopefully be able to document the historic recovery and the booster’s (fingers crossed) resilience, as well as the first use of Octagrabber with a Block 5 Falcon 9. Remote camera pickup is currently scheduled for tomorrow morning.

Follow us for live updates, behind-the-scenes sneak peeks, and a sea of beautiful photos from our East and West coast photographers.

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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 Phone? Not quite, but close: analyst

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elon musk phone
Photo: Boss Hunting.com.au

For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.

Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.

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It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.

Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.

The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.

Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.

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The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.

SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.

There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.

The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.

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Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.

The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.

On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.

Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD

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It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:

“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”

This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.

It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something

There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features

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(Credit: Megan Gale/Twitter)

Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.

Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.

Here are the full release notes for the suite:

  • Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
  • Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
  • Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
  • Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
  • Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
  • Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.

These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.

Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released

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He added:

“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”

Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.

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