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SpaceX making good progress towards Super Heavy static fire campaign
SpaceX appears to be making great progress towards the start of its first full Super Heavy static fire campaign, building upon extensive Starship testing and a single booster static fire completed in July 2021.
On May 14th, upgraded Super Heavy booster B7 was moved back to SpaceX’s South Texas Starbase Starship factory after completing a successful round of tests and smoothing out an otherwise rocky start to its life. It was not the booster’s first time on that journey: after first leaving the Starbase ‘nest’ on March 31st, Booster 7 suffered significant internal damage during a structural stress test on April 14th and was forced to return to the factory for repairs. Impressively, despite the cramped environment and extremely limited access to the interior of the Super Heavy’s primary and secondary propellant tanks, SpaceX engineers and technicians somehow completed those repairs and Booster 7 sailed through a new round of ‘cryoproof’ testing on May 9th and 11th.
In the ~20 days since its second return, SpaceX teams have been hard at work preparing Super Heavy B7 for its next major challenges – the results of which could determine whether the massive rocket helps launch a Starship into space later this year.
That goal, same as it has been for half a year, is to qualify the first Super Heavy booster for flight. To do so, SpaceX must – at long last – static fire a Super Heavy with all necessary Raptor engines installed. For Booster 7 and its near-term successors, that means 33 new “Raptor 2” engines capable of generating a total of ~7600 metric tons (~16.7M lbf) of thrust.
That’s exactly what SpaceX workers have been focused on doing since Booster 7’s second return to a Starbase assembly bay. Bit by bit, they have spent every day since installing Raptor 2 engines one at a time. Unfortunately, due to the Super Heavy’s relocation inside a brand new assembly building known as the Megabay, High Bay 2, or Wide Bay, the half-dozen or so unaffiliated photographers who have come to regularly photograph Starbase have yet to find an angle that shows the state of that engine installation progress.
Two weeks later, it’s clear that SpaceX is taking its time, which likely also implies that the company is simultaneously encasing Booster 7’s Raptors and engine section in shrouds that will protect them during static fire testing; as well as during launch, reentry, and landing if B7 makes it that far. That’s not guaranteed, however, and it could also simply be that installing 33 engines on the first attempt at installing any Raptor 2s on any rocket has proven much harder than expected.
On June 1st, CEO Elon Musk appeared to confirm that engines are still being installed on Super Heavy B7, but he also verified that “all Raptor 2 engines needed for [the] first orbital flight are complete.” That could include Starship S24, which needs three sea-level Raptor 2s and three vacuum-optimized Raptor 2s, but it’s still great news even if he only means it for Booster 7. SpaceX has been spotted delivering at least a handful of new Raptor 2 engines a week for the last month or two, which means that all 33 engines may already be onsite at Starbase. If some are still undergoing proof testing at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas facilities, it could be a few more weeks before all necessary engines are onsite, but that milestone is likely close at hand if it hasn’t already been reached.
For Super Heavy Booster 4, which was inexplicably never static-fired, installation of all 29 of its Raptor 1 engines took just a few days, but the installation of a heat shield around those engines took at least a few weeks. On June 1st, SpaceX also began installing grid fins on Super Heavy B7, further indicating the company’s growing confidence in the booster.
Outside of booster outfitting, SpaceX has also been aggressively refilling the Starbase orbital launch site’s (OLS) massive tank farm, which is capable of storing, subcooling, and distributing thousands of tons of liquid oxygen (LOx), liquid methane (LCH4), liquid nitrogen (LN2), and a variety of gases. For a full wet dress rehearsal (WDR), which has also never been done with Super Heavy, SpaceX would need to fill the booster with around 3400 tons (7.5M lb) of propellant. Out of an abundance of caution, Super Heavy B7 will likely have far less propellant aboard during almost all of its static fire tests, but a full static fire with a full load of propellant – simulating most prelaunch conditions – will likely be one of the last main goals of any static fire campaign. At full thrust, 33 Raptor 2 engines will likely burn around 25 tons (~55,000 lb) of propellant per second, so a huge amount of propellant will be needed regardless.
In the same series of June 1st tweets, Musk also confirmed that SpaceX intends to proceed cautiously into its first true Super Heavy static fire campaign, testing engines “just one at a time at first.” Musk probably isn’t being literal, as a campaign in which Booster 7 tested every one of its 33 Raptors individually could easily take weeks, so it’s likely safe to interpret his words to mean that SpaceX is not going to leap straight from the first limited test of one or a few engines to all 13 center engines, all 20 outer ‘boost’ engines, or all 33 engines at once.
Almost three weeks into the process of engine and heat shield installation, Booster 7 could potentially be ready to return to the orbital launch site any day now, though there’s probably an equal chance that it’s still a few weeks away. Nonetheless, SpaceX is on the cusp of kicking off one of the most exciting and important test campaigns in the history of Starship.
Tesla engineers deflected calls from Apple on a daily basis while the tech giant was developing its now-defunct electric vehicle program, which was known as “Project Titan.”
Back in 2022 and 2023, Apple was developing an EV in a top-secret internal fashion, hoping to launch it by 2028 with a fully autonomous driving suite.
However, Apple bailed on the project in early 2024, as Project Titan abandoned the project in an email to over 2,000 employees. The company had backtracked its expectations for the vehicle on several occasions, initially hoping to launch it with no human driving controls and only with an autonomous driving suite.
Apple canceling its EV has drawn a wide array of reactions across tech
It then planned for a 2028 launch with “limited autonomous driving.” But it seemed to be a bit of a concession at that point; Apple was not prepared to take on industry giants like Tesla.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives noted in a communication to investors that, “The writing was on the wall for Apple with a much different EV landscape forming that would have made this an uphill battle. Most of these Project Titan engineers are now all focused on AI at Apple, which is the right move.”
Apple did all it could to develop a competitive EV that would attract car buyers, including attempting to poach top talent from Tesla.
In a new podcast interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it was revealed that Apple had been calling Tesla engineers nonstop during its development of the now-defunct project. Musk said the engineers “just unplugged their phones.”
Musk said in full:
“They were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls. Engineers just unplugged their phones. Their opening offer without any interview would be double the compensation at Tesla.”
Interestingly, Apple had acquired some ex-Tesla employees for its project, like Senior Director of Engineering Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, who eventually left for Archer Aviation.
Tesla took no legal action against Apple for attempting to poach its employees, as it has with other companies. It came after EV rival Rivian in mid-2020, after stating an “alarming pattern” of poaching employees was noticed.
There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.
To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.
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Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:
“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”
Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”
It’s not impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2026
Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.
Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.
Elon Musk
Celebrating SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster launch, seven years later (Op-Ed)
Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
When Falcon Heavy lifted off in February 2018 with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as its payload, SpaceX was at a much different place. So was Tesla. It was unclear whether Falcon Heavy was feasible at all, and Tesla was in the depths of Model 3 production hell.
At the time, Tesla’s market capitalization hovered around $55–60 billion, an amount critics argued was already grossly overvalued. SpaceX, on the other hand, was an aggressive private launch provider known for taking risks that traditional aerospace companies avoided.
The Roadster launch was bold by design. Falcon Heavy’s maiden mission carried no paying payload, no government satellite, just a car drifting past Earth with David Bowie playing in the background. To many, it looked like a stunt. For Elon Musk and the SpaceX team, it was a bold statement: there should be some things in the world that simply inspire people.
Inspire it did, and seven years later, SpaceX and Tesla’s results speak for themselves.
Today, Tesla is the world’s most valuable automaker, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.54 trillion. The Model Y has become the best-selling car in the world by volume for three consecutive years, a scenario that would have sounded insane in 2018. Tesla has also pushed autonomy to a point where its vehicles can navigate complex real-world environments using vision alone.
And then there is Optimus. What began as a literal man in a suit has evolved into a humanoid robot program that Musk now describes as potential Von Neumann machines: systems capable of building civilizations beyond Earth. Whether that vision takes decades or less, one thing is evident: Tesla is no longer just a car company. It is positioning itself at the intersection of AI, robotics, and manufacturing.
SpaceX’s trajectory has been just as dramatic.
The Falcon 9 has become the undisputed workhorse of the global launch industry, having completed more than 600 missions to date. Of those, SpaceX has successfully landed a Falcon booster more than 560 times. The Falcon 9 flies more often than all other active launch vehicles combined, routinely lifting off multiple times per week.
Falcon 9 has ferried astronauts to and from the International Space Station via Crew Dragon, restored U.S. human spaceflight capability, and even stepped in to safely return NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams when circumstances demanded it.
Starlink, once a controversial idea, now dominates the satellite communications industry, providing broadband connectivity across the globe and reshaping how space-based networks are deployed. SpaceX itself, following its merger with xAI, is now valued at roughly $1.25 trillion and is widely expected to pursue what could become the largest IPO in history.
And then there is Starship, Elon Musk’s fully reusable launch system designed not just to reach orbit, but to make humans multiplanetary. In 2018, the idea was still aspirational. Today, it is under active development, flight-tested in public view, and central to NASA’s future lunar plans.
In hindsight, Falcon Heavy’s maiden flight with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster was never really about a car in space. It was a signal that SpaceX and Tesla were willing to think bigger, move faster, and accept risks others wouldn’t.
The Roadster is still out there, orbiting the Sun. Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
Tesla engineers deflected calls from this tech giant’s now-defunct EV project
Tesla to a $100T market cap? Elon Musk’s response may shock you
