News
SpaceX moves Super Heavy booster to make room for Mechazilla arm installation
For the second time, SpaceX has removed the first potentially flightworthy Super Heavy from Starbase’s orbital launch mount – this time to reportedly make room for the installation of a pair of huge ‘Mechazilla’ arms.
Designed with three primary purposes in mind, SpaceX has decided to outfit Starbase’s Starship launch tower – an almost 500 ft (150m) tall framework – with three massive arms that CEO Elon Musk has informally deemed “Mechazilla.” The first of those arms is a relatively simple swinging structure that has already been installed on the tower and outfitted with a giant claw-like appendage. Once a few more parts are installed and a bit more plumbing completed, that “quick disconnect arm” or QD arm will help stabilize Super Heavy during Starship installation and connect the massive reusable upper stage to the pad’s tank farm and power supplies while still on the ground.
The star of the show, though, has always been a pair of even larger arms that are hoped to one day all SpaceX to catch Super Heavy boosters and Starships out of the air.
Of course, those catcher arms – deemed chopsticks by SpaceX employees – have more than one purpose. Likely explaining why they were ever considered in the first place, SpaceX’s Starbase launch site – situated walking distance from the Gulf of Mexico on the South Texas coast – was always going to have to deal with extreme weather and high winds on a practically daily basis. Additionally, conditions that are already disruptive at sea level become a near-constant nightmare for vertical launch vehicle integration, where Starship and Super Heavy are effectively hollow cylinders with extensive surface areas that need to be regularly and precisely manipulated 50-150m (200-450 ft) above the ground.
Already, SpaceX regularly has to halt work involving cranes and boom lifts at Starbase. For Starbase (Boca Chica) to ever be able to support regular orbital Starship launches, let alone the dozens to hundreds per year Musk has hinted at, cranes were never going to be a viable long-term solution for the all-weather capabilities and rapid reusability SpaceX requires. In other words, whether SpaceX ever actually manages to routinely ‘catch’ the world’s largest rocket booster and upper stage in the future, a tower with giant arms (or some other exotic crane-free solution) was always going to be needed at Starbase.
Mauricio, thanks for the shout-out. I got some great feedback from folks and updated this diagram once more. Added another @NicAnsuini photo to show the scale of these parts! pic.twitter.com/o54hdBITfL— LunarCaveman (@LunarCaveman) September 16, 2021
This is all to say that the Starship launch tower’s massive pair of arms – (in)famous for Musk’s plans to catch rockets – have a more immediate and guaranteed purpose: lifting, stacking, and otherwise manipulating Starship and Super Heavy in almost all weather conditions. Using tiny hardpoints located just under Super Heavy’s grid fins and (once installed) under Starship’s forward flaps, the chopstick arms will be mounted on a carriage that will attach to rails installed on the exterior of three of the tower’s arms. A complex system of cables, winches, motors, and pulleys will then attach to that carriage, giving the carriage and its arms the ability to move up and down the tower.
In theory, that means that the launch tower arms will be able to drop down, grab Super Heavy off of a SpaceX transporter, and lift it onto the orbital launch mount. Then, once the quick disconnect arm has swung into place and ‘grabbed’ Super Heavy’s interstage to secure it, the main arms will again drop down, grab Starship off of another transporter, and raise the 50m (~165 ft) rocket around 100m off the ground to install it on top of Super Heavy. Finally, the QD arm can then connect Starship to the pad systems.
SpaceX has been working around the clock on those chopstick arms for months. However, thanks to information shared by a forum member who visited Starbase and briefly chatted with one of the SpaceX technicians on-site, they might be almost finished. According to the employee they spoke with, SpaceX planned to temporarily remove Super Heavy Booster 4 from the orbital launch mount to make room for Mechazilla chopstick arm installation as early as this weekend (now come and gone) or next week. Mere days later, SpaceX returned B4 to a transport stand and moved the booster out of the way. In other words, having already been proven right with Super Heavy, it appears that SpaceX really does intend to install the Starship launch tower’s chopstick arms and carriage as early as this week. Stay tuned for more!
Elon Musk
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.
There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.
We’ve unified plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium.
Introducing The X Subscription. https://t.co/SvkrVvBa0p
— SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) October 12, 2026
The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.
That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.
The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.
The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
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