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SpaceX Starship website spotted ahead of Elon Musk’s June rocket update
It appears that SpaceX is preparing a dedicated website for its proposed Starship point-to-point transport system, potentially capable of transporting dozens of passengers anywhere on Earth in just 30-60 minutes.
Assuming this website is actually a prelude to a SpaceX reveal (it could be completely unrelated), it seems likely that Starship.com will go live sometime around CEO Elon Musk’s planned June 20th update on Starship and Super Heavy. Much like Starlink.com went live on the day of SpaceX’s first dedicated launch, the company may be ready to tease more substantial details and fleshed-out plans for its aspirational Starship airline.
Big Falcon Challenge
Regardless of the theoretical viability of SpaceX’s Earth-to-Earth transport aspirations or the company’s readiness to kick off the publicity for the service, the fact remains that maturing Starship/Super Heavy (formerly BFR) into a system with reliability approaching that of airliners will take at least 5-10 years, if not decades. The idea itself – using reusable rockets to transport customers anywhere on Earth in 30-60 minutes at a cost comparable to business class tickets – is undeniably alluring and theoretically achievable. However, the list of “iff” statements that must first be satisfied for is immense and full of an array of technological firsts, any one of which could be a showstopper.
The greatest challenge of affordable, reliable point-to-point transport relates directly to the need for affordability and reliability. Put simply, rockets are in many ways far more complex than modern airliners, requiring margins of design and error and that would make commercial aircraft engineers blush. Modern FAA regulations currently expect manufacturers and operators to design, build, and fly passenger aircraft such that the chances of catastrophic failure (generally a fatal crash and total hull loss) average one in one billion flight hours. That may sound downright unachievable, but modern airliners routinely reach levels of reliability measured in hundreds of millions of flight hours between loss-of-life failures.
The best records of rocket reliability are currently held by Ariane 5 and Atlas V, reaching success streaks without catastrophic failure of 86 launches and 81 launches, respectively. It’s difficult to compare airliners and rockets, as rockets feature multiple stages and are typically only active for 30-90 minutes. Under the generous and inaccurate assumption that the average Ariane 5 mission accounts for 90 minutes of “flight time”, the most statistically reliable launch vehicle ever built is roughly 1,000,000 to 10,000,000 times less safe than the FAA’s present-day certification requirements. It would be more accurate to compare the distance traveled per catastrophic failure, but that would still indicate that the proven safety record of launch vehicles is perhaps 20,000 to 200,000 times worse than that of modern passenger aircraft.
Extreme reusability: extreme reliability?
Additionally, most modern rockets are expended, although SpaceX is doing everything it can to flip that equation. The only conceivable way to sustain a real commercial market for suborbital, hypersonic passenger transportation – aside from guaranteeing that passengers are unlikely to die – is to implement a level of rapid reusability that is entirely unprecedented in spaceflight. As it turns out, regardless of any Earthbound spaceliner ambitions the company may have, SpaceX’s ultimate mission is to accomplish precisely that goal, albeit in order to colonize Mars in a practical timeframe.
What has never explicitly been a part of SpaceX’s goal, however, is achieving that level of extreme reusability simultaneously alongside airliner-class reliability. Accepting high levels of risk has always been front and center to Elon Musk’s presentations on SpaceX’s BFR-powered Mars ambitions, with the CEO often indicating that chances of death would be quite high on early missions to the Red Planet. Of course, surviving and building a colony on Mars is a fair bit riskier than anything specifically centered around Earth and suborbital flight regimes.
All of this is to say that SpaceX may or may not succeed in its ambition of developing a spacecraft/booster that is as extraordinarily reliable as it is reusable, just as SpaceX may or may not publish a website dedicated to Earth-to-Earth Starship transport sometime next month. Stay tuned to find out on the next episode!
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Tesla is being sued by the family of the woman who was killed in a Texas crash involving a Model 3. The driver, who is also being sued, claimed the vehicle was operating on Autopilot mode, but Tesla executives have come out challenging that claim, stating that the driver of the vehicle overrode the system.
The lawsuit was filed by 76-year-old Martha Avila’s daughter and her husband, who allege a “design defect” involving a Tesla and a failure to warn. The suit alleges negligence against Tesla and the driver, Michael Butler.
Butler “stated he was operating with an automated driving assistance system engaged at the time of the crash,” the Harris County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. He showed no signs of intoxication and was cooperative, the Sheriff’s Office said, according to NBC News.
Just after reports of the crash and numerous headlines that immediately blamed Tesla’s Autopilot suite, both Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Head of AI Ashok Elluswamy challenged that. Musk said the crash made “no sense” given that Tesla Autopilot and Full Self-Driving do not travel at the speeds the door cameras captured the car traveling at, which Tesla says was 73 MPH.
Tesla finally clarifies fatal Texas crash, confirms driver manually overrode acceleration
Elluswamy also revealed that Tesla data showed Butler overrode the system by pressing the accelerator to 100%, and that the pedal was compressed fully even after the car had crashed. Tesla has not released this data to the public, likely because it is communicating with agencies like the NHTSA on an investigation.
The suit uses a Washington Post analysis of government data that “identified at least 17 fatal incidents linked to Tesla Autopilot.”
This is far from the first time an accident has been blamed on Autopilot. A fatal crash in Texas was blamed on Autopilot several years ago, but when Tesla released data to the NTSB, which was investigating the crash, Autopilot was not available where the crash occurred, and Autosteer was never enabled, meaning the car was manually controlled at the time of the accident.
“Application of the accelerator pedal was found to be as high as 98.8 percent,” the NTSB said in their findings. The highest recorded speed in the five seconds leading up to the impact was 67 miles per hour. The area where the crash occurred is residential, and Texas State laws… pic.twitter.com/XGD97NHVZ2
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 18, 2026
More information on the accident will be released as Tesla works with agencies to find the cause of the crash. From personal experience, it is hard to imagine Tesla Autopilot or FSD operating in this manner. It drives sometimes too cautiously in residential areas in parking lots, at least in my experience. Speeding happens, but at this rate in this type of area, it is hard to believe.
We look forward to more details being released with time.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has awarded the 2025-2026 Tesla Cybertruck crew cab pickup its highest honor: Top Safety Pick+. This marks the Cybertruck as the only full-size pickup to achieve this distinction in recent evaluations.
The award applies specifically to vehicles built after April 2025, following structural upgrades including front underbody reinforcements and footwell modifications.
These changes enabled strong performance in updated crash tests. The Cybertruck earned “Good” ratings in the small overlap front (driver and passenger sides), updated moderate overlap front, and updated side tests—core requirements for the Top Safety Pick+ designation.
It also secured acceptable or good headlights across trims and a “Good” rating for its standard front crash prevention system in pedestrian scenarios, along with acceptable or good performance in vehicle-to-vehicle testing.
The Cybertruck avoided every single pedestrian collision, including:
- Daytime child crossing
- Nightitime adult crossing
- Night parallel adult
In IIHS pedestrian front crash prevention tests, @Cybertruck avoided every single collision – daytime, nighttime & different angles
It was also the only pickup to earn Top Safety Pick+ (highest award) in 2026https://t.co/BNPqT9TbsW pic.twitter.com/M6nwDisBFK
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 24, 2026
In the large pickup category, competitors such as the Toyota Tundra received only a standard Top Safety Pick, while the Ford F-150 and Ram 1500 did not qualify for either award. This positions the Cybertruck as a standout in occupant protection and crash avoidance among its peers.
Credit: IIHS
Ironically, the same vehicle celebrated for superior U.S. safety performance remains banned from public roads in the United Kingdom and much of Europe. Regulators there cite the Cybertruck’s sharp external edges and highly rigid stainless-steel construction as failing pedestrian-protection standards. European and UK rules require rounded surfaces on protruding parts to minimize injury risk in collisions with vulnerable road users.
Critics also point to the truck’s substantial weight and unyielding body structure, which some argue could transfer more force to other vehicles or pedestrians rather than absorbing it.
Tesla’s engineering philosophy underpins the Cybertruck’s strong IIHS results. The vehicle features a distinctive stainless-steel exoskeleton made from ultra-hard 30X cold-rolled stainless steel. This provides exceptional structural rigidity and a robust safety cage that resists deformation in side impacts and rollovers.
Engineers designed integrated load paths to channel crash forces away from the occupant compartment while allowing controlled energy absorption in key zones. Post-April 2025 refinements to the front underbody further optimized performance in overlap crashes.
Complementing the passive structure is Tesla’s advanced active safety suite, including the standard Collision Avoidance Assist system with automatic emergency braking. This contributed directly to the vehicle’s strong front crash prevention scores. The skateboard platform and low center of gravity also enhance stability and handling, reducing the likelihood of certain crashes.
The IIHS recognition highlights how Tesla’s combination of high-strength materials, structural innovation, and software-driven safety systems can deliver top-tier protection in rigorous testing. While global regulatory differences on design and pedestrian interaction continue to limit the Cybertruck’s availability outside North America, its U.S. safety credentials set a new benchmark for full-size pickups.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.
Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites
It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.
SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history
Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.
Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.
SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.
The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.
Tesla and driver sued by family of woman killed in Texas crash: what we know
Tesla Cybertruck is officially the safest pickup, IIHS says
