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SpaceX tests extra-fast ocean landing, celebrates 50th launch
The happy tragedy of 1044
SpaceX has successfully completed the 50th launch of Falcon 9 a bit less than eight years after its 2010 debut, and has done so in a fashion that almost perfectly captures the veritable tsunamis the company has begun to make throughout the global aerospace industry. After a duo of delays due to hardware issues and range conflicts, this evening’s launch successfully placed Hispasat 30W-6 into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), where the massive ~6100 kilogram communications satellite will now spend several months raising its orbit to around 36,000 km (22,000 miles) above Earth’s surface.
Falcon 9 flight 50 launches tonight, carrying Hispasat for Spain. At 6 metric tons and almost the size of a city bus, it will be the largest geostationary satellite we’ve ever flown.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 5, 2018
Aside from becoming the heaviest commsat the company has yet to launch into GTO, the mission’s anticipated landing attempt stirred up quite a bit of intrigue and uncertainty in the spaceflight fan community. Stormy Atlantic seas, partially connected to the chaotic weather recently seen on the East coast, proved to be far too dangerous for SpaceX’s eastern recovery fleet and its drone ship, OCISLY, and they returned to Port Canaveral around 48 hours ago, under the watchful eyes of many anxious SpaceX followers. Tragically, this means that the brand new Falcon 9 booster (B1044) – originally expected to attempt perhaps the most difficult landing yet – had to be expended. Although the booster went through its paces as if it were preparing to land, it found no drone ship beneath it once it reached sea level, and subsequently dunked into the stormy Atlantic seas.
However, due to the last-minute nature of SpaceX and Hispasat’s decision to expend the booster rather than delay for better recovery conditions, launch technicians at Pad 40 simply did not have time to remove the rocket’s iconic landing legs and valuable titanium grid fins – the first time their titanium iteration has been chosen for a Falcon 9 to resist extreme reentry heating. Due to massive swells, recovery of even pieces of the expended booster – theoretically following a soft landing – will not be possible, as no SpaceX recovery vessels remained at the planned point of touchdown 400 miles off the Florida coast. Notably, following the successful inaugural flight of Falcon Heavy, CEO Elon Musk stated that upgraded titanium grid fins were “super expensive” and unequivocally “the most important thing to recover.” SpaceX’s decision to expend Falcon 9 B1044 without even sparing the time to remove the booster’s recovery hardware and titanium fins demonstrates just how focused the company is on its customers’ needs. In the case of geostationary communications satellites like Hispasat 30W-6, launch delays on the order of a few days can cause millions of dollars of financial harm to the parent company – each day a satellite spends on the ground orbit is also a day with no revenue generation, a less-than-thrilling proposition to shareholders.
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- Falcon 9 1044 lifts off for its first and last time in a breathtaking display of power. (Tom Cross)
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- Falcon 9 1044 vertical at Pad 40 around 72 hours before launch. (Tom Cross)
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- Booster 1044 displays its number one last time. (Tom Cross)
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- RIP B1044’s titanium grid fins. May they make a happy little reef at the bottom of the ocean. (Tom Cross)
B1044 sadly lost any hope at a second flight, but the data SpaceX gathered from its uniquely fast reentry and attempted soft-landing will hopefully pave the way for the recovery of Falcon 9 and Heavy boosters after all but the heaviest satellite launches. GovSat-1, a launch that saw its flight-proven booster famously survive a similarly hot landing in the ocean, was the first largely successful test of this new and experimental method of more efficiently recovering Falcons. By igniting three of its nine Merlin 1D engines instead of the usual single engine while landing, Falcon boosters can theoretically reduce the amount of fuel needed to safely land, fuel savings that can then be used to push its payloads higher and faster. However, the downsides of this approach are several. With three times as many engines igniting at landing, the margin of error for a successful landing becomes downright miniscule – the tiniest of problems with ignition, throttle control, or guidance could cause the rocket to smash into the drone ship at considerable speed. Additionally, triple the landing thrust would subject the booster to as much as 10Gs of acceleration (10 times the force of Earth’s gravity), forces that would almost instantaneously cause the average human (and even specially trained fighter pilots) to black out.
This rocket was meant to test very high retrothrust landing in water so it didn’t hurt the droneship, but amazingly it has survived. We will try to tow it back to shore. pic.twitter.com/hipmgdnq16
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 31, 2018
Regardless of 1044’s untimely demise, another successful mission for SpaceX is purely positive. Happy customers make for a happy company, and SpaceX has achieved an incredible consistency of success in the last year alone. The loss of a new, potentially-reusable Falcon 9 booster is sad, but it only serves to foreshadow the imminent introduction of Falcon 9 Block 5, an upgrade hoped to realize Elon Musk’s decade-old dream of rockets that can be reused as many as 10 times with minimal refurbishment, and 100 times with maintenance. That debut could occur as early as April, just a month away.
https://twitter.com/_TomCross_/status/970900892005359617
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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.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
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.
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.
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.
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
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.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“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… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
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.
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
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.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla Phone? Not quite, but close: analyst
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
