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SpaceX’s used Falcon Heavy booster shown off in stunning detail [Gallery]

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Less than two weeks after SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy performed a simultaneous first-stage landing, the Elon Musk-led space company has completed the process of recovering the massive rocket’s two side boosters, both of which can now lay claim to supporting two separate orbital missions. However, while fascinating in its own right, more interesting is the fact that SpaceX has chosen to very publicly display one of those two boosters front and center at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center (KSCVC).

It is likely no coincidence that the National Space Council is scheduled to have their second-ever meeting at Kennedy Space Center this Wednesday. One can readily imagine that SpaceX’s vast, sooty, flight-proven Falcon rockets can be quite an imposing and impressive sight, and it appears that the launch company is hoping to thoroughly impress the Space Council on Wednesday.

 

Regardless of odd and interesting jockeying, the Falcon Heavy booster display is an absolutely unprecedented opportunity in SpaceX history, and Teslarati’s East coast photographer Tom Cross jumped on it. This rocket display is easily the first time the general public has ever been allowed to get so close to fresh rocket hardware, let alone the entire booster of a brand new launch vehicle. Tom has captured some extraordinarily detailed photos of various flight-proven rocket hardware, ranging from titanium grid fins to Merlin engines and even more esoteric parts, like landing leg connecting points.

Titanium grid fins

Appearing nearly unscathed after exposure to reentry temperatures that are often less kind to aluminum, SpaceX’s second flight-test of titanium grid fins has been a resounding success. It’s been hinted by CEO Elon Musk that these massive pieces of cast metal are probably the most expensive individual components on a Falcon 9, and they certainly look every bit the part. Check out these pieces of metalworking art in the best detail yet.

One of Falcon Heavy’s titanium grid fins, viewed from the top of the booster. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)

Falcon rockets are constructed largely of aluminum and painted with compounds that are designed to burn off under the heat of reentry, known as ablation. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)

 

Merlin engines and octaweb details

Taking the brunt of the force and heat of reentry, Falcon Heavy booster 1025’s business end is a powerful display of the intense environment SpaceX’s rockets must survive in order to successfully find their way to land (or sea). Around each Merlin engine is an insulating ceramic fiber blanket intended to protect the more sensitive components of rocket plumbing from the intense heat and buffeting experienced by the engine bells. The octaweb and engine area is also lined with a fair amount of cork – yes, the same material you cork a wine bottle with – designed to sap up the heat of reentry and often ablate. This simple material has worked incredibly well for the rocket company, although it is considerably less than reusable, and likely has to be replaced each launch. Falcon 9 Block 5, expected to begin integrated testing in Texas just days from now, will likely switch to a more reusable material for its octaweb heat shield.

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Falcon Heavy booster 1025’s well-worn octaweb. The Merlin engines are underneath their blue cozies. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)

A beautiful capture of one of the booster’s nine Merlin engines, showing off the pipe used to cool the engine bell, as well as the ceramic blanket that protects its more sensitive plumbing. (Tom Cross/Teslarati)

 

Ultimately, this Falcon Heavy booster display is an incredible show of force to the National Space Council, as well as an extraordinary opportunity and inspiration for KSC visitors. Teslarati photographer Tom Cross has given us one of the most detailed looks yet at a complete SpaceX rocket, not to mention such a historic and flight-proven specimen.

The National Space Council meets early tomorrow morning (10:00 am EST, Feb. 21), and will be live-streamed here. SpaceX’s very own President and COO Gwynne Shotwell is expected to be in attendance, and will likely present a brief statement to the council.

Be sure to follow Teslarati’s space team for exclusive backstage access to SpaceX, coast-to-coast:

 

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 Semi lands the biggest electric truck deal in U.S. history

Tesla leads a record 2,500 truck order, but not every truck will be a Semi.

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Tesla has landed the largest electric truck order in U.S. history. ZET SCALE, a new alliance of shippers and carriers, named Tesla its primary manufacturer on Tuesday for an initial order of 2,500 electric Class 8 trucks. The deal alone would nearly double the number of electric heavy trucks operating in the country.

According to the press release from Catalyst Mobility, the nonprofit formerly known as CALSTART, Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo were also selected as secondary manufacturers that carriers can pick if their operations call for it. No split between the four brands has been published, so the exact number of Semis in the order is not yet known.

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Tesla won the top slot through a competitive request for proposals. The alliance, which Catalyst Mobility runs with the Smart Freight Centre, scored bidders on price, range, charging capability and production capacity. Pooling freight demand from founding shippers, including Microsoft and PepsiCo, let every truck maker bid lower than it would for a single fleet. “The Tesla Semi is designed for lower cost per mile operations than diesel,” said Dan Priestley, director of the Tesla Semi program, as noted in the press release.

The financing is built to pull in carriers who have avoided electric trucks. ZET Financial is issuing the purchase order for all 2,500 units and will place them with fleets through a fair market value lease. The trucks will be deployed over the next few years across 10 freight hubs in Los Angeles, Stockton, Bakersfield, Seattle and Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Atlanta, and the Newark and New York area. ZET SCALE says the first order is only the opening round, with a longer term goal of 10,000 trucks or more.

Even if Tesla ends up with only a majority share, it would still be the biggest Semi deal to date. Einride’s 500 unit order in August was the previous record, and WattEV’s 370 truck order in May was the largest California deal at the time. Einride’s CEO has since said he expects all 500 trucks delivered by the end of 2027.

The announcement lands two days before Tesla formally inaugurates its Semi factory in Nevada on September 24. The 1.7 million square foot plant sits next to Gigafactory Nevada’s 4680 cell lines and is designed for 50,000 trucks a year.

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Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant

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Credit: Grok

Tesla has expanded Grok from an in-car chatbot into a hands-free work assistant. On September 22, Tesla officially launched Grok Bot capability, confirming that drivers can now manage email, calendars, files, chats, and tasks by voice and then hand more ambitious errands to the AI-fueled productivity cheat code.

Grok itself is built by xAI. The new car features split into two layers: Connectors link Grok to outside accounts. Grok Bot, currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, can complete multi-step tasks such as placing a usual coffee order, booking a reservation, or scheduling an appointment. It truly puts the driver in a nearly complete hands-free driving and productivity setting, with ironically the only task truly requiring your hands being to touch the “Start Self-Driving” button.

We were granted access to Grok Bot’s Tesla integration a few weeks back, and we’ve been able to do a handful of things with it. On a handful of occasions, we’ve used it to order food and have it ready for pickup slightly later into the evening; we’ve managed to pick up groceries after a day of errands with Grok Bot, and outside of the car, it’s helped with budgeting and even my fantasy football draft.

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Tesla shows another way to utilize it: in their demo, a driver says “Hey Grok,” asks the assistant to check an inbox, and hears that a message concerns a weekend reservation. Grok then scans the calendar, reports no conflicts, and confirms the Tahoe trip is clear. It can also add check-in details to a road-trip itinerary. The point is not novelty chat. It is keeping eyes on the road, or on Full Self-Driving, while the car handles the paperwork of a trip:

This Grok rollout is not a gadget add-on as much as it is Tesla’s thesis in software form: the car should stop being a machine you operate and start being a room you occupy.

Connectors and Grok Bot treat the cabin as an office that happens to move, and that has truly been Tesla’s intention for years now. The car has slowly become an extension of a home more than a vehicle. Inbox, calendar, groceries, takeout, and reservations become voice work, not dashboard chores that you need to do before you get in your car.

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Responsibility shifts from the driver to the stack, and as many Tesla owners rely on FSD for travel, Grok Bot now handles the monotony of dinner reservations or appointments.

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X changed how everyone gets paid, and this lawsuit shows why

X sued a Bitcoin account network over fake payouts as its creator pay model shifts

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Elon Musk’s X has taken a Bitcoin-focused engagement ring to court, and the case doubles as a receipt for how differently the platform pays creators today. The company filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, alleging the pair ran six accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy and @TrendingBitcoin, as one coordinated operation to fake the kind of engagement that used to translate directly into money.

According to the filing, first reported by Gizmodo, the accounts posted near identical “BREAKING” crypto headlines seconds apart, in one case 11 seconds, then had three more handles like, reply to and repost the material to manufacture what X called “a false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.” X says the scheme pulled in at least £207,384, about $278,000, and pegs its own investigation and remediation costs at another £75,000. The accounts were suspended August 18. X general counsel James Burnham announced the case on X last weekend, writing that the company “will act forcefully to protect our platform and the earnings of genuine creators.” Musk’s own reaction, posted shortly after, was three words: “Don’t mess with 𝕏.”

The timing lines up with a a recent update to how X pays its creators. The program these accounts allegedly gamed, Creator Revenue Sharing, launched in mid 2023 and paid out based on how much a post got engaged with. Originality was never part of the formula, which is exactly how the platform ended up flooded with recycled clips, copy pasted “BREAKING” posts and replies engineered purely to farm reactions from paying subscribers.

X tried patching the model more than once, including an April cut to aggregator payouts and a March regional weighting change that Musk personally paused hours after it was announced. X retired Creator Revenue Sharing for good on September 7 and opened its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the next day.

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The new math is stricter. Payouts now come only from qualified impressions, meaning unique Home Timeline views from Premium subscribers where at least half the post is visible, and replies no longer count toward eligibility at all. Copied posts, reuploaded media and reposts without meaningful changes are explicitly excluded. Allegra Jacchia, senior product manager for Creators at SpaceXAI, which now runs X’s product and AI work following xAI’s acquisition of the platform, put it bluntly, saying the goal is to reward creators who bring original ideas and perspective, “not those who have become best at gaming the system.”

Read that way, the lawsuit isn’t really about six crypto accounts. It’s X putting a dollar figure on what the old incentive structure cost, then suing to collect it right as the new one goes live. For live updates on how the case and the new rewards program shake out, follow @Teslarati on X.

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