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SpaceX vs. Blue Origin: The bickering titans of new space
In the past three years, SpaceX has made incredible progress in their program of reusability. In the practice’s first year, the young space company led by serial tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has performed three successful commercial reuses of Falcon 9 boosters in approximately eight months, and has at least two more reused flights scheduled before 2017 is out. Blue Origin, headed and funded by Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, is perhaps most famous for its supreme confidence, best illustrated by Bezos offhandedly welcoming SpaceX “to the club” after the company first recovered the booster stage of its Falcon 9 rocket in 2015.
Blue Origin began in the early 2000s as a pet project of Bezos, a long-time fan of spaceflight and proponent of developing economies in space. After more than a decade of persistent development and increasingly complex testbeds, Blue Origin began a multi-year program of test flights with its small New Shepard launch vehicle. Designed to eventually launch tourists to the veritable edge of Earth’s atmosphere in a capsule atop it, New Shepard began its test flights in 2015 and after one partial failure, has completed five successful flights in a row. The space tourism company has subtly and not-so-subtly belittled SpaceX’s accomplishments over the last several years, and has engendered a fair bit of hostility towards it as a result.
Admittedly, CEO Elon Musk nurtured high expectations for the consequences of reuse, and has frequently discussed SpaceX’s ambition to reduce the cost of access to orbit by a factor of 10 to 100. However, after several reuses, it is clear that costs have decreased no more than 10-20%. What gives?
Well, Musk’s many comments on magnitudes of cost reduction were clearly premised upon rapid and complete reuse of both stages of Falcon 9, best evidenced by a concept video the company released in 2011.
The reality was considerably harder and Musk clearly underestimated the difficulty of second stage reuse, something he himself has admitted. COO Gwynne Shotwell was interviewed earlier this summer and discussed SpaceX’s updated approach to complete reusability, and acknowledged that second stage reuse was no longer a real priority, although the company will likely attempt second stage recovery as a validation of future technologies. Instead of pursuing the development of a completely reusable Falcon 9, SpaceX is instead pushing ahead with the development of a much larger rocket, BFR. BFR being designed to enable the sustainable colonization of space by realizing Musk’s original ambition of magnitudes-cheaper orbital launch capabilities.
Competition on the horizon?
Meanwhile, SpaceX’s only near-term competitor interested in serious reuse has made gradual progress over the last several years, accelerating its pace of development more recently. Blue Origin’s second New Shepard vehicle, designed to serve the suborbital space tourism industry, conducted an impressive five successful launches and landings over the course of 2016 before being summarily retired. NS2’s antecedent suffered a failure while attempting its first landing and was destroyed in 2015, but Blue learned quickly from the issues of Shepard 1 and has already shipped New Shepard 3 to its suborbital launch facilities near Van Horn, Texas. While NS3 is aiming for an inaugural flight later this year, NS4 is under construction in Kent, Washington and could support Blue’s first crewed suborbital launches in 2018.
More significant waves were made with an announcement in 2016 that Blue was pursuing development of a partially reusable orbital-class launch vehicle, the massive New Glenn. On paper, New Glenn is quite a bit larger than even SpaceX’s Falcon 9, and appears to likely be more capable than the company’s “world’s most powerful rocket” while completely recovering its boost stage. In a completed, manufactured, and demonstrably reliable form, New Glenn would be an extraordinarily impressive and capable launch vehicle that could undoubtedly catapult Blue Origin into position of true competition with SpaceX’s reusability efforts.
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- The New Shepard booster. (Blue Origin)
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- Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule could carry passengers as high as 100km in 2018. (Blue Origin)
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- A render of Blue Origin’s larger New Glenn vehicle. (Blue Origin)
However, while Blue Origin executives brag about “operational reusability” and tastelessly lampoon efforts that “decided to slap some legs on [to] see if [they] could land it”, the unmentioned company implicated in those barbs has begun to routintely and commercially reuse orbital-class boosters five times the size of Blue’s suborbital testbed, New Shepard.
Apples to oranges
The only point at which Blue Origin poses a risk to SpaceX’s business can be found in a comparison of funding sources. SpaceX first successes (and failures) were funded out of Elon Musk’s own pocket, but nearly all of the funding that followed was won through competitive government contracts and rounds of private investment. To put it more simply, SpaceX is a business that must balance costs and returns, while Blue Origin is funded exclusively out of billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos’ pocket.
As a result of being completely privately funded, Bezos’ deep pockets could render Blue more flexible than SpaceX when pricing launches. If Blue chooses to aggressively price New Glenn by accounting for booster reusability, it could pose a threat to SpaceX’s own business strategy. If SpaceX is unable to recoup its investment in reusability before New Glenn is regularly conducting multiple commercial missions per year, likely no earlier than 2021 or 2022, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 pricing could be rendered distinctly noncompetitive.
However, this concern seems almost entirely misplaced. SpaceX has half a decade of experience mass-producing orbital-class (reusable) rockets, (reusable) fairings, and propulsion systems, whereas Blue Origin at best has minimal experience manufacturing a handful of suborbital vehicles over a period of a few years. Blue has a respectable amount of experience with their BE-3 hydrolox propulsion system, and that will likely transfer over to the BE-3U vacuum variant to be used for New Glenn’s third stage. The large methalox rocket engine (BE-4) that will power New Glenn’s first stage also conducted its first-ever hot-fire just weeks ago, a major milestone in propulsion development but also a reminder that BE-4 has an exhaustive regime of engineering verification and flight qualification testing ahead of it.
First hotfire of our BE-4 engine is a success #GradatimFerociter pic.twitter.com/xuotdzfDjF
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) October 19, 2017
Perhaps more importantly, the company’s relative success with New Shepard’s launch, recovery, and reuse has not and cannot move beyond small suborbital hops, and thus cannot provide the experience at the level of orbital rocketry. New Shepard is admittedly capable of reaching an altitude of 100km, but the suborbital vehicle’s flight regime does not require it to travel beyond Mach 4 (~1300 m/s). The first stage of Falcon 9, however, is approximately four times as tall and three times the mass of New Shepard, and boosters attempting recovery during geostationary missions routinely reach almost twice the velocity of New Shepard, entering the thicker atmosphere at more than 2300 m/s (1500-1800 m/s for LEO missions). Falcon 9’s larger mass and velocity translates into intense reentry heating and aerodynamic forces, best demonstrated by the glowing aluminum grid fins that can often be seen in SpaceX’s live coverage of booster recovery. Blue Origin’s New Glenn concept is extremely impressive on paper, but the company will have to pull off an extraordinary leap of technological maturation to move directly from suborbital single-stage hops to multi-stage orbital rocketry. Blue’s accomplishments with New Shepard are nothing to scoff at, but they are a far cry from routine orbital launch services.
SpaceX’s future fast approaches
Translating back to the new establishment, Falcon 9 will likely remain SpaceX’s workhorse rocket for some five or more years, at least until BFR can prove itself to be a reliable and affordable replacement. This change in focus, combined with the downsides of second stage recovery and reuse on a Falcon 9-sized vehicle, means that SpaceX will ‘only’ end up operationally reusing first stages and fairings from the vehicle. The second stage accounts for approximately 20-30% of Falcon 9’s total cost, suggesting that rapid and complete reuse of the fairing and first stage could more than halve its ~$62 million price. Yet this too ignores another mundane fact of corporate life SpaceX must face. Its executives, Musk included, have lately expressed a desire to at least partially recoup the ~$1 billion that was invested to develop reuse. Assuming a partial 10% reduction in cost to reuse customers and profit margins of 50% with rapid and total reuse of the first stage and fairing, 20 to 30 commercial reuses would recoup most or all of SpaceX’s reusability investment.
Musk recently revealed that SpaceX is aiming to complete 30 launches in 2018, and that figure will likely continue to grow in 2019, assuming no major anomalies occur. Manufacturing will rapidly become the main choke point for increased launch cadence, suggesting that drastically higher cadences will largely depend upon first stage reuse with minimal refurbishment, which just so happens to be the goal of the Falcon 9’s upcoming Block 5 iteration. Even if the modifications only manage a handful of launches without refurbishment, rather than the ten flights being pursued, each additional flight without maintenance will effectively multiply SpaceX’s manufacturing capabilities. More bluntly: ten Falcon 9s capable of five reflights could do the same job of 50 brand new rockets with 1/5th of the manufacturing backend.
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- SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory routinely churns out one to two complete Falcon 9s every month. (SpaceX)
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- Falcon 9 B1040 returns to LZ-1 after the launch of the USAF’s X-37B spaceplane. (SpaceX)
Assuming that upcoming reuses proceed without significant failures and Falcon 9 Block 5 subsumes all manufacturing sometime in 2018 or 2019, it is entirely possible that SpaceX will undergo an extraordinarily rapid phase change from expendability to reusability. Mirroring 2017, we can imagine that SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory will continue to churn out at least 10 to 20 Block 5 Falcon 9s over the course of 2018. Assuming 5 to 10 maintenance-free reuses and a lifespan of as many as 100 flights with intermittent refurb, a single year of manufacturing could provide SpaceX with enough first stages to launch anywhere from 50 to 2000 missions. The reality will inevitably find itself somewhere between those extremely pessimistic and optimistic bookends, and they of course do not account for fairings, second stages, or expendable flights.
If we assume that the proportional cost of Falcon 9’s many components very roughly approximates the amount of manufacturing backend needed to produce them, downsizing Falcon 9 booster production by a factor of two or more could free a huge fraction of SpaceX’s workforce and floor space to be repurposed for fairing and second stage production, as well as the company’s Mars efforts. Such a phase change would also free up a considerable fraction of the capital SpaceX continually invests in its manufacturing infrastructure and workforce, capital that could then be used to ready SpaceX’s facilities for production and testing of its Mars-focused BFR and BFS.
“Gradatim ferociter”
It cannot be overstated that the speculation in this article is speculation. Nevertheless, it is speculation built on real information provided over the years by SpaceX’s own executives. Rough estimates like this offer a glimpse into a new launch industry paradigm that could be only a year or two away and could allow SpaceX to begin aggressively pursuing its goal of enabling a sustainable human presence on Mars and throughout the Solar System.
Blue Origin’s future endeavors shine on paper and their goal of enabling millions to work and live space are admirable, but the years between the present and a future of routine orbital missions for the company may not be kind. The engineering hurdles that litter the path to orbital rocketry are unforgiving and can only be exacerbated by blind overconfidence, a lesson that is often only learned the hard way. Blue Origin’s proud motto “Gradatim ferociter” roughly translates to “Step by step, ferociously.” One can only hope that some level of humility and sobriety might temper that ferocity before customers entrust New Glenn with their infrastructural foundations and passengers entrust New Shepard with their lives.
News
Tesla makes major rebound in European market with 4x in registrations
Tesla delivered a striking performance in Germany’s automotive market in March 2026, with new vehicle registrations more than quadrupling year-over-year, according to official data from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA).
Tesla headlines will have you believe the company is dead to rights in Germany, selling nearly no cars, and stating consumers are more interested in other brands not run by CEO Elon Musk.
However, the latest data from Germany proves this might be a dying narrative.
Tesla delivered a striking performance in Germany’s automotive market in March 2026, with new vehicle registrations more than quadrupling year-over-year, according to official data from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA).
Newly registered Tesla vehicles jumped 315.1 percent to 9,252 units, marking the company’s strongest March on record in the country and signaling a sharp rebound after earlier challenges in the European market.
A big 4x from Tesla in Germany in March in vehicle registrations
Don’t let anyone tell you Tesla is dead in Europe https://t.co/24hyus1xTF pic.twitter.com/205yPwncRv
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
The March surge accounted for roughly 72 percent of Tesla’s first-quarter total in Germany. Q1 registrations reached 12,829 vehicles, a 160 percent increase from the same period a year earlier. For context, the implied March 2025 figure was approximately 2,229 units—one of the brand’s weaker months in recent years.
These numbers underscore Tesla’s ability to capitalize on renewed demand in Europe’s largest car market, where the company had faced softening sales throughout much of 2025 amid heightened competition and broader economic pressures.
Germany’s overall new passenger car market also expanded in March, with 294,161 registrations—a 16 percent rise from the prior year. Battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) performed even more robustly, climbing 66.2 percent to 70,663 units and representing about 24 percent of all new car registrations.
Tesla’s 9,252 deliveries captured approximately 13.1 percent of the BEV segment for the month and roughly 3.1 percent of the total new car market, highlighting its continued leadership among pure-play electric brands despite growing competition from both domestic German manufacturers and Chinese entrants like BYD, which saw its own registrations surge 327.1 percent to 3,438 units.
The strong showing comes as Germany’s EV incentives and infrastructure investments continue to support adoption. Tesla’s lineup, anchored by the Model Y and Model 3, appears to have resonated with buyers seeking premium electric options.
Industry observers note that the concentrated March registrations, accounting for the bulk of the quarter, may reflect strategic inventory management, competitive pricing adjustments, or pent-up demand following a slower start to 2026.
This performance provides a much-needed bright spot for Tesla in Europe, where the brand had seen market share erosion in prior periods.
Tesla Model Y outsells all EV rivals in Europe in 2025 despite headwinds
With Q1 2026 registrations up significantly, Tesla has demonstrated resilience in a market that registered 699,404 new passenger cars for the quarter, up 5.2 percent overall. As the year progresses, sustained momentum in Germany could bolster Tesla’s European outlook, particularly if broader BEV growth persists amid evolving policy support and technological advancements.
The March 2026 data from the KBA paints a picture of Tesla’s renewed strength in Germany: a fourfold monthly leap, record quarterly gains, and a solid foothold in an expanding EV segment.
Whether this marks the beginning of a sustained recovery or a seasonal peak remains to be seen, but the numbers affirm Tesla’s enduring appeal in one of the world’s most competitive automotive landscapes.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk reveals unfortunate truth of Tesla Full Self-Driving development
In a candid reply to a dramatic video of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system averting disaster, Elon Musk laid bare a harsh reality facing autonomous vehicle technology.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite is one of the most significant technological developments in terms of passenger travel in decades, but it is not all sunshine and rainbows, even with major strides in safety, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
In a candid reply to a dramatic video of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system averting disaster, Elon Musk laid bare a harsh reality facing autonomous vehicle technology.
The clip shows a Model 3 traveling at over 65 mph on a foggy, rain-soaked highway when a pedestrian suddenly steps into traffic.
Full Self-Driving instantly detects the threat and swerves safely, preventing what could have been a fatal collision for both the pedestrian and the driver’s cousin.
Musk’s response was unequivocal:
“Tesla self-driving saves a lot of lives – the statistics are unequivocal. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, of course.” Even with a projected 10x safety improvement over human drivers, FSD would still prevent roughly 90% of the world’s approximately one million annual auto fatalities. The remaining 10%—roughly 100,000 deaths—would expose Tesla to relentless lawsuits. Meanwhile, the vast majority of lives saved would go unnoticed. “The 90% who are still alive mostly won’t even know that Tesla saved them. Nonetheless, it is the right thing to do.”
This “unfortunate truth,” as Musk implicitly framed it, highlights a fundamental asymmetry in how society perceives safety technology. Human drivers cause the overwhelming majority of crashes through distraction, fatigue, or error.
Tesla self-driving saves a lot of lives – the statistics are unequivocal.
That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, of course.
Even when we improve safety 10X, saving 90% of the million lives lost in auto accidents every year, Tesla will still get sued for the 10% who did die. The 90%… https://t.co/OrNB1mO5eF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 6, 2026
Yet when FSD errs, the incident becomes headline news and a courtroom target. Prevented tragedies, by contrast, leave no trace.
Survivors simply continue their journeys, unaware of the split-second intervention that kept them alive. The result is a distorted public narrative that amplifies failures while rendering successes invisible.
We have seen this through various headlines throughout the years, including the mainstream media’s obsession with only mentioning the manufacturer’s name in the instance of an accident when it is “Tesla.”
Opinion: Tesla Autopilot NHTSA investigation headlines are out of control
The video’s real-world example underscores FSD’s current capabilities. In near-zero visibility, the system’s cameras and neural network reacted faster than any human could, demonstrating the life-saving potential Musk cites.
Tesla’s latest safety data already shows FSD (Supervised) performing significantly better than the U.S. average, with crashes occurring far less frequently per mile driven.
Still, regulatory scrutiny, liability concerns, and media focus on edge-case failures continue to slow widespread adoption. Musk’s frank admission suggests Tesla is prepared to push forward despite the legal and perceptual headwinds.
As FSD edges closer to unsupervised autonomy, Musk’s post serves as both a progress report and a reality check. The technology is already saving lives today.
The unfortunate truth is that proving it and scaling it responsibly will require society to value statistical lives saved as much as dramatic stories of those lost. In the race toward safer roads, perception may prove as formidable an obstacle as the fog and rain in that viral video.
Tesla started rolling out Full Self-Driving v14.3 to Early Access Program (EAP) members earlier today, and I had the opportunity to see some of the improvements that were made from v14.2.2.5.
While a lot of things got better, and I truly enjoyed using Full Self-Driving again after being stuck with the widely confusing and frustrating v14.2.2.5, Tesla still has one major problem on its hands, and it has to do with Navigation and Routing. I truly believe those issues will be the biggest challenges Tesla will face with autonomy: the car simply going the correct way, not conflicting with what the navigation says, and taking the simplest and most ideal route to a destination.
Here’s what I noticed as an improvement with my first hour with v14.3. This is not a full review, nor is it reflective of everything I will likely experience with this new version. This is simply what I saw as a noticeable improvement from the past version, v14.2.2.5.
There is also a more streamlined version on X, available at the thread below:
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 testing now: pic.twitter.com/9UuP11Fv9f
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
Yellow Light Behavior is Significantly Better
On v14.2.2.5, I had so many instances of the car slamming the brakes on to stop at a yellow light when it was clearly the safer option to proceed through. There were several times when the car would be about 20 feet from the line, traveling at 15-20 MPH, the light would turn yellow, and it would slam the brakes to stop. I would nudge it through yellow lights constantly because of this by putting my foot on the accelerator.
The instances I’m talking about here would not have been close calls — the car would have likely moved through the intersection completely before the light would turn red.
On multiple occasions this evening, FSD proceeded through yellow lights safely, without hesitation or any brake stabbing. It was refreshing:
🚨 Here’s an EXCELLENT example:
v14.2.2.5 would have slammed the brakes and stopped at this stop sign. I would have tapped the accelerator to proceed.
You can see the light turns yellow and the car makes — in my opinion — the correct decision to proceed. https://t.co/hHMikimkbp pic.twitter.com/Iesta1OYoV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
This was a huge complaint with v14.2.2.5. Sometimes, it’s a safer option to go through a yellow light, especially when you have traffic behind you. It’s a great way to get rear-ended.
Parking Performance
I had four instances of parking, and FSD v14.3 really did a flawless job. I was very impressed with how solid it was, but also with how efficiently it moved into the spot. When there was traffic around with past versions, I usually chose to park manually just because FSD took its time getting into a spot. I don’t see that being an issue anymore.
I complained about parking a lot and shared several images on X and Facebook of those examples:
Still a few issues with parking on FSD v14.2.2.4 pic.twitter.com/BphvVWDPqe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 5, 2026
No issues with it this evening. 4/4. Here are two looks:
Highway Performance
FSD v14.3 passed the five cars shown in this image:
The sixth was 200-300 yards ahead of the fifth. In v14.2.2.5, FSD would usually stay in the left lane, especially on Hurry and Mad Max. It did not do that, as it instead chose to get back over in the right lane after passing the final car.
Speed was not much of a concern here, even though it was going 21 MPH over. Although it was fast, I did have a line of cars behind me traveling at the same speed, and FSD had just merged about a half mile prior, so I chose to let it continue.
There were no instances of camping in the left lane for extended periods of time. I do want to do more testing with the Speed Profiles because they were in need of some work with the previous version. I am starting to side with those who want a Max Speed setting, which was removed last year.
Navigation and Routing Still Need Work
I was heading back toward where I came from, so I turned “Avoid Highways” on to take a different way. This confused the Routing system, and instead of turning left, then right, as the Routing said, the car turned right, then indicated for another right, basically going in a big rectangle. The car ignored the second right-hand turn and continued straight. I ended up turning “Avoid Highways” off and letting the car pick the same routing option as what took me here.
I have truly complained so much about Navigation and Routing that I’m starting to feel sort of bad. It is obviously such a massive challenge for some reason, but I am confident it will improve. I recall seeing Tesla hiring someone for this role a few months back, so perhaps there is hope for it to get better.
Smarter Behavior When Approaching Exits/Routing
This probably should be grouped in with Highway Behavior, but I wanted to highlight it on its own.
The highway exit pictured was always frustrating for v14.2.2.5. In the Hurry speed profile, I have seen it try to execute passes on multiple cars with as little as 0.6 miles to spare before taking the exit.
With three cars ahead of it, it chose to reduce speed and just wait until the exit. It was refreshing to see an improvement here, so I hope this behavior persists. Sometimes there’s just no reason to pass when you’re less than a mile from getting off the highway anyway.
Larger Visibility Warnings
Tesla seems to have increased the size of these “Camera Visibility Limited” warnings. Previously, they were just small thumbnails:
🚨 The warnings of “Camera Visibility Limited” appear to be larger with v14.3
Previously, it was a small thumbnail. Haven’t seen it this magnified before. https://t.co/iKJLsZ8P4Q pic.twitter.com/qRWwFyIZNd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
Stop Sign Behavior
This is probably the biggest improvement of all, because how it behaved at Stop Signs in v14.2.2.5 was so incredibly terrible and disruptive to the flow of a busy intersection.
There are several four-way, all-stop intersections near me. In the past, FSD would stop well behind the Stop Sign or the white-painted line on the road. It would then inch forward, stopping again at this line, essentially making two stops at a single intersection.
If there is visibility, I don’t truly care where FSD stops, as long as it stops once. Stopping twice just isn’t ideal or logical. I can’t imagine many humans would do it, I know I wouldn’t.
I didn’t have that issue this evening:
🚨 Here’s a look with some commentary – Previously, FSD would stop where it did in this video, then again at the white line, before proceeding. https://t.co/xwyVGMy28y pic.twitter.com/MObgUa7DoA
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 7, 2026
This was pretty tight, too, in the sense that both my car and the other one got to the intersection at the same time. FSD may have stopped first, but the other vehicle was probably around the same point that I was when FSD decided to stop. I was happy to see the assertiveness to proceed; it felt like it was ideal to just go through. I was happy it didn’t stop a second time up at the line. I’d be fine if it stopped at the line, as long as that was the only stop it made.
Tesla makes major rebound in European market with 4x in registrations
Elon Musk reveals unfortunate truth of Tesla Full Self-Driving development
