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Tesla’s ‘Big Green’ Semi truck gets a shoutout from Kimbal Musk
The Tesla Semi recently got a shoutout from someone who is part of Elon Musk’s most intimate circle — Kimbal Musk. In a recent post on his Instagram page, Kimbal dubbed the electric long-hauler as a “Big Green” Tesla Semi, referencing his nonprofit organization aimed at building Learning Gardens for schools across the United States.
Quite interestingly, Kimbal Musk’s projects, such as Big Green and Square Roots, could benefit from using the Tesla Semi. Big Green, for one, is involved with building interactive, modular gardens where young American students can learn about real food and healthy eating habits. Considering Kimbal Musk’s goal of building 100,000 Learning Gardens across the US, having an electric truck that can haul materials would be a good idea.
The Tesla Semi is also a perfect match for Kimbal’s Square Roots farming project. Square Roots involves converting old shipping crates into advanced, climate-controlled indoor farms that can yield more than 50 pounds of organic, non-GMO, pesticide-free greens each week. So far, Square Roots is only operating its shipping container-farms in Brooklyn, NY, but it’s not too difficult to see a future where the farming startup’s indoor farms can be transported and set up in other key US cities.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bj4v7w4Apa6/?taken-by=kimbalmusk
Since being unveiled last November, the Tesla Semi has been sighted numerous times across the United States. Back in March, Elon Musk announced in his social media pages that Tesla would start using the all-electric trucks as transport vehicles to haul battery packs from Gigafactory 1 in Sparks, NV to the Fremont factory in CA. The two Tesla Semi prototypes have also been spotted conducting transport runs between Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto, CA and Fremont.
During its unveiling back in November, Elon Musk outlined several of the Semi’s impressive specs. Just like Tesla’s other vehicles, the Semi is capable of quick acceleration, thanks to its four Model 3-derived electric motors that produce instant torque. From a dead stop, the Semi is capable of sprinting from 0-60 mph in just 5 seconds, compared to about 15 seconds on a similar Class 8 diesel truck. With a full 80,000-pound load, the Semi can hit 60 mph in 20 seconds. On average, diesel-powered Class 8 trailers hit highway speeds in about a minute.
The Tesla Semi is capable of climbing 5% grades at a steady 65 mph, unlike diesel trucks that max out at 45 mph on 5% grades. Lastly, thanks to an upcoming network of Megachargers, the Semi will be capable of charging up to 400 miles of range in just 30 minutes.
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The interior of the Tesla Semi as spotted during the 2018 Annual Shareholder Meeting. [Credit: TeslaModel11/Reddit]
During Tesla’s Q1 2018 earnings call, both Elon Musk and CTO JB Straubel noted that the production version of the Semi’s long-range variant would likely have almost 600 miles of range per charge. These statements, of course, stand in stark contrast to criticisms from Tesla’s competitors, especially Daimler AG head of trucks Martin Daum, who threw shade at Tesla earlier this year by suggesting that the Semi’s rated specs, if accurate, defy the laws of physics. According to Straubel, much of competitors’ criticisms come from a misunderstanding of Tesla’s battery technology.
“There’s a fundamental misunderstanding, I think, of what the current technology in our existing products can actually do. Maybe that’s just a misunderstanding of the current status of the technology versus others in the industry. If they’re benchmarking sort of the best battery pack they can buy from a supplier, and then mapping that with what the Semi could do, it doesn’t solve,” Straubel said.
While Tesla is not actively pushing sales for the Semi, Straubel noted during the first-quarter earnings call that the all-electric long-hauler has roughly 2,000 reservations to date. Production of the Tesla Semi is expected to begin in 2019.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
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This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
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Elon Musk has updated his timeline for when humans will walk on Mars and for when ships will simply get there.
The objective of getting to Mars has been one of Musk’s biggest goals since becoming a serial entrepreneur and realizing that time on Earth is limited. Musk has said several times he hopes to die on Mars, and not by impact.
Musk now believes that people will be on Mars in “roughly 5 to 7 years.” He said that a Mars lander will get there “a few years sooner.”
People on Mars in roughly 5 to 7 years.
Mars lander a few years sooner.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
The response from Musk comes after NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said that SpaceX’s biggest priority is the Moon and not Mars. Because of this, Isaacman conceded that he believes nuclear power and propulsion investments will provide “potentially the pathway with the fewest miracles required to put four people on Mars in the next 10 to 15 years.”
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Of course, this is what NASA can do through taxpayer funding and nuclear investments, he added.
Musk’s grand ambitions are much more optimistic than most, and it is certainly a double-edged sword. This is not the first time timelines for Mars have been somewhat lofty, especially to those normal thinkers like you and me, not super geniuses like Musk.
In fact, the SpaceX and Tesla frontman has said on at least a dozen occasions that we could be on Mars in the coming years. Musk said 2020 would be the big year as early as 2009. In 2020, he was “highly confident” of a landing in 2026, and had even said 2024 in a best-case scenario.
The point is, the range has varied, and it’s anyone’s guess when we’ll get there. This latest adjustment to the timeline is typical of Musk, and while the Moon has seemingly taken priority over Mars, it is still worth mentioning that the ultimate goal is to make life multiplanetary, and it starts potentially with the Red Planet.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
Elon Musk sheds two new bits of detail on Starship after 13th test launch
