Free Republic

Starfall?! Most Tesla investors have never heard of it. But this quiet SpaceX project could be one of the biggest tailwinds for TSLA in the 2030s and beyond. It is not just "another capsule." It is a 10 feet diameter, 2.5 feet tall disk-shaped, reentry vehicle designed to bring high-value payloads back from orbit safely and affordably. It weighs about 4,600lbs and is the missing piece for in-space manufacturing at scale. The first FAA-approved launch test is scheduled for June 21st 2026. Starfall’s sole purpose is to be a rapid point-to-point cargo delivery vessel. It unlocks commercial in-space manufacturing by...

In this episode, John and I got to do a real deep-dive with Elon. We discuss the economics of orbital data centers, the difficulties of scaling power on Earth, what it would take to manufacture humanoids at high-volume in America, xAI’s business and alignment plans, DOGE, and much more. Elon Musk -- "In 36 months, the cheapest place to put AI will be space" | 2:49:45 Dwarkesh Patel and Stripe | 1,628,229 views | February 5, 2026

"The super-factory will alter everyday life. If it actually happens. The announcement of Terafab was made at a decommissioned power plant, reflecting Elon Musk’s understanding of stagecraft: The ruined infrastructure of one era makes a convenient altar for the next. On March 21 and 22, 2026, at the Seaholm Power Plant in Austin, Musk presented Terafab. It is either the most ambitious semiconductor manufacturing project in history or a very expensive project that may not come to be. Terafab is a plan to build vertically integrated chip-manufacturing capacity in Austin, combining under one roof the design, fabrication, packaging, and testing...

It's a ~24-minute video that primarily consists of a transcript/narration of a major speech by Elon Musk. In it, Musk announces a massive collaborative project between SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla to build what's called a "Terafab" — an unprecedented advanced chip fabrication facility (described as "the most epic chip building exercise in history"). Key points from the announcement: The goal is to produce 1 terawatt (1,000 gigawatts) of compute capacity per year, combined with terawatt-scale solar power — much of it deployed in space. This is framed as essential to advance humanity on the Kardashev scale (toward Type 1 civilization...