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NASA awards SpaceX five more Dragon astronaut launch contracts

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4 years ago

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NASA has finalized plans to purchase another five Crew Dragon launches from SpaceX, securing its astronauts access to the International Space Station (ISS) through 2030.

The award comes three months after NASA issued a notice of intent to purchase five additional missions from SpaceX. The space agency signed a different contract for three more Crew Dragon launches just three months before the latest order, meaning that NASA has now purchased eight new Crew Dragon launches from SpaceX in six months – doubling the spacecraft’s future launch manifest in the process.

August 31st’s order adds Crew missions 10 through 14 to Crew Dragon’s roster and brings its total number of planned operational NASA astronaut launches to 14. NASA says the five extra missions will cost $1.44 billion and raise the total value of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon CCtCap contract to $4.93 billion.

Factoring in a sum of approximately $2.74 billion that funded development and three test launches, NASA will ultimately pay an average of $328 million for each of 15 productive Crew Dragon astronaut launches (including Demo-2, the spacecraft’s first crewed test flight). Assuming four astronauts fly on each operational launch, the average price per astronaut launched through 2030 will be $85 million.

With its latest contract, NASA will beat that average and pay $288 million per launch ($72 million per astronaut). Crew-10 through Crew-14 will likely occur in the late 2020s, meaning that the space agency may be saving even more money than is immediately obvious. Assuming an inflation rate of 2.5% over the next eight years, $288 million today could be worth around $235 million in 2030. SpaceX is not paid until after its services are rendered.

SpaceX’s fifth operational NASA Crew Dragon launch is scheduled in early October. (NASA)

NASA’s decision to award SpaceX eight new Crew Dragon launch contracts in 2022 is a major blow to its second Commercial Crew provider, Boeing, which has received zero additional orders. It also emphasizes just how good of a deal the agency got with SpaceX. Once said to be “well positioned to fly [its] first crew in early 2020,” Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule finally completed its first (mostly) successful uncrewed test flight in May 2022. Boeing and NASA are now working towards February 2023 for the spacecraft’s first crewed test flight, delaying Starliner’s first operational astronaut launch until late 2023 at the earliest.

Starliner still has only six operational launch contracts, which date back to ta guarantee in the original 2014 CCtCap awards that promised 2-6 operational launch contracts per provider. Thanks to NASA’s fixed-price contract with Boeing, the agency won’t have to cover the almost $700 million that years of Starliner delays and a test flight do-over have cost the company to date, but taxpayers will still end up paying a total of $4.49 billion – $748 million per operational Boeing astronaut launch.

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Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft nears the ISS for the first time during its second uncrewed test flight. (ESA)

Even using iffy Boeing calculus that claims NASA will get five seats of value per launch by adding an extra astronaut or cargo, the space agency would end up paying $150 million per astronaut through 2030. If only four astronauts launch on each Starliner, the average price per seat rises to $187 million.

Unless Boeing is able to find a commercial customer willing to burn tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid launching private astronauts with SpaceX, it may never recoup the losses it has incurred developing Starliner. Worse, without Boeing paying even more out of pocket to certify Starliner to launch on a different rocket, the spacecraft will find itself without a certified rocket after its sixth operational launch.

Meanwhile, on top of eight new NASA contracts, Crew Dragon has already supported two private astronaut launches and SpaceX has contracts for five more private missions through 2024. Put simply, thanks in large part to the void created by Boeing’s surprising shortcomings, SpaceX practically owns the western market for crewed orbital spaceflight and will likely continue to dominate it throughout the 2020s.

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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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Elon Musk

Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

Elon Musk sat beside Trump as AI leaders signed a voluntary White House safety accord.

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September 29, 2026

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Elon Musk had the seat right next to President Donald Trump on Tuesday as the White House hosted the leaders of America’s biggest artificial intelligence companies for a lunch that ended with a voluntary industry accord on AI safety.

A seating chart Trump posted on Truth Social placed Musk at the president’s left in the East Room, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on his right, according to an Associated Press reporter. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also attended, along with Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

After the lunch, Trump told reporters outside the West Wing that the executives had signed “The White House Accord on Superintelligence: A Joint Commitment on Frontier SI Responsibilities.” Johnson described it as a voluntary statement of principles built on “robust internal controls and layers of internal and external review,” while Zuckerberg said company boards would independently review reports from outside auditors. Trump called the document “morally binding,” said he would name a new AI czar within days, and signed an executive order formally renaming artificial intelligence “super intelligence,” CNBC reported.

Musk was not in the room for Tesla alone. Since SpaceX absorbed xAI, he runs the company behind Grok and one of the largest AI training operations anywhere. On September 25, he said another 220,000 Nvidia GB300 chips would come online at Colossus 2 within a week, with more expected in November and December.

SpaceX confirms third massive compute deal at Colossus data center

 

Musk also used the trip to restate his energy ambitions. “SpaceX is aiming together with Tesla to do 200 gigawatts of solar production per year,” he said at an event in Washington. It is the same combined target he laid out that feeds directly into Terafab, the Tesla and SpaceX chip venture that will need enormous amounts of power.

The showing between Musk and Trump has come a long way, since the two had the very public split in mid 2025 after Musk opposed the “Big Beautiful Bill” and left DOGE. They reconciled at Charlie Kirk’s memorial that September, and Trump later called their relationship “good”. Since then, Musk has joined Trump’s China delegation in May and attended last week’s White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

For Tesla, that access to government official could pay dividends. As Teslarati noted in January, federal autonomy rules, NHTSA oversight and a single national standard for driverless vehicles all run through an administration Musk can more easily reach directly as Tesla works to scale Robotaxi and Cybercab beyond Texas.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded

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14 hours ago

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September 29, 2026

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Credit: @BLKMDL3/Twitter

Ahead of its highly anticipated unveiling, Tesla’s upcoming Roadster received a new patent that aims to keep it grounded while enabling white-knuckle speeds.

The patent, which was granted on September 29, is titled “Electric Car Fan,” bluntly stating its design but not its purpose, which is further detailed in the text of the application. Interestingly, it comes two weeks before the Roadster event, which was delayed due to unfavorable weather on Thursday, which could cause issues, as Tesla revealed the event must be held outdoors.

The purpose is to solve a problem that is relatively unique to high-performance electric cars. Instant motor torque is useless if the tires cannot plant that force, and conventional wings and underbody tunnels generate downforce only when air is already rushing past the car. At launch, in slow corners, and under hard braking from modest speed, passive aerodynamic additions contribute essentially very little to downforce.

Tesla’s filing says that its fans can produce the downforce needed, independent of vehicle velocity, then ease off so the same hardware does not pile on drag at highway speeds, an issue that can come from excessive body modifications.

The hardware outlined in the patent is a ducted-fan package that is placed into the rear of the vehicle. An underbody inlet between the rear wheels feeds a duct that rises to a wide outlet in the diffuser. In that outlet are four axial fans, which are divided by vertical strakes. They will pull air from under the floor and press the chassis onto the pavement.

The language in the patent claims it can cut drag rather than add to it while simultaneously increasing downforce.

Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges

The fans run from the high-voltage battery and a vehicle control system, so output can be modulated rather than left on as a fixed penalty.

There are additional strengths that can come from this design, like extra tire load at low speed, which can contribute to even more face-melting acceleration rates, decrease stopping distance, and sharper turn-in before a wing has air to work with. Adjustable fan speed lets the car add grip only when needed, so it can be catered to the force of a turn or acceleration.

These designs were previously used, and banned, in some competitive settings. The Brabham BT46B was banned in F1 competition for using a similar fan design and being labeled as too effective.

Tesla still lists the Roadster as having a sub-two-second 0-60 MPH time and a 250-plus-MPH top speed, and there are expectations for a SpaceX cold-gas thruster package that could not only increase acceleration but potentially cause the vehicle to hover.

It is important to note that a patent is not a production part, and packaging four fans in a rear diffuser, managing noise, and potential debris are all things Tesla must consider. With that being said, the patent being granted shows Tesla is designing the Roadster to go fast, but it is also attempting to use unique strategies to combat any issues it might have at those speeds.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla showrooms picked clean ahead of Q3 end as demand looks strong

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15 hours ago

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September 29, 2026

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Credit: @thaichiminh1907/X

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) showrooms have been picked clean ahead of the end of the third quarter of the year, as demand looks to be strong and delivery estimates for new vehicles are pushed into late 2026 and early 2027.

Tesla appears to have sold out of many of its Model 3 and Model Y trim levels in the United States, as only the Model Y RWD and Model Y All-Wheel-Drive are available for delivery before the end of the year.

Additionally, many showrooms are either completely empty or void of all but just one demo unit within the buildings themselves in an effort to bolster what could be one of Tesla’s best quarters in vehicle deliveries in recent memory.

Additionally, when I spoke to the guys at Tesla Mechanicsburg two weeks ago, when I returned the Model Y L, their third hauler of the week had just arrived, and every vehicle on it, along with every vehicle in their delivery lot, was accounted for and had a name attached to it for delivery.

Tesla saw a 25 percent increase in deliveries in Q2 compared to the same quarter the year before. The vast majority of the 480,126 units it delivered, 467,762 vehicles to be exact, were the Model 3 and Model Y.

In Q3 2025, Tesla delivered 497,099 vehicles, once again a figure that was dominated by the company’s two mass-market vehicles. Analysts have unusually wide predictions for this quarter, likely because so many firms missed the Q2 delivery figure by such a substantial margin; Wall Street predicted 408,000 cars, while Tesla delivered 480,000.

Goldman Sachs has Tesla slotted for 435,000 deliveries in Q3, while JPMorgan said it anticipates 482,000. The median guess is about 449,000 deliveries for Q3.

Interested in ordering a Tesla? Use my referral code for three free months of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) here.

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