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NASA asks SpaceX to decide the fate of ‘Dragon XL’ lunar cargo spacecraft
In a new Request For Information (RFI) quietly released by NASA on April Fools’ Day, the space agency appears to have indirectly asked SpaceX to determine the fate of its ‘Dragon XL’ lunar cargo spacecraft.
In March 2020, NASA announced that it had selected SpaceX to deliver the bulk of pressurized and unpressurized cargo it would need to crewed and operate a proposed “Gateway” lunar space station for the first several years of its existence. To accomplish that task, SpaceX would develop a heavily-modified single-use version of its Dragon 2 spacecraft with more propellant storage, more space for cargo, and a range of other design changes.
Known as Dragon XL, that spacecraft would weigh around 15 to 16 tons (~33,000-35,000 lb) at liftoff and likely require a fully or partially expendable Falcon Heavy launch for each mission to the Moon. At the time, it was a fairly balanced and reasonable choice on NASA’s part, leveraging existing investments and experience with SpaceX and Dragon and erecting no major technical hurdles. However, more than two years later, NASA still hasn’t started work on the contract.
That’s why the new April 1st RFI is so intriguing. NASA begins by referencing fine print in the original 2018 Gateway Logistics Services (GLS) Request For Proposals (RFP) that allows the agency to continue receiving and considering new proposals from new and existing providers throughout the program’s planned 17-year lifespan. The agency says its primary motivations are for “information and planning purposes, to request feedback, to promote competition,” and to “[determine] whether to conduct an on-ramp in 2022.” NASA doesn’t specify what exactly that means, but in the context of the rest of the text, it appears that the agency wants to use this RFI to help determine whether or not to finally “on-ramp” its existing Dragon XL contract with SpaceX.
However, the document gets far more interesting and suggestive. Later, NASA spells out what exactly it wants respondents to discuss. In a list of eight main questions, the agency repeatedly hints at a desire to substantially expand the scope of GLS. In question #8, NASA asks if, to help “create a vibrant supply chain in deep space,” respondents would be able to deliver additional cargo to “cislunar orbits [and] the lunar surface” or offer a “dedicated delivery tug capability” or “rapid response delivery service.”
NASA also asks for information on ways prospective GLS providers could “[minimize] the cost impact of…requirement changes,” “reduce operating costs,” and “minimize upfront costs.” In questions #2 and #3, NASA requests details about “new and/or innovative capabilities” that could “significantly increase…cargo delivery capacity” within “the next five years” and states that “offerors exceeding the minimum [cargo] capabilities may be viewed more favorably.”
NASA seems very interested in the potential benefits of alternative deep space cargo transport services that are both cheaper and more capable than Dragon XL. Between the lines, however, the RFI also reads as if it was written directly to SpaceX. The first question is perhaps the most telling: “Is your company interested in on-ramping to the GLS contract to provide Logistics Services as described in the original solicitation?”
SpaceX is the only company with an existing GLS contract that it could “on-ramp to” – a roundabout way to say “start work on”. In the following questions, NASA then repeatedly expresses interest in cargo transport capabilities well beyond the original contract’s requirements and asks about innovative new capabilities that could enable such improvements. NASA even “recognizes” and hints at a willingness to consider unorthodox solutions that, for example, might require “more than one launch” per cargo delivery or help “minimize upfront costs to the Government.” Put simply, while it does open the door for just about any US company to inform NASA about new GLS options, it’s hard not to conclude that this new RFI is at least partially designed to give SpaceX an opportunity to propose Dragon XL alternatives or upgrades.
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The most obvious option: Starship. Through the Human Landing System (HLS) program, NASA has already committed to investing at least $3 billion to develop a crewed Starship Moon lander and the fully-reusable launch vehicle and refueling infrastructure required to launch and operate it. With barely any modification, the Starship architecture SpaceX and NASA are already developing could be used to deliver dozens of tons of pressurized cargo to cislunar space, lunar orbit, the Gateway, the lunar surface, or just about anywhere else NASA wants. Leveraging that significant investment would also tick almost every box in NASA’s new RFI by drastically reducing upfront and total development costs, helping to stimulate a “vibrant” deep space supply chain, and beating Dragon XL’s cargo capabilities by a factor of 5, 10, or even 20+.
Of course, there are technical challenges and reasons to believe that Starship can’t easily replace Dragon XL. Even Dragon XL risked running into Gateway’s visiting vehicle mass limit of just 14 tons. Starship would likely weigh at least 100-200 tons – more than the entire Gateway. Dragon XL would use non-cryogenic propellant and is baselined to spend at least 6-12 months at a time at the Gateway. NASA has also studied the possibility of using Dragon XL as a crew cabin or bathroom to temporarily relieve Gateway’s extremely cramped habitable volume. Starship’s main engines use cryogenic propellant that wants nothing more than to warm up and boil into gas, making it far harder to keep at the station for months at a time. Those problems are likely solvable, but it’s still worth noting that Starship is not a perfect fit right out of the box.
The RFI could also end with a whimper if SpaceX simply tells NASA that it’s happy to proceed with Dragon XL as proposed. Only time will tell. NASA is planning to hold an industry day on April 20th to better explain the RFI’s goals and wants responses by May 31st, 2022, after which the agency will decide whether or not to follow up with a solicitation or on-ramp Dragon XL.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
