SpaceX
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to launch astronauts in July, says Russian source
A source familiar with Russia’s aerospace industry recently informed state newspaper RIA Novosti that NASA has provided Russian space agency Roscosmos with an updated planning schedule for International Space Station (ISS) operations, including a preliminary target for SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon launch with astronauts aboard.
According to RIA’s source, NASA informed Roscosmos that the agency was tentatively planning for the launch of SpaceX’s Demonstration Mission 2 (DM-2) as early as July 25th, with the spacecraft departing the ISS, reentering the atmosphere, and safely returning astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to Earth on August 5th. In a bizarre turn of events, Russian news agency TASS published a separate article barely 12 hours later, in which – once again – an anonymous space agency source told the outlet that “the [DM-2] launch of Crew Dragon is likely to be postponed to November”. For the time being, the reality likely stands somewhere in the middle.
While it’s hard not to jump to conclusions about the oddity of two wholly contradictory reports arising from similar sources in similar articles just half a day apart, it’s just as likely that the near-simultaneous publishing of both TASS and RIA stories is mainly a coincidence. At the same time, truth can be found in both comments made by the anonymous source(s), while they also offer a sort of best-case and worst-case scenario for the first crewed launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.
RIA began the series on March 22nd with a brief news blurb featuring one substantive quote from the aforementioned space industry source.
“The American side informed the Russian side that the launch of the [first crewed launch of] Dragon-2…to the ISS…is scheduled for July 25. The docking with the station is scheduled [to occur around one day later]. The separation from the ISS and return to Earth is expected on August 5,” the agency’s source said.
Put in a slightly different way, NASA informed Roscosmos that it had begun to loosely plan for the launch of SpaceX’s DM-2 no earlier than (NET) late July, much like NASA and SpaceX publicly announced that Crew Dragon’s DM-1 launch debut was scheduled NET January 17th as of early December 2018. DM-1’s actual debut wound up occurring on March 2nd, a delay of approximately six weeks. The cause(s) behind the discrepancy between NASA’s first serious planning date and the actual launch remains unknown but it’s safe to say that things took quite a bit longer than expected even after Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 were technically “go” for launch.
Although NASA and SpaceX now have the luxury of a vast cache of flight data and the practical experience derived from conducting Crew Dragon’s first – and nearly flawless – orbital launch and ISS rendezvous, Crew Dragon’s DM-2 mission remains an entirely different animal. Aside from requiring a number of significant hardware changes and introducing the visceral pressure of real human lives hanging in the balance, DM-2 will be a major first for the NASA after having spent the better part of eight years unable to launch its own astronauts into orbit.
A ‘race’ no more
Meanwhile, Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft – a companion to Crew Dragon under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program – has suffered multiple setbacks in 2019, reportedly pushing the vehicle’s uncrewed launch debut from April to NET August, a delay of at least four months. As a result, nothing short of severe anomalies during Crew Dragon hardware preparation and/or NASA’s reviews of DM-1 performance and DM-2 flight-readiness could prevent SpaceX from becoming the first commercial entity to build, launch, and operate a crewed spacecraft in the history of spaceflight.
According to a December 2018 update provided during NASA’s quarterly Advisory Council meetings, the entirety of Crew Dragon DM-2’s manufacturing and integration may already be complete, with the capsule potentially heading to SpaceX’s Florida payload processing facilities later this week. NAC’s December 2018 dates did not, however, account for the DM-1 launch delays that shortly followed, plausibly impacting the completion of DM-2 integration and pad delivery to ensure that any potential anomalies experienced during Crew Dragon’s test flight could be resolved in Hawthorne, CA.
According to NASA and SpaceX, DM-2’s Crew Dragon will need to be retrofitted with thermal regulation hardware to prevent Draco thruster plumbing from freezing under a handful of specific conditions on orbit, as well as potential modifications to the craft’s parachute system and the installation of four windows instead of two. SpaceX will also need to install Crew Dragon’s first orbit-ready display and control hardware. Finally, SpaceX has opted to conduct an in-flight abort (IFA) test of Crew Dragon to verify that the spacecraft can safely carry astronauts to safety from the moment of launch to orbital insertion, a test that will have to be completed successfully and reviewed by NASA before the agency allows SpaceX to proceed with DM-2.
All of the above tasks – including major agency-wide reviews of Crew Dragon’s performance during its DM-1 debut – must be completed before SpaceX will be permitted to launch astronauts to the ISS, all of which inherently add some level of uncertainty to DM-2’s practical launch schedule. If all reviews and modifications proceed flawlessly, including a perfect in-flight abort test as early as late June, it’s possible that SpaceX and NASA could be prepared to launch Crew Dragon once more by the end of July.
In reality, it’s extremely unlikely that everything will proceed perfectly, as evidenced by the drawn-out process required for NASA and SpaceX to eventually reach flight-readiness prior to DM-1. If a significant number of challenges arise over the next few months of reviews and work, it’s not out of the question for DM-2’s launch to slip to Q4 2019 or Q1 2020. Splitting the difference, it would be safest to bet that Crew Dragon will lift off with astronauts aboard no earlier than August or September. Regardless, a great many exciting milestones are soon to come for SpaceX’s first human spaceflight program. Stay tuned as SpaceX prepares to ship the second flightworthy Crew Dragon to Florida.
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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.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.
Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.
The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.
Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.
Check out the “Robovan” from @Tesla
📸: @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/D4es2i9NUe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”
Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.
The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”
Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.
Elon Musk
Space finally faced the people living next to its next Terafab mega-project
SpaceX confirmed Terafab’s Grimes County site is locked in, with construction starting within months.
SpaceX and Terafab representatives sat across from Grimes County residents for the first time on Wednesday, telling a packed Commissioners Court room that the $55 billion chip manufacturing project is now a done deal at the Gibbons Creek Reservoir site.
The meeting followed a $10 million check SpaceX sent the county earlier this week, satisfying a payment deadline built into the tax abatement agreement both sides signed in June. Elon Musk shared a post on X confirming the payment, and County Judge Joe Fauth told the San Antonio Express-News his office deposited the check after it beat its deadline.
Wednesday’s session, first reported by KBTX, moved the project from paperwork to construction. Terafab representative Riley Trennell told residents the JETI tax break agreements with Iola ISD and Anderson-Shiro CISD are signed and active, and that civil work and foundation prep are starting almost immediately. Renderings of the facility could be released within days, he said, with construction beginning within months.
The foundations for an exciting future are being built in Texas. Next up: Terafab → https://t.co/jGg52Zhn5I pic.twitter.com/SNfSXNr2tb
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 6, 2026
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
Musk first announced Terafab in March as a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI aimed at producing over a terawatt of AI compute annually, an amount that dwarfs the roughly 20 gigawatts the entire global chip industry produces today. Intel joined as a manufacturing partner in April. Musk has said the project needed its own day in the spotlight rather than being squeezed into an earnings call, and for months the Grimes County site remained unconfirmed even as reporting pointed there.
SpaceX attorney Buck Brannon used Wednesday’s meeting to note that the company’s abatement is roughly 78 percent, not the 100 percent some earlier reports suggested. In exchange, SpaceX will pay Grimes County a fixed $20 million a year for 35 years, a total of $710 million, which Brannon said exceeds the $14 million Tesla paid Travis County in 2025.
SpaceX also addressed environmental concerns that have followed the project since Musk’s Terafab partnership with Intel was announced. Representatives said Terafab will not raise electric bills for other ratepayers, will not deplete local water supplies and will not draw down the Navasota River. SpaceX confirmed it owns the Navasota River pumping station, which it plans to use to divert stormwater into the Gibbons Creek Reservoir, and said it will build its own natural gas plants to power the facility rather than pulling from the ERCOT grid.
Grimes County commissioners also approved an addendum letting county employees use ten approved AI chatbots for work, including Grok.
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
