News
SpaceX Crew Dragon, four astronauts set for brief flight around the space station
To set the stage for another Dragon launch just a few weeks from now, NASA astronauts are preparing to board a SpaceX Crew Dragon for a brief flight around the International Space Station (ISS).
Orbiting roughly 400 km (250 mi) above the Earth’s surface, the ISS and its crew of seven international astronauts have just two docking ports available to manage a growing influx of SpaceX Crew and Cargo Dragon 2 spacecraft, as well as Boeing’s chronically delayed Starliner. While Starliner hasn’t flown since a near-catastrophic orbital debut in December 2019 and isn’t likely to reattempt that uncrewed flight test until the second half of 2021, SpaceX is in the exact opposite position as it prepares to sustain an unprecedented Dragon launch cadence.
One challenge of that cadence ramp – space station port logistics and availability – is now becoming clear as SpaceX nears its next Crew Dragon NASA astronaut launch.
All launched on SpaceX Cargo Dragons, including a third destroyed during Falcon 9’s CRS-7 launch failure, the International Space Station has just two perpendicular International Docking Adapter (IDA) ports – one facing space and the other facing Earth. Regardless of CRS-7’s lost port, that IDA duo was always NASA’s plan.
The ISS requires the use of a huge, robotic arm (Canadarm2) to unload unpressurized cargo from spacecraft and that arm doesn’t have the mobility to access vehicles docked to the Earth-facing IDA port, meaning that cargo spacecraft with IDA ports can really only dock on the space-facing port. Cargo Dragon 2’s use of IDA docking and the Cygnus spacecraft’s use of berthing thankfully mean that neither NASA Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS2) vehicle is at risk of a traffic jam.
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is set to debut the cargo variant of its Dream Chaser spaceplane as early as 2022 for annual launches and will need to share that same lone IDA port with Cargo Dragon for its (approximately) annual resupply missions. More importantly, though, Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner both require the use of one of those two IDA ports to deliver astronauts to and from the ISS. Both spacecraft are also expected to leave with the same crew that launched on them, meaning that both will spend a fully six or so months in orbit on each crew rotation mission.
In general, NASA also plans to overlap all Commercial Crew Program (CCP) astronaut launches, meaning that Crew Dragon will wait for Starliner to arrive (and vice versa) before departing the ISS with its four-astronaut crew. Those use-cases and safety requirements combine to create strict, complex scheduling challenges that mean a Cargo Dragon or Dream Chaser can never be docked to the ISS during a crew handover, while also adding significant constraints to any planned private astronaut (tourist) missions to the station – of which SpaceX already has at least one.
In the meantime, though Boeing’s Starliner is now at least 18 months behind SpaceX’s Crew Dragon on the path to launching NASA astronauts to and from the ISS, SpaceX is picking up the slack to the extent that station ‘traffic’ conditions are practically unaffected. Whereas NASA’s nominal plan was to alternate between its two redundant Commercial Crew providers before Boeing ran into huge delays, SpaceX is on track to launch Crew Dragon’s Crew-2 astronaut ferry mission as early as April 22nd.
The flight-proven Demo-2 Dragon will then rendezvous with the ISS while Crew-1’s Dragon and four astronauts are still aboard the station. Crew-1 and Crew-2 will spend about a week together before the former group boards their Dragon and heads for home. As few as six or so weeks later, SpaceX could launch its second Cargo Dragon 2 resupply mission, known as CRS-22. – This morning’s “port relocation,” which will see the Crew-1 Dragon will ‘relocate’ from the station’s Earth-facing IDA to its space-facing port, is thus necessary to free up that port for Cargo Dragon’s arrival when Crew-1 departs.
Barring major delays, SpaceX is currently on track to complete another two Crew and Cargo Dragon launches in 2-3 months, marking four Dragon missions in seven months if all goes to plan. Another three Dragon missions are firmly scheduled in 2021, potentially making for seven Dragon launches in 11-12 months if schedules hold. SpaceX’s current record – technically achieved twice in 2018 and 2019 – is five orbital Dragon missions in 12 months.
-
Tune in below around 6am EDT (UTC-4) to catch Crew Dragon C207’s brief 46-minute jaunt around the International Space Station (ISS) – a first for an American crewed spacecraft of any kind.
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.
Inside Tesla’s secretive $10 Billion “Project Crystal Sun” filing
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
