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SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship marches towards launch with vacuum chamber test
SpaceX has published the latest photo of its next-generation Crew Dragon spacecraft, showing the crewed vehicle preparing to be put through its paces inside a NASA thermal vacuum chamber located in Cleveland, Ohio. If the tests are completed without issue, the Dragon’s next destination will be Cape Canaveral, Florida, where it will prepare for an inaugural launch targeted for the fourth quarter of 2018.
In the photo released on June 20th, SpaceX’s DM-1 Crew Dragon capsule (C202 in shorthand: [C]apsule, Dragon [2], serial number [02]) is seen being craned by SpaceX technicians into the thermal vacuum chamber at NASA’s Plum Brook testing facilities. Located in Ohio, Plum Brook’s vacuum chamber is unique because of both its size and its ability to fairly accurate replicate the actual environment faced by satellites and spacecraft once in space. Most importantly, this includes the extreme thermal conditions those vehicles are subjected to by constant ~90-minute day-night cycles in low Earth orbit (LEO).
Without Earth’s cozy atmosphere to act as both a heat sink and insulating blanket once on orbit, there is simply nothing there to protect spacecraft like Crew Dragon from the absolute extremes of direct solar radiation (sunlight), total darkness, and a complete lack of cooling by conduction and convection. In order to avoid overheating, Crew Dragon thus needs to bring along its own means of cooling in the form of onboard radiators to shed excess heat. The use of white paint on spacecraft further aids this process by selectively preventing the absorption of solar radiation while simultaneously efficiently emitting in infrared wavelengths.
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- SpaceX’s Demo Mission-1 Crew Dragon seen preparing for vacuum tests at a NASA-run facility, June 2018. (SpaceX)
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- The DM-1 Crew Dragon testing inside SpaceX’s anechoic chamber, May 2018. (SpaceX)
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- An overview of Crew Dragon’s main features, all of which can be seen in the real-life photos. The Cargo Dragon version will likely remove seats and windows. (SpaceX)
How to prep your Dragon
Crew Dragon’s primary radiators are elegantly integrated into vertical panels installed on the cylindrical bottom segment, known as the trunk, while the craft’s power source – solar panels in this case – are installed in a curved array on the opposite side of the trunk. Intriguingly, the trunks displayed in the two most recent photos of the DM-1 Crew Dragon appear to be almost completely different, and the trunk at Plum Brook does not appear to have its solar arrays or radiators installed. Nominally, SpaceX would use the thermal vacuum capabilities of the Ohio facility to fully vet Crew Dragon’s ability to maintain optimal temperatures on orbit, but the particularly tests planned for the DM-1 capsule and trunk may be of a slightly different type.
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- On February 28, SpaceX completed a demonstration of their ability to recover the crew and capsule after a nominal water splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of Florida. (SpaceX)
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- Astronaut Bob Behnken examines a sample of Crew Dragon docking and crew transfer hardware, the mechanisms that will allow the spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station and allow crew to enter the orbital outpost. Taken March 2017. (SpaceX)
Regardless, after testing at Plum Brook is completed, the DM-1 Crew Dragon capsule will be shipped to a newly-constructed processing facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida, while it’s understood that the trunk installed in SpaceX’s June 20th photo will be returned to the Hawthorne, CA factory to be outfitted with flight hardware (presumably including cameras, radiators, solar arrays, and a healthy amount of insulation). It’s unclear when the two segments of DM-1 will part ways and head on to their next destinations, but it’s likely that testing at Plum Brook will last for at least a handful of weeks.
Birds of a feather
In the meantime, several additional Crew Dragon capsules/trunks and the Falcon 9 Block 5 rockets that will launch them are in a variety of states of fabrication and assembly at SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory. B1051, the Block 5 booster assigned to the first uncrewed Demo-1 launch of Crew Dragon, was reported by NASA to be undergoing propellant tank integration in March 2018, implying that the rocket should be at or near the final stages of integration, and will likely ship to McGregor, Texas for static fire testing late this summer.
As of June 15th, SpaceX’s third Falcon 9 Block 5 booster was vertical on the Texas test stand, likely nearing its own static fire test before being shipped to SpaceX’s Vandenberg Air Force Base launch facilities for the July 20th launch of Iridium-7. While possible that a booster slipped past the watchful eyes and ears of SpaceX enthusiast observers, it’s probable that the rocket currently in McGregor is B1048, implying that a minimum of two additional booster shipments and Texas test programs remain before B1051 can be prepped to launch SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon mission. At the current marginally accelerated booster production and shipment schedule (~ 30-day cadence), B1051 would be expected to leave Hawthorne for Texas no earlier than (NET) late August or early September. This meshes with a recent comment from Commercial Crew astronaut Suni Williams:
“I think we’re going to get the [uncrewed[ demo flights probably by the end of the year, maybe a little after that . . . and then the crew demo missions next year.”
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- Falcon 9 Block 5 completed its first launch on May 11, carrying the Bangabandhu-1 communications satellite to geostationary transfer orbit. (Tom Cross)
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- SpaceX’s second Block 5 booster was spotted vertical at the company’s McGregor, TX testing facilities. That booster has since been shipped to Florida for a mid-July launch, with B1048 now in its place as of June 15. (Aero Photo)
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- A matte-silver Block 5 Merlin 1D rocket engine seen preparing to leave SpaceX’s Hawthorne factory for testing in Texas. (SpaceX)
Anticipating acceptance and prelaunch testing that is far more extensive and time-consuming than typically seen with SpaceX’s commercial missions, it’s safe to bet that the first uncrewed Crew Dragon mission – DM-1 – will launch from Kennedy Space Center in November or December 2018. While those operations proceed over the course of the rest of this year, SpaceX expects roughly 10 additional Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches to occur. It’s gonna be a busy H2.
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Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public. It is not active in the entire fleet, but there are a “few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors,” Ashok Elluswamy said:
Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin.
Starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time. https://t.co/ShMpZjefwB
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) January 22, 2026
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Elon Musk shared an incredible detail about Tesla Cybercab’s potential efficiency, as the company has hinted in the past that it could be one of the most affordable vehicles to operate from a per-mile basis.
ARK Invest released a report recently that shed some light on the potential incremental cost per mile of various Robotaxis that will be available on the market in the coming years.
The Cybercab, which is detailed for the year 2030, has an exceptionally low cost of operation, which is something Tesla revealed when it unveiled the vehicle a year and a half ago at the “We, Robot” event in Los Angeles.
Musk said on numerous occasions that Tesla plans to hit the $0.20 cents per mile mark with the Cybercab, describing a “clear path” to achieving that figure and emphasizing it is the “full considered” cost, which would include energy, maintenance, cleaning, depreciation, and insurance.
Probably true
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 22, 2026
ARK’s report showed that the Cybercab would be roughly half the cost of the Waymo 6th Gen Robotaxi in 2030, as that would come in at around $0.40 per mile all in. Cybercab, at scale, would be at $0.20.
Credit: ARK Invest
This would be a dramatic decrease in the cost of operation for Tesla, and the savings would then be passed on to customers who choose to utilize the ride-sharing service for their own transportation needs.
The U.S. average cost of new vehicle ownership is about $0.77 per mile, according to AAA. Meanwhile, Uber and Lyft rideshares often cost between $1 and $4 per mile, while Waymo can cost between $0.60 and $1 or more per mile, according to some estimates.
Tesla’s engineering has been the true driver of these cost efficiencies, and its focus on creating a vehicle that is as cost-effective to operate as possible is truly going to pay off as the vehicle begins to scale. Tesla wants to get the Cybercab to about 5.5-6 miles per kWh, which has been discussed with prototypes.
Additionally, fewer parts due to the umboxed manufacturing process, a lower initial cost, and eliminating the need to pay humans for their labor would also contribute to a cheaper operational cost overall. While aspirational, all of the ingredients for this to be a real goal are there.
It may take some time as Tesla needs to hammer the manufacturing processes, and Musk has said there will be growing pains early. This week, he said regarding the early production efforts:
“…initial production is always very slow and follows an S-curve. The speed of production ramp is inversely proportionate to how many new parts and steps there are. For Cybercab and Optimus, almost everything is new, so the early production rate will be agonizingly slow, but eventually end up being insanely fast.”
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla Earnings Call: Top 5 questions investors are asking
