News
SpaceX to end Crew Dragon capsule production as Starship’s shadow grows
Reuters reports that SpaceX has begun to shut down Crew Dragon capsule production after assembling a fleet of four reusable spacecraft, highlighting the company’s ever-growing desire to pivot to Starship.
According to SpaceX president and chief operating officer (COO) Gwynne Shotwell, who spoke with Reuters reporter Joey Roulette, the company has already ended production of new Crew Dragon capsules after recently completing a fourth operational spacecraft. Nicknamed “Freedom” by its crew, Dragon capsule C212 (Dragon 2 capsule #12) is scheduled to debut as early as April 19th and will ultimately ferry SpaceX’s fourth crew of government astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
However, while ending production of Crew Dragon might sound like a dramatic and unexpected move after less than two years of operational astronaut launches and undeniably hints at the company’s desire for Starship to take over, it’s not quite as jarring as it seems.
Above all else, Shotwell did not explicitly mention Cargo Dragon 2 production. It’s possible that there was a miscommunication during the brief Q&A and that a generic statement about ending production of all Dragon capsules was projected onto just SpaceX’s Crew Dragon variants, but the Reuters article strongly implies that only Crew Dragon production has been ended.
As of today, SpaceX only has two operational Cargo Dragon 2 capsules in its uncrewed fleet – both of which have already flown twice. Following a recent contract extension, SpaceX is scheduled to complete at least 11 more ISS cargo deliveries and recoveries by 2027 and while it’s possible that the company is confident enough to gamble that two Dragon 2 capsules can complete all 15 CRS2 resupply missions, a SpaceX engineer confirmed that at least one more Cargo Dragon is scheduled to debut in 2022. With three Dragons, that would at least give SpaceX the ability to confidently fulfill its CRS2 obligations even if one capsule is damaged or lost.
Meanwhile, Shotwell indicated that SpaceX would preserve the ability to restart Dragon production if the need arose – far easier said than done. At the same time, the company will still need to churn out at least half a dozen or so expendable Dragon ‘trunks’ per year and continue building a wide range of replacement parts. A substantial team will also be needed to refurbish and operate Crew and Cargo Dragons for as long as launches continue.


But by and large, the move to end Crew Dragon capsule production says one thing above all else: that SpaceX is chomping at the bit to redirect large portions of its Falcon and Dragon workforce to Starship development. If SpaceX can make it work, Starship – a fully-reusable two-stage rocket – could end up costing roughly as much as Dragon and Falcon per launch but its launch costs could also plummet to a magnitude less – all while offering a magnitude more space, performance, and capabilities.
Crew Dragon is currently used to launch four astronauts at a time. A single crewed Starship could have a habitable volume greater than the entire International Space Station and carry 40 astronauts into orbit inside it in a single launch. Cargo Dragon typically delivers about three tons (~6600 lb) of cargo to the ISS. A Cargo Starship could deliver dozens of tons in one go – more cargo space than NASA would know what to do with after decades sent under the tyranny of razor-thin mass margins.
NASA is likely the single largest individual investor in Starship after contracting with SpaceX to build a version of Starship capable of returning astronauts to the Moon for about $3 billion, meaning that the space agency will be intimately aware of and involved in the vehicle’s development over the next 5-10 years. It would only be logical to extract as much value as possible out of that investment and simultaneously revolutionize the transportation of cargo and, one day, astronauts to Earth orbit and beyond.
Unfortunately, there’s no real guarantee that NASA will actually do that, but SpaceX’s choice to end Dragon capsule production so early on makes it clear that the company is more than willing to prepare the groundwork for such a transition itself.
News
SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
SpaceX puts a $50 billion price on its Arizona supercompute campus ahead of December’s hearing.
SpaceX has put a price tag on the supercomputer campus it wants to build in the southern Arizona desert. In a statement Thursday, the company said it is pursuing a roughly $50 billion supercompute campus in Cochise County, about 80 miles east of Tucson. Together with a separate facility planned at Starbase, Texas, the two projects add up to more than $74 billion in planned investment.
The Arizona figure had not been disclosed before. SpaceX’s involvement only became public on November 4, when company representatives hosted a packed town hall at Cochise Elementary School for an application filed under the name Tombstone Resources LLC. A SpaceX representative told residents the filing used another name because putting SpaceX on it “draws attention” from outside the county, local station KVOA reported.
The application describes a 747-acre site near the Willcox Playa with up to nine buildings of about 493,000 square feet each. SpaceX plans to bring the campus online in four phases of roughly 1.5 GW, reaching 6 GW at full build, backed by a 24 GWh battery system and about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades. At that size, it would draw about 2.5 times more power than every data center in Maricopa County combined, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.
SpaceX says the project will create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, and that it could cut electricity bills for members of the local cooperatives by up to 20 percent. The campus would use dry cooling with no industrial groundwater use. Its application estimates ongoing water needs of 7 to 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 homes consume.
Power is the bigger question. The site sits next to the Apache Generating Station, a coal and natural gas plant with about 1 GW of capacity that had been slated to retire by 2028. SpaceX told residents its investment could expand the station to more than 6 GW.
Local opposition is organized. A petition asking the county to deny the permit has gathered about 2,400 signatures, and the nearby playa is a landing spot for federally protected sandhill cranes, which SpaceX says its design accounts for. The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, with written comments due November 27. If approved, construction could start in March 2027.
The Texas project faces a vote the same day. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement for SpaceX’s $24 billion gas plant and supercompute facility at its own December 9 hearing, as Teslarati reported. SpaceX said Thursday the Starbase site has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs, and it committed $220 million to Brownsville’s water and wastewater systems, $40 million of which has been paid.
Both campuses would expand a footprint still centered on the Memphis area, where SpaceX’s Colossus data centers run largely on gas turbines and the company won a permit for a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi earlier this year. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute. The Arizona campus alone, at full build, would be more than three times that size.
Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.
News
Starlink Mini 2 arrives with one feature for true off-grid connectivity
SpaceX officially launched the Starlink Mini 2 on November 10, delivering the first portable Starlink terminal designed around independent power.
Invitation-only preorders for select U.S. customers are priced at $999 plus tax, a figure that includes a full year of Roam Unlimited service valued at roughly $2,100. A refundable $100 deposit reserves the kit, with the balance due at shipment, expected to begin in mid-December. Broader availability is listed as coming soon.
Starlink just unveiled Mini 2, its next-gen portable dish.
Quick-swap battery, up to 4.5 hrs per charge
USB-C power
Built-in Wi-Fi
Online in about 60 secondsPreorders are open now. https://t.co/QawqgbswrQ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 10, 2026
The headline feature is the quick-swap 71 Wh battery. Clipped to the rear of the dish without tools, it delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity on a single charge.
The 490-gram pack includes its own USB-C port and LED indicators, so users can charge a spare separately and swap it in seconds while staying online. Starlink notes that the terminal can continue operating while the battery charges or run directly from a 60 W USB-C source. The retail box includes one battery, a 60 W USB-C charger, and a 3-meter cable.
Beyond power, the Mini 2 is thinner at 23.1 mm (versus 38.5 mm on the original Mini) while measuring 263 × 314 mm. With the battery and kickstand attached it weighs 1.6 kg.
Built-in Wi-Fi 6 expands coverage to up to 1,800 square feet, an IP67 rating protects against dust and water, and a standard 1/4-20 tripod thread plus physical power button round out the design. Field of view remains 110 degrees, and the unit retains support for mobile use.
For travelers, campers, and remote workers, the swappable battery removes the longstanding requirement for an external power bank or vehicle outlet that defined the first Mini. Spare packs sold separately further extend runtime, turning the compact terminal into a more self-contained solution.
While the bundled $999 invitation price sits well above the original Mini’s current $149 starting point, the included year of service and genuine untethered operation mark a clear step forward in portable satellite internet.