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SpaceX's first NASA astronaut launch closer than ever as spacecraft and rocket near Florida

Crew Dragon arrived at the International Space Station on March 3rd, 2019 during Demo-1, its inaugural orbital launch. (NASA/Oleg Kononenko)

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According to an engineer’s February presentation, SpaceX is on the brink of shipping its first NASA astronaut-rated Crew Dragon spacecraft to Kennedy Space Center – arguably the company’s biggest milestone yet on the path to human spaceflight.

In the last year, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon program has undeniably stumbled a few times, suffering challenging parachute failures and the catastrophic explosion of the first flight-proven Crew Dragon capsule. However, the year has been filled with far more successes. By all appearances, Crew Dragon’s parachute issues have been completely solved, while SpaceX successfully static fired an upgraded Crew Dragon’s SuperDraco engines before launching a flawless in-flight abort (IFA) test just last month.

Prior to all of this, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft completed what NASA deemed a “flawless” and “phenomenal” orbital launch debut, docking with and departing the space station without issue before safely reentering Earth’s atmosphere and splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean. Now, ten months after that flawless debut, SpaceX is perhaps just a week or two away from reaching a major milestone ahead of its first NASA astronaut launch.

In just a few short months, this scene could be repeated – but with NASA astronauts at Crew Dragon’s helm. (NASA)

Part of some kind of Kennedy Space Center (KSC) event on February 1st or 2nd, SpaceX Director of Vehicle Integration Christopher Couluris gave an exceptionally insightful presentation that was apparently recorded and (very) briefly available on YouTube. Aside from a great deal of new and useful information on Falcon booster reusability, Starship manufacturing, and more, Couluris also teased some major news for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft.

SpaceX has finally set the date for Crew Dragon's In-Flight Abort test. (Teslarati - Pauline Acalin)
Excluding Falcon 9, all pieces of SpaceX’s first astronaut-rated Crew Dragon spacecraft are visible in this one frame. (Teslarati – Pauline Acalin)
Assigned to Crew Dragon’s Demo-2 astronaut launch debut, SpaceX Falcon 9 booster B1058 successfully completed a routine static fire test back in August 2019. (SpaceX)

In short, Couluris revealed that the Crew Dragon spacecraft – capsule C206 and an expendable trunk – assigned to SpaceX’s ‘Demo-2’ NASA astronaut launch debut could arrive at the company’s Florida Dragon processing facilities as early as mid-February, just a week or two from now. At the same time, comments the SpaceX engineer made about the number of SpaceX rocket boosters currently in Florida heavily implied that the Falcon 9 rocket assigned to said astronaut launch debut is already at KSC Launch Complex 39A (or at least nearby).

In other words, after Crew Dragon arrives, SpaceX will have all the hardware on hand and ready for its first NASA astronaut launch – arguably the single most important mission in the company’s history. Barring calamity, all that will remain is a few weeks of processing and an indeterminately long period of NASA/SpaceX reviews and paperwork. Elon Musk recently stated that he was confident that Crew Dragon Demo-2 would be fully ready to launch as early as April 2020, although May or June are also a strong possibility.

Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon stand vertical at Pad 39A for the second time ever on January 17th, 2020. (Richard Angle)

Funded by NASA and designed and built by SpaceX, Crew Dragon (Dragon 2) is an upgraded version of the company’s workhorse Cargo Dragon (Dragon 1) spacecraft, which has successfully performed 18 International Space Station (ISS) resupply missions in just eight years. While there’s a chance that SpaceX will ultimately use Crew Dragon for its own needs, like private orbital tourism, the spacecraft’s primary purpose is to routinely carry NASA astronauts to and from the Space Station – a capability the US has not had since NASA and Congress prematurely killed the Space Shuttle in 2011.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft – along with Boeing’s delayed Starliner – is intended to fill a void the Space Shuttle left in 2011. (Richard Angle)

Originally intended to launch as early as 2017, both SpaceX and Boeing suffered major delays as they worked through the many challenges associated with human spaceflight and grappled with several years of egregious Congressional underfunding.

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Eric Ralph is Teslarati's senior spaceflight reporter and has been covering the industry in some capacity for almost half a decade, largely spurred in 2016 by a trip to Mexico to watch Elon Musk reveal SpaceX's plans for Mars in person. Aside from spreading interest and excitement about spaceflight far and wide, his primary goal is to cover humanity's ongoing efforts to expand beyond Earth to the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”

SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.

It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.

Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.

Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:

There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.

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Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk reminds everyone about Roadster’s true meaning

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Elon Musk addresses the crowd next to the new Tesla Roadster, which Tesla offers in Performance, Thrust and Rocket versions. (Image: Tesla/X)
Elon Musk addresses the crowd next to the new Tesla Roadster, which Tesla offers in Performance, Thrust and Rocket versions. (Image: Tesla/X)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Sunday to remind everyone that the Roadster’s true meaning is not about company growth or adding dollars to shareholders’ pockets. Sometimes, you just do things because you can.

Following the Roadster’s epic unveiling event last Thursday, skeptics and critics of the company or the project itself came out to say that the vehicle is a pointless project because it is not geared toward growing the company, delivering supreme margins for profitability, nor does it contribute to the big picture of Artificial/Super Intelligence.

But that’s just the thing: Roadster is not meant to be some shareholder dream; it’s meant to be a vehicle that people buy just because it is something awesome, unique, and the first of its kind.

Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds

Musk had to remind those who are skeptical about the Roadster’s importance to the company mission that while it is not a major contributor to Tesla’s long-term goals, it is something that is being built just because it can be:

“Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla’s value. The only things that will scale to incredible size (K2 and beyond) economically are super intelligence, robots, solar power, and mass to space. And, of course, if you have the first two, the rest will follow. But Roadster is super cool, so we’re doing it anyway.”

Musk has said on many occasions that Optimus would be the project that would make up the vast majority of Tesla’s value in the coming years.

Robotics will be a major focus of Tesla over the coming years, especially as Musk believes Optimus will enable work to be optional for humans and will enable what he calls “High Universal Income.”

Cybercab will be a passive income opportunity for owners, Musk and Tesla have said for a very long time, as a fleet of self-driving vehicles will operate within a ride-hailing Robotaxi service that won’t require a human driver to be present.

Tesla investors are more than enthusiastic about the company’s future projects, at least from a general consensus perspective. However, it is important to note that the Roadster is a fun and cool project that pushes the boundaries of what people thought was possible for an automobile.

What we saw last week was the first true example of a flying car, and despite the backlash about how it might not contribute to Tesla’s grand ambitions, it’s okay to have fun sometimes, too.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX’s biggest earnings test yet lands Tuesday, and Tesla shareholders should be watching

SpaceX reports earnings Tuesday as Wall Street watches AI spending, Starlink growth and Tesla merger

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SpaceX reports third quarter results after the market closes Tuesday, with a webcast at 4:30 p.m. ET streamed on X, and Tesla follows a day later. Bloomberg consensus, cited by Pepperstone, calls for revenue of $12.89 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $6.62 billion and adjusted EPS near $0.15. That would be about 65% growth from the second quarter and SpaceX’s first profitable quarter since its IPO. Analysts expect roughly $6.4 billion from AI and $4.9 billion from Starlink, which is projected to reach 14.3 million consumer subscribers. Capital spending is forecast at $19.6 billion, leaving free cash flow near negative $11.6 billion.

The numbers matter because SpaceX has spent months trying to win over a skeptical market. It priced its record IPO at $135, spiked to $225.64, then sank near $105 in early August. Friday’s close of $146.03 sits about 28% below the June high. The Q2 report beat on revenue at $7.8 billion and put Starlink at 12 million subscribers, but $18.4 billion of capex hurt the stock. Since then SpaceX reached orbit on Starship Flight 14 with 26 Starlink V3 satellites, agreed to buy 800 MHz spectrum for about $8 billion as part of its Starlink Mobile push, and signed a fourth compute hosting deal in four months worth roughly $13 billion a year from December. Management is targeting more than 2 gigawatts of compute by year end and a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate. Evercore ISI, which raised its target to $275, said the quarter may be judged more on those targets than the reported figures

All of this sits under the Tesla merger question. Barclays analyst Dan Levy expects an all stock deal in which SpaceX buys Tesla at a premium, using reference values of $2.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, and said an announcement would need to come by late October or early November to be voted on at Tesla’s December 6 annual meeting. Barclays estimates Musk would hold about 37% of the combined company and 56% of the votes. Musk said in July that combining companies cannot be discussed on an earnings call, but an investor question asking when SpaceX will merge with Tesla is sitting on SpaceX’s Q&A platform, and Teslarati has tracked how the Roadster demo revived the talk.

If a deal happens, Tuesday’s result would effectively set the price Tesla holders would receive. Their shares would convert into SpaceX stock, along with exposure to a company with a heavy investment on AI, while Tesla itself expects 2026 capex above $25 billion. A strong quarter and calmer spending would make that exchange easier to sell. Another round of heavy capex and a falling stock would make it harder.

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