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SpaceX space tourism ambitions made real with Crew Dragon's first private contract
Axiom Space has announced its first contract with SpaceX, revealing plans to launch three tourists to the International Space Station (ISS) on a Crew Dragon spacecraft as early as 2021
Building off of the extraordinary success of the privately-developed Cargo Dragon spacecraft, set to be retired perhaps just a month or so from now, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft was designed almost from scratch to safely launch humans into space. While there are few guarantees in human spaceflight, SpaceX appears to be well on track towards its inaugural astronaut launch, and Crew Dragon is scheduled to support that mission – known as Demo-2 – as early as next month. If Demo-2 is successful and NASA signs off on Crew Dragon’s operational readiness, it’s starting to look like the spacecraft might have considerable demand even outside the space agency that funded its development.
Less than three weeks after SpaceX and Space Adventures revealed tentative plans to launch space tourists on a record-breaking Crew Dragon flight, this latest news seemingly implies that a separate company has gone a step further, putting real money down on its own space tourism launch contract. For SpaceX, this is now the second time in less than a month that the Crew Dragon spacecraft has received serious space tourism-related interest. The market, in other words, could be substantially larger than one might initially imagine.
First announced on February 18th, Space Adventures – a private firm that has been working in the space tourism business for more than two decades – and SpaceX revealed that they’d signed an agreement to potentially support a unique opportunity for private astronauts. Likely completed without any exchange of funds, the joint agreement means that Space Adventures can now begin to seriously pursue customers for a Crew Dragon mission that could reach an altitude that only a handful of NASA Apollo and Gemini astronauts have gone beyond.
As such, there is technically no guarantee that the Space Adventures-SpaceX agreement will translate into any actual Crew Dragon or Falcon 9 contracts, although there is certainly a chance. The tourism company did successfully arrange eight orbital launches and space station visits for seven customers in the 2000s but has been relatively inactive in the decade since then.
Axiom Space, an unrelated venture, is also seriously interested in space tourism but is instead focused on the far more arduous task of building its own space station. Thanks to a recent agreement with NASA, potentially translating to $140M contract to build its first custom space station module, it appears to be increasingly likely that Axiom is not simply smoke and mirrors – depressingly common in space tourism industry.
Intriguingly, the contract Axiom announced with SpaceX and Crew Dragon appears to be entirely unrelated to the company’s plans to build its own space station modules. Instead, the contract would see SpaceX train and launch an Axiom ‘commander’ and three private passengers to the existing ISS for more than a week before returning them safely to Earth. Perhaps more impressive is the schedule: Axiom wants SpaceX to launch its first space tourism mission as early as the second half of 2021 – potentially less than a year and a half from now.
Regardless, if this contract does result in Crew Dragon’s first dedicated space tourism launch and Axiom’s customers are satisfied, it’s safe to say that SpaceX will be the first to receive a call if or when Axiom needs more orbital taxi services or rockets to launch its space station modules in the mid-2020s.
If its prices are notably better than what past tourism ventures have been able to offer, SpaceX might even be able to expand the market for private (orbital) human spaceflight, creating an entirely new niche for Crew Dragon. Given that NASA’s Commercial Crew Program contract anticipates requiring no more than an average of two dedicated Crew Dragon astronauts launches per year, it would not take much at all for SpaceX to double the spacecraft’s annual flight rate with the help of orbital tourism.
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SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
SpaceX pushed Starship Flight 13 to Friday, blaming weather instead of the previous engine issues.
SpaceX called off Thursday’s launch attempt of Starship Flight 13, pushing the mission to Friday because of weather tied to Tropical Storm Bertha. The company confirmed the delay on X, noting “Now targeting Friday, July 24 for Starship’s thirteenth flight test, due to weather. A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won’t be possible with today’s weather conditions.”
This is the second delay for Flight 13 in two weeks. SpaceX first tried to launch the mission on July 16, but the countdown ended in an automated abort at T-0 when four of Super Heavy Booster 20’s 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite. Musk said at the time that two Raptors would need to be removed and replaced, as Teslarati reported. The company spent the following week destacking Ship 40 and Booster 20, swapping engines, and running leak checks before restacking the vehicle on Pad 2 Wednesday night, according to Spaceflight Now’s live coverage.
Unlike the engine problem, Thursday’s delay has nothing to do with the hardware. SpaceX wants clean footage of Starship’s heat shield captured from the ground as the vehicle flies through max dynamic pressure, something the storm’s cloud cover over South Texas would not allow. The company said visibility should improve for Friday’s attempt, with the same 90 minute window opening at 5:45 p.m. CT.
Flight 13 will be the second outing for the V3 versions of Starship and Super Heavy, following their debut on Flight 12 in May. The mission carries 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, the first time SpaceX has flown operational satellites rather than mass simulators on Starship. Six of those satellites are fitted with cameras to inspect the heat shield from a different angle during ascent, giving engineers a second data source beyond the ground imagery the weather is currently blocking.
Booster 20 will attempt a boostback burn and a splashdown landing burn in the Gulf of America, while Ship 40 follows a suborbital trajectory toward a landing in the Indian Ocean. The flight plan largely mirrors Flight 12, though the booster will run a more aggressive ascent burn after max Q this time, and the ship’s heat shield includes load sensing tiles meant to measure stress at the higher dynamic pressure SpaceX is targeting.
If Friday’s attempt succeeds, Flight 13 could be the last suborbital test in the program. SpaceX is already looking to push for an orbital flight on Flight 14.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
Elon Musk clapped back at France’s decision to withhold the approval for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised system, projecting a clear and blunt message to French Transport Minister Phillippe Tabarot, after he publicly rejected the technology in its current form.
Tabarot outlines several concerns with Tesla Full Self-Driving in a detailed video statement, where he said, “The safety trade-offs are not yet sufficient to authorize it as it currently stands,” he said. He emphasized that FSD is not a true self-driving system and that the driver remains fully responsible.
Key issues Tabarot also brought up included allowing speeding when surrounding traffic exceeds limits and what he believes are insufficient guarantees of driver attention during complex urban maneuvers such as lane changes, intersections, and roundabouts.
Delaying the approval of FSD in France will cost lives
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
While acknowledging technological progress and France’s support for autonomous innovation, Tabarot stressed that deployment must prioritize road safety. He noted ongoing technical discussions with Tesla, the Netherlands, and other European partners, with further ecosystem meetings planned for the fall.
Musk’s rebuke highlights the human cost of regulatory caution. Tesla’s latest safety reports provide compelling data supporting accelerated adoption. In the most recent 12-month period, vehicles using FSD (Supervised) recorded one major collision per approximately 5.1 million miles driven, dramatically better than the U.S. national average of one crash per 698,000 miles.
Even Tesla vehicles driven manually with active safety features outperform the average by a wide margin. These figures come from billions of real-world miles of telemetry, showing FSD vehicles involved in far fewer incidents than both manual Teslas and the broader U.S. fleet.
Critics argue Tesla’s comparisons require careful scrutiny regarding reporting thresholds and fleet demographics, yet the data consistently positions FSD as a potential lifesaver. With road fatalities remaining a leading cause of death worldwide, Musk contends that proven safer technology should not face prolonged bureaucratic hurdles.
France’s measured approach reflects the broader European regulatory caution, which many, especially Musk, have been critical of in the past. However, as autonomous systems from Tesla and competitors like Waymo demonstrate superior safety in independent studies, pressure is mounting for harmonized approvals.
Musk’s warning carries the belief that every month of delay may equate to avoidable tragedies on European roads.
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
Tesla stock tumbles after earnings, one of its sharpest single-day declines
