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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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Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
