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SpaceX’s first Starship hop on hold for historic Crew Dragon astronaut launch
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that he’s “redirected SpaceX’s priorities” to be almost entirely focused on Crew Dragon’s imminent astronaut launch debut, delaying Starship’s own hop test debut by at least a week or two as a result.
As of now, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft remains on track to lift off with NASA astronauts for the first time ever at 4:33 pm EDT (20:33 UTC) on Wednesday, May 27th. Known as Demonstration Mission 2 (Demo-2), it will be Crew Dragon’s second orbital launch, third launch on a Falcon 9 rocket, and – most importantly – the United States’ first domestic astronaut launch in almost a decade. Although NASA has still managed to maintain a continuous presence at the International Space Station over the last nine years by paying Russia’s space agency more than $4 billion for roughly six dozen seats on Soyuz spacecraft, Demo-2 will be NASA’s first astronaut launch from the US since June 2011.
Built entirely by SpaceX with funds awarded by NASA, the company’s Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket will effectively singlehandedly return the United States’ ability to launch its own astronauts. Funded along with Boeing to ensure that NASA has two redundant spacecraft available, the latter company’s Starliner spacecraft has run into extensive delays after its orbital flight test (OFT) uncovered dangerously shoddy software and quality control. If Boeing is lucky, NASA might clear Starliner for its own crewed flight test (CFT, equivalent to Crew Dragon Demo-2) in the first half of 2021. As a result, a vast amount of pressure is on SpaceX’s shoulders to successfully launch astronauts for the first time ever just a few days from now.
Of course, SpaceX is not unilaterally focused on Crew Dragon or its inaugural astronaut launch, even if it might be the single most important mission in the company’s 18 years of operation. For a company as large as SpaceX, it’s simply not practical or valuable to have every single employee working on one project, while having too many people on a given project would also likely be to its detriment. Nevertheless, Musk – in an interview with Aviation Week’s Irene Klotz – stated that he’d redirected SpaceX’s priorities to be “very focused” on Demo-2.
Aside from Crew Dragon Demo-2, SpaceX operates a Starlink satellite factory near Seattle, builds and assembles all aspects of Falcon rockets and Dragon spacecraft at its Hawthorne, CA headquarters, tests those rockets and spacecraft in McGregor, Texas development facilities, and builds, tests, and flies Starship prototypes in Boca Chica, Texas. (The company has many, many other operations around the US but the list above at least covers the bulk of the company’s workforce.)
Those myriad programs can’t simply freeze operations without catastrophically impacting future plans and schedules, meaning that Musk’s “redirection” is likely more an effort to keep the public focus on Crew Dragon, versus actually retasking thousands of employees to do work that probably doesn’t (but might) exist. Still, the company has definitely taken some real steps to stay laser-focused on Crew Dragon where practical.
Most notably, SpaceX has already indefinitely delayed its eight launch of 60 Starlink communications satellites, previously scheduled to lift off no earlier than (NET) May 19th. Now, Musk says that SpaceX has also decided to delay the first flight test of a full-scale Starship prototype until after Demo-2 successfully launches, implying that the company could have potentially launched Starship SN4 for the first time later this week.
In fact, SpaceX has three Starlink launches – including the mission delayed from May – now scheduled in June 2020, as well as Falcon 9’s second US military GPS III satellite launch at the end of the month. It’s unclear whether SpaceX will retest Starship SN4 after its off-nominal May 19th Raptor test or move directly into flight test operations, but its next South Texas test period has windows on May 28th, May 29th, and June 1st. In short, the next ~5 weeks are set to be a wild ride for SpaceX, to put it mildly.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is now the centerpiece of the company’s newly revised Referral Program, which launched on October 29.
Instead of referring people to purchase vehicles and the referrer receiving $250 in Tesla Credit, the new program now incentivizes Full Self-Driving subscriptions.
If a Tesla owner is on an FSD trial and uses a referral code to subscribe to Full Self-Driving, the person whose Referral Link was used will receive one month of FSD (Supervised). Their code can be utilized 12 times per year, with January 1 marking the reset date.
Realistically, this means that if your Referral Code is used by 12 Tesla owners on an FSD trial, you will receive a full year of FSD for free.
🚨 Here is Tesla’s new Referral Program for Full Self-Driving (Supervised):
When someone subscribes to FSD using your link, you’ll get a month free. Up to a year of FSD is available to you for free!
If you’d like to use my link: https://t.co/g00IX9OCE3 https://t.co/GFBzEO2jjS
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The previous program made it pretty difficult to get referrals; buying a vehicle is obviously a much larger financial strain than subscribing to Full Self-Driving for a month.
Of course, the previous Referral Program also offered a tangible benefit: $250 in credits you could use on Service, Supercharging, or anything in the Tesla Shop. It truly could pay for someone’s travel for a year. It recently bought me a new backpack and a T-shirt.
However, this new program is much more attainable for those who do not have a massive online presence of a slew of friends in the Tesla community who will use the code and max out subscriptions for vehicle purchases.
Woke up to maxed out Referrals! Thank you guys, that’s awesome!
Share your referral link below so others can use it! https://t.co/kesbwTcoTV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 30, 2026
The Full Self-Driving suite will now be the keystone of the Referral Program, which makes it more inclusive and more fun for everyone with an awesome benefit.
It also gives the impression that Tesla is truly focused on FSD subscriptions, something that saw a tremendous increase in volume in Q3, as 75 percent of deliveries for the quarter came with an FSD subscription attached.
Full Self-Driving data is so instrumental to the suite’s improvement that this kind of program benefits Tesla as much as it does the consumer.
Elon Musk
Tesla made napping in a Robotaxi easier with its latest update
Tesla’s quiet mode reaches Model Y Robotaxis, blacking out the screen for riders wanting rest.
Tesla’s quiet mode, the setting that blacks out the screen for riders who want to rest, has moved beyond the Cybercab. A video posted Thursday by Spencer (@scotsrule08) shows the feature running in a Model Y Robotaxi on a night ride that appears to be in Dallas.
New quiet mode now on @Robotaxi https://t.co/2cM2eM9NeN — Spencer (@scotsrule08) October 29, 2026
The rider taps a small crescent moon icon in the bottom right corner of the map screen. The map, media player, app shortcuts and Grok prompt disappear, leaving a dark display with “Arriving soon,” the destination and a line reading “Tap display to exit quiet mode.” Controls a passenger may still need, including Pull Over, cabin temperature, volume and Support, stay visible. One tap anywhere brings the full map back.
Quiet mode first showed up in the Cybercab last week, which Teslarati reported alongside a new rear camera view. Tesla has been trimming cabin noise in other ways too. On October 25, Spencer reported that Robotaxi turn signals now chime for the first four blinks and then go silent. Tesla has not published release notes for either change.
Elon Musk has been pitching this use for more than a decade. In October 2014, he said that “maybe five or six years from now I think we’ll be able to achieve true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep and wake up at your destination,”
By 2017 he was setting a higher bar. Speaking at TED, Musk said the hard part was not making self-driving work 99.9 percent of the time, “because, like, if a car crashes one in a thousand times, then you’re probably still not going to be comfortable falling asleep. You shouldn’t be, certainly.”
Owners asked for something similar in their own cars. In December 2019, a Tesla owner requested a Nap Mode that would keep the climate running and wake the occupant with an alarm, and Musk answered “Ok,” as Teslarati covered at the time.
The line returned when the Cybercab was unveiled at the We, Robot event in October 2024. “We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving, where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” Musk said. On Tesla’s first quarter earnings call in April 2025, he called it the deciding measure: “The acid test is, can you go to sleep in your car and wake up in your destination and I’m confident that will be available in many cities in the US by the end of this year,”
Tesla has run driverless Model Y rides in Dallas and Houston since April, so a passenger dozing off on the way home is now a realistic use of the button. Tesla is also offering new riders a free first trip in both cities, according to an in-app screen shared by tracker Ethan McKanna, and said on its third quarter call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas next month.
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Tesla Full Self-Driving becomes main pillar of new Referral Program
