News
SpaceX awarded three more NASA astronaut launch contracts
Three months after announcing its intent, NASA has procured three more Crew Dragon astronaut launches from SpaceX, raising the total number of operational missions the company is contracted to perform from six to nine.
NASA announced its plans to award additional contracts in December 2021 after releasing a half-hearted Request For Information (RFI) in October. That RFI, which seemingly lacked any real NASA support for an attempt to develop one or more additional crew transport vehicles, unsurprisingly produced the conclusion that the space agency should buy more flights from its existing providers.
Short of a second Commercial Crew Program (CCP), Boeing and SpaceX were thus the only options. Boeing, whose Starliner spacecraft has yet to successfully complete even an uncrewed test flight and remains years behind schedule, was apparently ruled out of this contract add-on. SpaceX, on the other hand, aced uncrewed and crewed Crew Dragon test flights in March 2019 and May 2020 and ultimately began operational astronaut transport missions in November 2020, making it the only logical option.
As such, NASA announced that it would award three more transport contracts to SpaceX, raising the total value of its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract from about $2.6 billion to $3.49B. As of August 2019, NASA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reported that of the original $2.6 billion SpaceX was awarded, the company planned to spend $1.2 billion on development and test flights and $1.4 billion on up to six operational Crew Dragon missions.
At the time, that meant that NASA intended to pay a total of ~$230 million for each of the first six Crew Dragon transport missions, each of which would carry four astronauts to and from the International Space Station and serve as a lifeboat in the six months between launch and landing. For NASA’s contract modification, the space agency will now pay the company no more than $890 million – up to $297 million apiece – for three more transport missions, each likely carrying four astronauts.
For missions seven through nine, NASA will thus pay an average of up to ~$74 million per seat – substantially more expensive than the ~$55 million per seat SpaceX’s first six Crew Dragon missions will cost the space agency. To be clear, there’s a chance that a significant fraction of the $890 million contract value increase actually came before the addition of three more missions, in which case NASA might instead be paying around $700-800 million or around $60-70M per seat for three more Dragon launches. Regardless, that’s cheaper than the ~$90 million per seat Boeing’s Starliner is expected to cost. At the end of NASA’s Soyuz ridesharing efforts, the agency was also being gouged for about ~$90 million per seat to launch its astronauts on Russian Soyuz missions.
Update: There is evidence that SpaceX’s total CCtCap contract value was about $2.74 billion before the addition of three more missions, meaning that NASA is likely paying SpaceX around $755 million or ~$63 million per seat – a more reasonable 15% increase over earlier pricing.
SpaceX remains on track to launch Crew-4 no earlier than (NET) 15 April 2022, Crew-5 NET October 2022, and Crew-6 NET February 2023. The company is now expected to complete all six of its first operational crew transport missions before Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft completes a single one. In fact, it’s increasingly plausible that SpaceX will launch all six of its original Crew missions before Starliner attempts its first crewed test flight – a milestone Crew Dragon passed in May 2020.
It remains to be seen when Starliner will finally become operational. If Boeing manages that feat by mid-2023, there’s at least a chance that Starliner and Crew Dragon will finally be able to start alternating launches, in which case NASA’s three extra Dragon launches might last until 2027. Starliner would then have three more missions remaining, allowing NASA to stretch its 15 existing Commercial Crew transport contracts as far as H2 2028.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
News
NHTSA just escalated its Tesla Cybercab investigation in a big way
NHTSA escalated its Cybercab audit into a sworn Special Order with a September 30 deadline.
Federal regulators have moved from asking Tesla questions about its Cybercab to demanding sworn answers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a Special Order that requires a Tesla officer to sign an affidavit attesting to the completeness of the company’s responses, with a deadline of September 30.
The order builds on Audit Query AQ26002, which NHTSA opened on September 3, the same day Tesla began commercial Cybercab service in Austin. Teslarati covered that initial inquiry when it surfaced, noting the agency wanted to understand how Tesla certified a vehicle with no permanently attached steering wheel, pedals, or mirrors as compliant with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. A Special Order is a different tool and converts a fact finding review into a legally enforceable demand, the same mechanism NHTSA used against Tesla in 2023 during its Autopilot investigation.
Several of the 21 requests target a specific gap in Cybercab’s design. One asks whether Tesla used temporarily attached human controls at any point to help certify the vehicle, and if so, which standards depended on that equipment being present. Another quotes an existing rule directly: “The service brakes shall be activated by means of a foot control.” Cybercab has no foot pedal. NHTSA wants a detailed explanation of how the vehicle satisfies that requirement, and how it complies without the kind of exemption granted to Zoox in July under Part 555, the regulatory pathway built for steering wheel free vehicles.
The order does not claim Cybercab is unsafe or that Tesla broke a rule. It requires Tesla to explain, under oath, the reasoning behind decisions the company already made when it self-certified the vehicle. That distinction matters, but so does the exposure. Motor1’s reporting, summarized here, put potential civil penalty exposure as high as $139 million if NHTSA later finds the certification was flawed, on top of whatever criminal risk comes with a false sworn statement.
Tesla has not said publicly how it plans to respond. Cybercab is still carrying passengers in Austin through the Robotaxi app while the September 30 deadline approaches, and the company has continued expanding the vehicle’s footprint even as the regulatory question remains open. The Special Order does not pause any of that and just sets a date by which Tesla has to put its certification logic on the record, with a company officer’s name attached to it.
In a new interview on Wednesday, Tesla uber bull Ron Baron said that anyone looking to buy the company’s stock should do so as soon as they can.
Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital and one of Tesla’s most persistent institutional bulls, used a CNBC Squawk Box appearance on Wednesday to deliver a familiar message with fresh urgency: In his opinion, Tesla stock is a buy:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.”
The Baron Capital frontman’s case is built around Full Self-Driving. Tesla reported 1.48 million active FSD subscriptions in the second quarter, up 56 percent year over year, and company officials have said roughly 55 percent of new North American deliveries left with a subscription enabled.
Baron framed that attach rate as proof the product is moving from enthusiast extra to default expectation, and as a reason software, not just vehicle volume, should drive the next phase of value.
His conviction on Tesla shares is not theoretical, as Baron Capital made its first Tesla investment in 2014, after years of meetings that began around the 2010 IPO roadshow. The firm later built a large SpaceX position starting in 2017.
Ron Baron today in new interview on Tesla:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.” pic.twitter.com/Rv5PB0bVZ2
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 16, 2026
Baron said those Musk-led bets have generated about $30 billion of the $71 billion in profits Baron Capital has produced for clients. He put the firm’s current exposure at roughly $25 billion in SpaceX and $5 billion in Tesla. Personally, he described SpaceX as his largest holding, at about $5 billion, with about $1.5 billion in Tesla and additional Tesla exposure through the firm’s funds.
That concentration is also a statement of loyalty. Asked about talk of a SpaceX-Tesla combination, Baron said he had already walked Elon Musk through arguments for and against a deal, then declined to repeat them on air. His public position was simpler: “Whatever you decide is better is what I’m going to support,” he said to Musk.
Baron also said that he picked up the farewell edition of the Model S after Tesla decided to sunset the vehicle earlier this year, calling it his favorite car he’s ever driven.
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
NHTSA just escalated its Tesla Cybercab investigation in a big way
