NASA has also so far insisted on only flying on new (unflown) boosters and only using freshly built Crew Dragon capsules. Both of those are able to refly multiple times, reducing costs further, once their reliability is sufficiently proven for NASA certification standards.

The agreed to reuse human capsules for cargo missions. No people at all.

> Dragon also carries tons of cargo

Does it? I seem to remember reading somewhere that the "trunk" section will be mostly empty on crewed vehicles.

It makes sense. We've seen that Dragon aborts with the trunk attached for aerodynamic reasons. It seems likely that hauling a bunch of cargo together with an escaping crewed capsule isn't feasible.

You could also see that during the Demo-2 launch stream when the Dragon separated from the upper stage. There was a short segment where camera from the stage showed the underside of the Dragon and you could see that it was mostly just empty space inside.

During an abort they would dump the service module, which is where the unpressurised cargo is stored.

The color commentary yesterday suggested that a bit of cargo could be where the other 3 passengers should be, so he might be right.