Lifestyle
Space Hero Extraordinaire: Elon Musk
Anyone that can break the cycle of bureaucracy and nay-sayers to get a country focused on things that are super important, things like clean energy and planetary exploration, is a hero in my book. For Elon Musk and the few others like him, wanting something “too bad” isn’t a weakness because the very things you want require that kind of commitment to be attainable. The proof of that concept? Four words: “The Falcon has landed.”
Just Another Dreamer
When I was a kid, I wanted nothing more in the world than to be an astronaut. I just knew it was my “calling”. I fed my space addiction as much as the school’s library would allow me to, and I couldn’t even fathom why every other kid in my grade didn’t want the same thing. I still remember laughing when one of them said he didn’t know who Neil Armstrong was, thinking it was a joke, and then being completely floored when he asked me why he should care about some “old” dude.
Columbia Commander Eileen Collins by NASA on The Commons is provided with no known copyright restrictions.
I was a total geek. I have no problem admitting that. I had even managed to convince my parents to send me to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama where I was selected to be my session’s shuttle commander. This was years before Eileen Collins had become the first female shuttle commander, so it was a big deal to me.
One day, another student told me that I would never become an astronaut because I wanted it “too bad”. I still hate that she was right, but I really can’t hate the reasons why it came to be true. Genetics are genetics, and not meeting a five-foot-four threshold combined with not having twenty-twenty vision are more or less non-starters for the space cowboy wannabes out there. Then life happened, I went down another path (or seven), and the shuttle program was shut down before I ever got the opportunity to see a launch in person.
Mars and Musk for the “Win”
Apollo 8 Liftoff View by Project Apollo Archive is provided as part of the public domain.
When I finally made it to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, it was the same week the very last shuttle had landed. As I stood in the bleachers where hundreds of others had sat to watch rockets take to the sky, gazing out at the launch pad that had held so much human spirit on it, I suddenly felt it again. The “calling”, renewed now with a slightly different purpose. Then I turned to my mostly disinterested brother and said, “Mike, this is my manifesto. One day, I’m going to be part of the effort that takes man to Mars. I got here too late for the moon and too late for the shuttle, but I’m not gonna give up. It’s too much a part of who I am, even today.” He laughed at me, of course, and probably rolled his eyes, but I wasn’t watching him. I was dreaming again.
The Final Shuttle by Brent Newhall is licensed under CC by 2.0.
That’s where Elon Musk came in for me. Cool rich guy does cool stuff with his money in an attempt to go cool places with his rockets, right? No, not really. It wasn’t that simple. I will even admit it took me a fairly long time to actually follow what he was doing. The words “commercial” and “space” just didn’t really mesh well together in my head. What could a business mentality really bring to the spirit of human space exploration that was pure enough to be worthy?
It took an interview with Elon on an episode of StarTalk Radio, hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson (your personal astrophysicist), to finally “get” what was special about him. This guy’s main concern in life was advancing humanity. It really seemed to me that money was a means to an end for him, not the end itself, and that was something I could respect in a big way. After that, it didn’t take very long for fascination to set in, and now I consider him to be one of my heroes.
OnInnovation Interview: Elon Musk by OnInnovation is licensed under CC by ND 2.0.
“Hero” is a word that tends to be thrown around a lot, but I think in this case it is definitely deserved. It’s about breaking the cycle. The space industry is heavy with bureaucracy, inefficiency that drives high costs, and “big guys” happy to stand in the way of any other “guys” hoping to get in on the action. New technology means less job security for those doing things the way it has always been done, and long-standing relationships between the “big guys” and NASA have kept the “little guys” focused mostly on space tourism rather than pure scientific pursuit or pushing the boundaries of what can be done and where we can go.
Elon Musk: Space Hero Extraordinaire
Enter Elon Musk with SpaceX. He decides he’s going to launch rockets that are better, cheaper, flown more often, and with Mars as the ultimate goal. Shockingly, it doesn’t entirely even matter to him whether he succeeds or not. It’s just that important and must be tried. He didn’t get into the space business to make money; he got in for sake of all of us.
Exploration Imagery by NASA on The Commons is provided with no known copyright restrictions.
To be fair, Elon is not entirely unique in his desire to explore other planets, especially Mars. I remember watching an IMAX film during my week at Space Camp that had fantastic visuals explaining how we could terraform our red neighbor. I even remember thinking, “Oh, great! We do have a plan.” In reality though, we didn’t have a plan, or at least didn’t until Elon’s effect inspired people to demand one.
Anyone that can break the cycle of bureaucracy and nay-sayers to get a country focused on things that are super important, things like clean energy and planetary exploration, is a hero in my book. For Elon Musk and the few others like him, wanting something “too bad” isn’t a weakness because the very things you want require that kind of commitment to be attainable. The proof of that concept? Four words:
CRS-8 first stage landing by SpaceX is part of the public domain.
“The Falcon has landed.”
So that’s my angle, my two cents – whatever you want to call it. With SpaceX and Elon taking so much initiative, our future in the final frontier is finally happening again, and I am excited to both have the opportunity to watch everything unfold and to share my thoughts as it happens. I do plan on joining the effort directly, but more on that later. For now, the headlines are filled with the “next steps”, and there’s much to be said about them.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
Tesla Cybercab uses a unique strategy for picking up the right rider
Tesla ends in-house wrap service that always seemed like a short-term program
