Connect with us

Lifestyle

Elon Musk’s Mars ambitions honored in Moon-landing anniversary animation

Elon Musk-inspired animation produced by Initial Pictures. | Image: Initial Pictures

Published

on

Elon Musk’s push for colonization of Mars is one of his best-known goals for humanity, and with the resources he’s gathered from successes in his many endeavors, that dream is closer to being made reality than it has been for similar dreamers over the last few decades. This July 20th will mark the 50th anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 Moon landing which put human footprints on the surface of our closest neighbor for the first time. With that timing in mind, an independent film studio based in France has created a short animation honoring Musk and his accomplishments that will hopefully lead to human footprints on Mars.

Initial Pictures, the French studio that created the traditionally animated film, “Elon Musk – One Giant Leap for Mankind,” has an entire team comprised of self-described fans of “the genius entrepreneur” who founded the company developing tech needed to make Mars habitation happen – SpaceX. “This is why we decided to produce a short movie in his honour and that would look like him,” the studio stated in its comments about the film. “It is a 1 minute very short movie with a very asserted style, resuming the significant innovations of the industrialist, such as Tesla, the Hyperloop, SpaceX, and to finish, Mars’ colonization.”

The storyboards and draft sketches made while developing the animation reveal the story of a team dedicated to every detail behind every part of the message their film is conveying. Tesla’s hand-drawn robot assembly lines are marked to ensure their motion is accurately represented, and the on-orbit staging of Starship, SpaceX’s massive rocket intended for human transport, is depicted as proposed in the company’s official animations, albeit in front of Mars instead of Earth.

Elon Musk-inspired animation produced by Initial Pictures. | Image: Initial Pictures

Advertisement

Throughout the animation, a narrator blends an inspirational message focused on a Mars mission with a fun soundtrack featuring the David Bowie and Queen version of “Under Pressure.” This all takes place against a background of Musk’s companies portrayed as leading the way to the red planet. Marc Churin, director of Initial Pictures, provided additional commentary about the project:

“Elon Musk seems to be someone who seems to enjoy a great deal of freedom. His genius allows him to complete his wildest projects. His sense of humour, ambition, financial and intellectual abilities make of him a modern hero. He is a icon that gives hope for the future. Then, what could make more sense for an animation studio than making a movie of him ? Science-fiction movies are, by definition, ahead of their time. With Elon Musk, it only takes to comment the present to tell something amazing.”

Elon Musk is no stranger to fan-base inspired projects. A full computer animated video depicting the serial entrepreneur as a young man, bullied at school and inspired by the Moon, then progressing through one success after the other to ultimately drive a Roadster on Mars, was published last year by Andy Front. SpaceX’s various rocket projects specifically have received the fan treatment over the years as well, demonstrating artistic space enthusiasts’ best interpretations of what Musk and his company have planned for the future. Tesla’s next generation Roadster has also been the subject of fan-made videos imagining the high-tech sports car showing off its insane acceleration.

The press release announcing the Initial Pictures’ animation is as follows:

Advertisement

One giant leap for mankind » Elon Musk’s Chronicles

As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, discover the 60 seconds short film “One giant leap for mankind”, directed by the French creative studio Initial Pictures, which pays tribute to the wonderful adventure of the entrepreneur Elon Musk.

Space has long captured humankind’s curiosity and imagination, and soon, thanks to innovations driven by passionate people such as Elon Musk, some dreams will become reality. Through a tradigital animation made of 900 drawn sketches, the short film depicts the entrepreneur’s projects in the pace at which they were achieved, as well as his upcoming interplanetary explorations.

The moon landing mission had a lasting impact on science and society, allowing people to realize what were the amazing possibilities of the space revolution. Just like Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in 1969, Elon Musk pursues his dream of space discovery, along with the NASA, which chose SpaceX as well as Boing, to create the astronauts’ means of transport to access and return from the International Space Station.

Advertisement

Watch the full “Elon Musk – One Giant Leap for Mankind” animation below:

One giant leap for Mankind from Initial on Vimeo.

Advertisement

Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville

The Boring Company’s Prufrock MB2 is commissioned and ready to mine beneath Nashville’s streets.

Published

on

By

boring-company-prufrock-1-2

The Boring Company’s second tunnel boring machine, Prufrock MB2, is officially ready to dig in Nashville. The company confirmed the news on X, posting: “Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here. Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start? And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August!”

MB2 arrives with meaningful improvements over its predecessor. Lessons learned from the launch and operation of MB1 have already been applied to MB2 to improve efficiency and prepare the machine for launch.

Traditional tunnel boring machines operate in a stop-and-go cycle, digging roughly five feet, halt, erect precast concrete segments to line the tunnel wall, then resume. That repeated interruption is one of the main reasons conventional tunneling is slow and expensive. Prufrock is designed to install the tunnel liner simultaneously with mining, eliminating the need to stop every five feet. The machine also skips the need for excavated launch pits. Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and launches into the ground within 24 hours. And when the tunnel is complete, it emerges from the ground and drives to its next launch site on a trailer, eliminating the need for expensive cranes or pit excavation. The machine is also fully electric and runs with zero people in the tunnel during normal operations, controlled remotely from a surface operations center.

It won’t be long before we hear of another major update on The Boring Company’s Music City Loop project – a planned underground transit network beneath Nashville that would move passengers in electric vehicles through a series of tunnels at highway speeds, and bypassing surface traffic entirely. Nashville was selected in part because of its strong rock conditions that suits the Prufrock machines well, and relatively less regulatory hurdles.

Advertisement

Progress has been steady on multiple fronts. All 37 permits and approvals required ahead of tunneling have been obtained, out of 45 total. Key wins include a fully executed TDOT tunnel permit authorizing 25 miles of tunnel, unanimous airport authority approval for a Nashville International Airport station, and the city’s first residential station agreement serving downtown tower residents.

With MB1 already tunneling, MB2 now commissioned, and MB3 shipping in August, Nashville is becoming something of a live proving ground for scaled tunnel boring. The broader ambition is not limited to one city. The Boring Company’s stated goal is to make underground transportation a practical alternative to surface roads across major metro areas. Nashville is one of many cities, including a successful Las Vegas tunnel system, where that idea is being put to the test at real speed.

Continue Reading

Investor's Corner

Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.

Published

on

By

Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.

While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure

The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.

Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

Advertisement

Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.

Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.

As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.

Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app

SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.

Published

on

By

SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.

Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.

Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.


Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.

Advertisement

Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.

Advertisement
Continue Reading