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Elon Musk and SpaceX featured in Nat Geo MARS mini-series

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National Geographic (“NatGeo”) has launched their MARS mini-series to be aired every Monday evening for a total of six weeks. It’s a fictional drama set in the year 2033 imagining the first human mission to the surface of Mars with a huge focus on the scientific accomplishments necessary to make such a journey reality. Cut in with the drama are interviews with scientists explaining the complexities of the mission being imagined including, of course, our favorite Mars-bound-humanity-game-changer, Elon Musk.

Elon’s role in the first episode was to talk about the “big picture” challenges immediately apparent in a Mars mission:

  • The risks of getting to Mars
  • The adventure of it all
  • The historical significance of launching from Pad 39A
  • Why Mars is a goal to begin with
  • Why landing on Mars is hard
  • The importance of rocket reusability
  • How fast we could establish a Mars colony

There’s been critique that the NatGeo series was essentially a big commercial for SpaceX and Elon. While the intention was (probably) not such, I can’t really argue that the impact (outcome?) wasn’t similar to a commercial. Elon wasn’t significantly over-featured versus others, but all of the modern-day rocket footage they used featured Falcon 9 and the SpaceX facilities.

Falcon 9: A big star in NatGeo's MARS series | Credit: SpaceX

Falcon 9: A big star in NatGeo’s MARS series | Credit: SpaceX

Honestly though, when you’ve been both leading the charge and are arguably the biggest player (i.e., rocket company) in the Mars game, a realistic drama series featuring humanity’s first trip to the red planet is probably going to include you in a major way. And seriously, how awkward would it be pretending otherwise?

Prequels to the NatGeo MARS Series

In the weeks leading up to the premiere of their MARS series debut, NatGeo published plenty of relevant videos in order to keep curious minds, well, curious and in anticipation for the series. There were three videos that stood out most to me:

  1. “Before MARS”

Featuring twin girls that become significant players in the main MARS series, this video gave a short coming-of-age backstory wherein one of the sisters embraces her interest in space science via a ham radio/wise neighbor experience. I thought it was well done and a sweet tale, but kind of missed the “feels” it was supposed to inspire. Perhaps as the girls’ characters are fleshed out in the coming episodes, it will have more impact.

  1. “Is it okay to touch Mars?” by Vsauce1 (YouTube channel)

This video wasn’t published by NatGeo, but is was sponsored by them and host Michael Stevens promoted the MARS series throughout while discussing the science behind it. There were plenty of interesting Mars topics not generally discussed such as space “bugs” infecting the Earth and rover scientists living by “Mars time”. I found it to be a good primer for the series.

  1. “NatGeo Live | Sending Humans to Mars: How will we do it?”

This video featured a panel of three scientists answering questions about the challenges of a Mars mission after showing clips from the series. Automation, 3D printing, and terraforming were the primary featured topics after general discussion of mission requirements. There was disagreement on the topic of terraforming Mars that I thought was very interesting and recommend watching.

Fun Trivia

After watching and reading through most of the material published on this series, there were a few interesting things I noted and wanted to share for fun:

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"Flight of Icarus" | Credit: Internet Archive Book Image

“Flight of Icarus” | Credit: Internet Archive Book Image

  • The spaceship carrying the Mars astronauts in the series is called “Daedalus”, named after the Greek god who fathered the infamous waxed-wing god Icarus (great Iron Maiden song, too). In the 1986 movie “Space Camp” (starring Kate Capshaw and Leah Thompson), the space station whose oxygen tank reserves save the kids from certain death in space is also called “Daedalus”. Uh, sorry for the spoiler.
  • Mars already has an unofficial flag: A tricolor rectangle of red, green, and blue. Each color represents the stages of terraforming the planet from its current red state, to green from vegetation, and finally to blue like Earth. The colors were also inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s trilogy Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars.
  • In the “Before Mars” video, ham/amateur radio is a big feature, even allowing one of the girls to communicate with the International Space Station. It actually is possible to communicate with the ISS via ham radio. Astronauts reach out on their free time regularly.

Overall, I thought NatGeo did a great job on the series, intertwining drama with the science to give the viewer an understanding of where we are, where we are going, and why it’s so tough to do it. The series especially shines if you’re looking for a kind of “one-stop” place for all that information in an entertaining way. Unfortunately though, if you’ve been reading about the march towards Mars for some time now, there isn’t much added other than a different perspective and storyline to consider.

I’m looking forward to the coming episodes and, of course, seeing what else Elon has to say along the way. Next up on my playlist: NatGeo’s “Before the Flood” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and featuring our guy Elon.

Onwards.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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