Lifestyle
Elon Musk’s plans to terraform Mars: Who knew clean energy could be so controversial?
I have to admit, I’ve been pretty fascinated with the idea of terraforming Mars ever since seeing an IMAX film discussing the topic during my week at Space Camp, um, a few years back…or so. While I’m more interested in permanent space colonies (e.g., Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), I’m also very interested in multiplanetary habitation for humans, and transforming the Martian environment rather than constantly fighting to survive in it makes me keep an open mind to the idea.
That, and the fact that Elon Musk has a successful rocket company that was founded with long-term occupation of Mars as its core purpose are handy motivators. The t-shirts are are a great plus, too. The topic is now in the headlines again (with a brand new t-shirt to boot), and the players have taken up their usual places on the game board.
Musk has doubled down on his terraforming strategy, tweeting “Nuke Mars!” and then, “T-shirt soon.” He explained a little more a few days later in response to radiation concerns with, “Nuke Mars refers to a continuous stream of very low fallout nuclear fusion explosions above the atmosphere to create artificial suns. Much like our sun, this would not cause Mars to become radioactive.” Numerous articles were then written or referred back to in response, all arguing that the calculations for such a feat were either highly unlikely or near impossible as a viable terraforming solution. I won’t pretend to have a numbers-based opinion on the matter because, frankly, I always wondered whether it would even matter if it was possible.
Working through the politics of clean energy is hard enough when you’re just talking about converting to battery-electric vehicles like what Tesla makes to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Then, when you include nuclear energy into the mix as a zero emissions option, the fights really break out thanks to the awful consequences that came from nuclear plant failures of the past and the long-term impacts that nuclear weapons have caused in wartime. It doesn’t really matter if the science says it’s pretty safe with current technology – fear of the consequences overtakes any data-driven discussion. So, when someone like Elon Musk says he wants to use a technology on Mars that struggles so much on Earth, it really feels like much ado about nothing because it will never get a green light in the first place let alone gather the resources needed to execute.
A different concept that seems to be a bit more acceptable to the science community involves reflective satellites. Musk floated this option in a tweet, saying “Might make sense to have thousands of solar reflector satellites ? to warm Mars vs artificial suns (tbd).” Since SpaceX is already in the business of manufacturing satellites at the scale that would be needed for such an undertaking with Starlink, the feasibility factor has more points than the thousands of nuclear bombs needed for an artificial sun near Mars. And, hey! Solar power (amplification) for the win, right?
However, I’m not sure whether NASA would acknowledge this strategy, either, since they’ve basically already scrubbed terraforming as an option in their opinion. A study released by the agency in July 2018 was pretty clear in its conclusions:
“Mars does not retain enough carbon dioxide that could practically be put back into the atmosphere to warm Mars, according to a new NASA-sponsored study. Transforming the inhospitable Martian environment into a place astronauts could explore without life support is not possible without technology well beyond today’s capabilities.” – Bill Steigerwald / Nancy Jones for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Basically, neither nuclear energy nor solar power could terraform Mars according to everyone it seems, or at least it’s not feasible for a time frame that stretches the patience of most dreamers. Let’s pretend, though, that the science isn’t so fatalistic for a minute. After all, we don’t really know the nitty gritty details about Musk’s thought process and why he doesn’t think NASA is correct on this issue. Assume that NASA and everyone else says this is something totally possible and would do exactly what Musk et al. want it to do. Our next problems are human haters and planetary protection advocates.
There are a good number of people, or at least good number of very vocal people, that don’t think humans even deserve to colonize Mars. We’ve got enough problems to solve on Earth, they say to some effect. Even Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of the influential Martian terraforming trilogy with the titles of Red, Green, and Blue Mars, has said that Mars ‘isn’t a backup planet’ and that we need to fix our problems here before porting them to our red neighbor. I’m not saying Stanley hates humans, but rather pointing out that even someone with a grand vision for our species doesn’t think we currently have much business acting as another planet’s steward. This type of opposition can be infectious once the debate gets serious.
If you followed the story about Israel’s spacecraft crash landing on the Moon with some tardigrades aboard, you probably saw the raging debate that followed about polluting another planetary body. Honestly, I’d heard about concerns of spacecraft contamination that could interfere with the accuracy of, say, regolith analysis (how do we know what we found didn’t hitchhike from Earth, etc.), but nothing on the scale that followed the tardigrades. It reminded me a bit of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (sorry for all the Trekkie references) where a terraforming team was greatly upset that they’d interfered with the environment of a crystalline, inorganic life form possessing intelligence. One crew person even shed tears over it despite one of her crew members being killed by the beings that were invisible to their equipment.
The whole outcry about the tardigrades came down to an anti-private space exploration mantra, really. Followers of Musk know how much flak comes from challenging the narrative in this arena, but SpaceX has finally made enough headway in terms of accomplishments to have overcome some of the biggest detractions. Not all of them, of course, but the victories thus far give hope for the future plans. Seeing that there was this rabid ‘Planetary Protection Police’ out there (way beyond basic science concerns) was kind of depressing. How many others will come out of the woodwork once SpaceX is actually ready to land on Mars? And with private citizens wanting to relocate there, no less?
The combination of all these things I’ve discussed kind of paints a bleak picture for ever getting off the planet and/or creating another home for humans to live on. I still have faith, though. Like fellow writer Eric Ralph suggested to me, perhaps it will all fall to the wayside once there are actual boots on the ground. The movie may already be in the works despite it all:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Martian Bombs.
Tesla’s Automatic Collision Evasion feature can be seen in one of the first owner videos of it in action.
Tesla owner Spencer (@scotsrule08) posted on Monday that the feature “worked flawlessly,” saying FSD reengaged itself just as he was about to hit a curb. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla’s AI team, shared the clip and wrote, “A guardian angel always looking out for you.”
The video arrives in the middle of a staged rollout. Tesla first shipped Automatic Collision Evasion with FSD (Supervised) v14.3.9 in software update 2026.27.6 earlier this month, which Teslarati covered as it reached cars. Update 2026.27.10, which began going out on September 19, carried the feature improvements with FSD v14.3.10, according to release notes tracked by Not a Tesla App. The newer 2026.27.11 build is now reaching another wave of vehicles.
The new Automatic Collision Evasion feature worked flawlessly! FSD reengaged itself just as I was about to hit a curb.
Kudos @Tesla_AI team! 👏 pic.twitter.com/Fbp15HhpL2
— Spencer (@scotsrule08) September 28, 2026
The feature only runs on HW4 vehicles, and it requires an active FSD purchase or subscription with both FSD (Supervised) and Automatic Emergency Braking enabled. HW3 owners receive FSD v14.2 Lite in the same updates, but that build does not include collision evasion.
Tesla’s release notes describe two triggers. The first is an imminent frontal collision that braking alone may not prevent, in which case the car can activate FSD to steer, brake or accelerate around the hazard. That scenario is limited to highways below 85 mph, with no pedestrians or cyclists detected and no slippery road surface. The second covers a driver who appears inattentive, such as reaching into the back seat, or who seems to have switched off FSD by accident. Spencer’s curb clip appears to fall into that second category.
Tesla plans big safety improvements for Full Self-Driving v15
Once the system takes over, the accelerator is muted and light brake input will not cancel the maneuver. Drivers need to apply firm, deliberate steering force to take back control, and the car chimes to hand control back once the danger has passed.
Elluswamy recently noted that earlier hazard prediction, faster reaction time and better collision avoidance would arrive with FSD v15, the next major version.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig
Musk says Boring Company could shrink the Austin to San Antonio drive to just minutes.
Elon Musk says The Boring Company is working on what he called “a simple, precursor Hyperloop” tunnel connecting Austin and San Antonio, targeting speeds above 200 mph and cutting a drive that can take up to two and a half hours down to a consistent under 30 minutes. Musk posted the idea on X Sunday, in a reply to a repost of an AI generated video imagining a science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds, which he shared with the line “This is the future we shall bring into being.”
This is the future we shall bring into being pic.twitter.com/8aD0w8MDVc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 20, 2026
The Boring Company’s own account picked up the idea in the same thread, adding a detail about how the trip would actually work: “Because Loop/Hyperloop is express (i.e. no intermediate stops), one could travel from an Austin parking lot to a favorite San Antonio restaurant in about 30 minutes. As long as they both have Loop stations.” That framing ties the proposed intercity link to the same station model the company already runs in Las Vegas, where riders enter the tunnel network through small, garage style stops rather than one central terminal.
This is not the company’s first run at the Austin to San Antonio corridor. Boring Company floated tunnels between the two cities as far back as 2021, and later competed for a separate San Antonio Loop project tied to the airport before that specific bid stalled. Pitches for tunnels in Chicago, Los Angeles, and a New York to Washington corridor have followed a similar pattern of big announcement without a shovel in the ground.
What is different this time is the balance sheet, especially since The Boring Company closed a 3 billion dollar funding round led by investors in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month at a valuation near 23 billion dollars, giving the tunneling company more capital to chase speculative projects than it had during its earlier Texas pitches. The company is also mid-build on two other intercity systems it has actually broken ground on, inc;luding a Nashville tunnel linking downtown to the airport, where a second boring machine finished commissioning in June, and its Las Vegas network, where the station count keeps climbing on paper faster than tunnels get dug.
That gap between announcement and execution is the reason to treat Sunday’s post as an opening bid rather than a project. A tunnel spanning roughly 80 miles between two metro areas, running at speeds Boring Company has not demonstrated over any real distance, would dwarf anything the company has built. For now, the Austin to San Antonio Hyperloop exists as a caption under an AI generated space video.
Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.
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