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Answering Elon Musk’s call for help to build Thailand’s cave rescue pod in 24 hours

[Credit: Giovanna Castro Salas/Wing Inflatables via Mad River Union]

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On the morning of Friday, July 6, Andrew Branagh received a call that would put his company’s 30-year experience in the field to the test. Branagh, who serves as the CEO of Arcata-based Wing Inflatables, had been asked by Elon Musk’s engineering team from SpaceX to construct an inflatable escape pod for the 12 children and their coach who are currently stranded in an air pocket inside the sprawling Tham Luang Nang Non cave complex in Thailand. Knowing that time is of the essence, Branagh and his team got to work.

The stranded members of the Wild Boar Soccer Team have been stranded in the caves since June 23, after a casual excursion into the underground caverns turned into a pitch-black ordeal due to flash floods. The group of 13, comprised of boys aged 11-16 and their 25-year-old coach, were missing until this past Monday, when they were located by two UK divers. The children and their coach have been given food and survival supplies, and on Tuesday, a doctor and a nurse spent the night with them. While the group is safe for now, however, retrieving them is not easy, considering that they are located 2.5 miles away from the entrance to the caves. Parts of the cave systems are also underwater, which would force the children to dive into murky waters during their retrieval.

Wing Inflatables’ rescue pods under construction. [Credit: Giovanna Castro Salas/Wing Inflatables via Mad River Union]

In a tweet on Friday, Elon Musk posted a brief update on Twitter stating that SpaceX and Boring Co. engineers are headed to Thailand in order to see if they can be helpful to the government’s rescue efforts. That was the same day that Branagh woke up to a text and call from the SpaceX team. Branagh notes that the message was brief, but the request was clear.

“Elon has an idea, or our team does.”

Musk’s initial idea to rescue the trapped children is to use an inflatable tube. Considering Wing’s experience in the field, Branagh and his team went to work refining the idea. The result was a submersible “torpedo,” which could hold a person with an air tank and a breathing apparatus. The torpedo is designed to be towed by its front and back, and be sleek enough to be guided through the cave system’s trickiest sections. Branagh opted to utilize 30% of his company’s workforce for the fast-track effort, reducing his business’ usual output by half. The CEO’s gambit worked, and by 9:30 a.m. on Friday, a prototype was ready. Branagh noted that the first rescue pod, which is 7-feet-long, sealed with velcro, and inflatable with the passenger’s exhaled air, was a finished product. There were no throw-away units or re-dos. There was just not enough time.

By 1:00 p.m., Wing’s rescue pod was tested on the Arcata Community Pool, with a certified dive instructor and two individuals who do not know how to swim. The tests were encouraging, with both test individuals being able to breathe comfortably inside the rescue pod. Branagh had also been speaking with Musk and his engineering staff in a conference call.

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“He (Elon) was very direct and clear on supporting getting a solution in place,” Branagh said.

By 5:15 p.m., the first set of Wing Inflatables rescue pods were ready to be transported from Arcata-Eureka airport in Northern CA.

Apart from the inflatable pods that the engineers from SpaceX and The Boring Company transported to Thailand on Friday, Musk and his team at LA are also designing a mini-submarine for the children. In a series of tweets over the weekend, Musk stated that the mini-sub would be small enough to fit through the contours of the cave and its hull will be made of the same material as the oxygen transfer tube of a Falcon rocket, making it extremely durable. The mini-sub would have four handles and hitch points for the front and rear, with two air tanks on both front and rear, allowing up to four tanks to be connected.

Rescue efforts for the stranded children are already underway as of Sunday. For this rescue attempt, the children would have to dive using scuba gear into the waters with two experienced divers. Divers who will be conducting the retrieval of the soccer team are expected to spend 11 hours inside the caves, six hours heading to the children, and five hours going out. It remains unknown for now if the rescuers will be utilizing the rescue pods delivered by the SpaceX and Boring Co. team. Musk’s mini-sub continues testing in LA, just in case it’s needed for the cave rescue efforts.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming

Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.

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Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.

In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”

The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”

Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.

Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.

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The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.

It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”

The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.

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Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.

Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.

Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.

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The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.

A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.

Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.

Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.

Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.

The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.

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Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration

Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.

The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.

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Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update

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Credit: @jojje167 on X

Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.

Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.

The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.

Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.

When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.

Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.

The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.

Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.

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For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.

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