Energy
For HyperSciences, geothermal energy builds a path to space
These days, it seems anyone wanting to launch rockets will inevitably be compared to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, especially if rocket launching isn’t the only business interest on the agenda. Musk has Tesla plus SpaceX, and Bezos has Amazon plus Blue Origin. Now, meet Mark Russell, a disciple of Bezos and rocket engineer who founded HyperSciences, a drilling company that uses aerospace technology to both quickly extract underground geothermal energy and put payloads into orbit at low cost.
The idea of leveraging Earth’s geothermal energy is not a new concept, but the expense and time required to reach the depth needed have been prohibitively expensive. That’s where HyperSciences comes in.
Russell and his team have developed a low-cost, multi-purpose projectile called the HyperDrone that can accelerate to velocities over five times the speed of sound and pulverize hard rock via their HyperDrill. This will enable tunneling speeds that are 5-10 times quicker than conventional methods, and more importantly, it opens up significant market viability in other industries that could benefit, namely when that acceleration is pointed skyward. NASA has already recognized this potential and is a current investor and major partner of HyperSciences.
Bringing accessible, affordable, and true green energy to the international arena is onely one component in Russell’s overarching goal in life. In a way reminiscent of the founder of another famous digging enterprise, The Boring Company, HyperSciences’ founder has both roots in space exploration and a long-term vision for a paradigm shift in space launch capabilities using the same basic
“I would not have left ‘conventional’ aerospace unless there was a path forward for spaceflight,” Russell told me in a conversation we had about his vision for his company’s inventions beyond Earth’s atmosphere. He was referring to his decision to leave Blue Origin after he’d led their crew capsule and vertical takeoff and landing vehicle development to found HyperSciences. I’d heard that Russell had history with the Bezos-led rocket company, but as a lifelong space nerd, I was very excited to hear the extent of his background in aerospace and how it tied into just about everything about his drilling company.
“I was the black sheep of the family that went into the aerospace arena instead of into mining,” he told me, jokingly, before reminiscing about his amateur astronomy hobby and desire to be an astronaut in his younger days. Russell is the third generation of a family of successful miners from Idaho.
It is Rocket Science
The future HyperSciences founder obtained a master’s degree in Aero Astro Engineering from Stanford University before spending some engineering time at Boeing first, then Kistler Aerospace, where he worked with a man who would eventually become Blue Origin’s first president, Rob Meyerson. Russell made the transition to Jeff Bezos’s space venture himself for a time, but as the company moved more in the direction of becoming a traditional launch provider, he made the decision to circle back around to his family mining days where he’d been considering some underground-type space industry ideas that needed more attention to flesh out.
The result of that return home would eventually lead to the invention of the HyperDrill
So, how does a drill transform into a rocket? While the technology itself is the product of very innovative and intelligent minds, the concept overall is simple. A projectile (or rocket payload, rather) is loaded into a long tube that’s been drilled underground, and then fuel is ignited in the bottom of the tube to propel it at hypersonic speed towards space, a second transfer stage possibly being implemented for orbital entry. The company calls the actual launching device the HyperCore Engine. By essentially separating the fuel and the payload of a rocket, the process of putting things into orbit becomes cheaper, safer, and achievable at a much faster rate of launch than anything even being planned by the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin.
This kind of technology proposition gained NASA’s interest, and HyperSciences has since won a Phase I innovation award for from the agency, the testing for which was successfully completed at Spaceport America in New Mexico at the end of January this year. With this achievement under their belt, Russell’s long-time spaceflight dreams are really starting to take shape.
Looking Beyond Earth
Tying the team’s mining and space technology ambitions neatly together, Russell also told me that his time at Blue Origin contributed more than just direct experience with spaceflight development to his hypersonic launch ambitions. Bezos’s “test early, test often” philosophy was directly relevant to a technology involving speeds 3-6 times the speed of sound – frequent flight testing is a must.
“At this point I realized, you really have to change the paradigm, and you need to test an awful lot,” he explained. “I thought to myself, if you want to practice a lot in 
There was yet another aspect to Russell’s plan in developing his technology that I thought was pretty exciting – crowdsourced investment. Unlike SpaceX and Blue Origin where investment isn’t really accessible to day-to-day citizens wanting to be a part of the “next big thing”, HyperSciences’ latest funding round is being hosted by SeedInvest. This approach provides a real ownership opportunity for pretty much anyone excited about things like aerospace and clean energy, and it’s open until March 22, 2019.
“Every 15 seconds, we’re firing something at hypersonic speeds. Nobody does that. NASA doesn’t do it. Boeing doesn’t do it. But we do it.”
As a native space nerd, I also had to prod Russell about taking HyperSciences’ tech to Mars – did he see a place for it there, whether it be for underground geothermal-type energy hunting or habitat digging? Turns out, he was several steps ahead of me. “I think the next bit of space exploration really does need to drill holes,” he said, acknowledging my sentiments about taking the tech off-planet. “In our patents, we have some applications that aren’t terrestrial.” How’s that for forward thinking?
“Hypersonics is not just about space. It’s a brand new way – a brand new engine,” Russell emphasized to me.
The disruptions already caused by Elon Musk in the same arenas HyperSciences is aiming for have made so many inroads where strict boundaries once stood, and it’s very exciting to see another space-driven company come along and want to keep pushing those boundaries into another phase of development all together. Visiting HyperSciences’ SeedInvest page is a great place to learn more details about the company’s plans and the benefits investors can gain by being a part of their future-forward technology.
The video below provides some exciting visuals and information surrounding the aerospace applications for HyperSciences’ technology, as demonstrated for their NASA Phase I funding award.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s $2.9 billion bet: Why Elon Musk is turning to China to build America’s solar future
Tesla looks to bring solar manufacturing to the US, with latest $2.9 billion bet to acquire Chinese solar equipment.
Tesla is reportedly in talks to purchase $2.9 billion worth of solar manufacturing equipment from a group of Chinese suppliers, including Suzhou Maxwell Technologies, which is the world’s largest producer of screen-printing equipment used in solar cell production. According to Reuters sources, the equipment is expected to be delivered before autumn and shipped to Texas, where Tesla plans to anchor its next phase of domestic solar production.
The move is a direct extension of a vision Elon Musk has been building for months. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this past January, Musk announced that both Tesla and SpaceX were independently working to establish 100 gigawatts of annual solar manufacturing capacity inside the United States. Days later, on Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, he made the ambition concrete: “We’re going to work toward getting 100 GW a year of solar cell production, integrating across the entire supply chain from raw materials all the way to finished solar panels.”
Job postings on Tesla’s website reflect that same target, with language explicitly calling for 100 GW of “solar manufacturing from raw materials on American soil before the end of 2028.”
Tesla job listing for Staff Manufacturing Development Engineer, Solar Manufacturing
The urgency behind the latest solar manufacturing target is rooted in a set of rapidly emerging pressures related to AI and Tesla’s own energy business. U.S. power consumption hit its second consecutive record high in 2025 and is projected to climb further through 2026 and 2027, driven largely by the explosion in AI data centers and the broader electrification of transportation. Tesla’s own energy division, which produces the Megapack utility-scale battery storage system, has been growing rapidly, and solar supply is a critical companion component for the business to scale. Musk has argued that solar is not just a clean energy option but the only one that makes economic sense at the scale AI infrastructure demands.
Tesla lands in Texas for latest Megapack production facility
Ironically, the path to domestic solar independence currently runs through China. Sort of.
Despite Tesla’s stated push to localize its supply chain, mirrored recently by the company’s plan for a $4.3 billion LFP battery manufacturing partnership with LG Energy Solution in Michigan, Tesla still relies on China-based suppliers to keep its cost structure intact.
The $2.9 billion equipment deal underscores a tension Musk himself acknowledged at Davos: “Unfortunately, in the U.S. the tariff barriers for solar are extremely high and that makes the economics of deploying solar artificially high, because China makes almost all the solar.” Building the factory in America requires buying the machinery from the country Tesla is trying to reduce its dependence on.
Tesla named by U.S. Gov. in $4.3B battery deal for American-made cells
The regulatory pathway adds another layer of complexity. Suzhou Maxwell has been seeking export approval from China’s commerce ministry, and it remains unclear how quickly that clearance will come. Still, the market has already reacted, with shares in the Chinese firms reportedly involved in the talks surged more than 7% following the Reuters report that broke the story.
Whether Tesla can hit its 2028 target of 100GW of solar manufacturing remains an open question. Though that scale may seem staggering, especially in such a short timeframe, we know that Musk has a documented history of “always pulling it off” in the face of ambitious deadlines that may slip. But, rest assured – it’ll get done.
Elon Musk
Tesla named by U.S. Gov. in $4.3B battery deal for American-made cells
What began as an open secret in the energy industry was confirmed by the U.S. Department of the Interior on Monday: Tesla is the buyer behind LG Energy Solution’s blockbuster $4.3 billion battery supply agreement.
What began as an open secret in the energy industry is becoming more real after the U.S. Department of the Interior named Tesla as the stakeholder in the LG Energy Solution’s blockbuster $4.3 billion battery supply agreement.
Tesla and LG Energy Solution are expanding their partnership to build a LFP prismatic battery cell manufacturing facility in Lansing, Michigan, launching production in 2027. The announcement, made as part of the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Summit results, ends months of speculation.
“American-made cells will power Tesla’s Megapack 3 energy storage systems produced in Houston, creating a robust domestic battery supply chain.”, notes a press release on the U.S. Department of the Interior website.
Tesla has long utilized China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. (CATL), the world’s largest LFP battery maker, as one of its primary suppliers. That relationship made financial sense for years, considering that Chinese LFP cells were cheap, abundant, and reliable. But with escalated tariffs on Chinese imports and an increasingly growing Tesla Energy business that’s particularly reliant on LFP cells for products including its Megapack battery storage units designed for utilities and large-scale commercial projects.
The announcement of a deepened partnership between LG Energy Solution and Tesla has strategic logic for both parties. For Tesla, it secures a tariff-compliant, domestically produced battery supply for its fast-growing energy division. LGES, now producing LFP batteries in Michigan, becomes the only major supplier currently scaling U.S. production, outpacing rivals like Samsung SDI and SK On. LG Energy Solution’s Lansing plant, formerly known as Ultium Cells 3, was previously operated as a joint venture with General Motors. LGES acquired GM’s stake in May 2025 and now fully owns the site, with a production capacity of 50 GWh per year. LG Energy said the contract includes options to extend the supply period by up to seven years and boost volumes based on further consultations.
For the broader industry, the ripple effects are significant. This deal signals that domestic battery manufacturing can be financially viable and not just aspirational. Utilities, energy developers, and rival automakers will take note as American-made LFP supply becomes a competitive reality rather than a distant promise.
For consumers, the benefits will take time but are real. A more resilient, U.S.-based supply chain means fewer price shocks from trade disputes, more stable Megapack availability for the grid storage projects that reduce electricity costs, and long-term downward pressure on energy storage prices as domestic production scales.
Deliveries are set to begin in 2027 and run through mid-2030, and as grid storage demand accelerates, reliable, US-made battery supply is no longer a future ambition. It is becoming a core requirement of the country’s energy strategy.
Energy
Tesla Energy gains UK license to sell electricity to homes and businesses
The license was granted to Tesla Energy Ventures Ltd. by UK energy regulator Ofgem after a seven-month review process.
Tesla Energy has received a license to supply electricity in the United Kingdom, opening the door for the company to serve homes and businesses in the country.
The license was granted to Tesla Energy Ventures Ltd. by UK energy regulator Ofgem after a seven-month review process.
According to Ofgem, the license took effect at 6 p.m. local time on Wednesday and applies to Great Britain.
The approval allows Tesla’s energy business to sell electricity directly to customers in the region, as noted in a Bloomberg News report.
Tesla has already expanded similar services in the United States. In Texas, the company offers electricity plans that allow Tesla owners to charge their vehicles at a lower cost while also feeding excess electricity back into the grid.
Tesla already has a sizable presence in the UK market. According to price comparison website U-switch, there are more than 250,000 Tesla electric vehicles in the country and thousands of Tesla home energy storage systems.
Ofgem also noted that Tesla Motors Ltd., a separate entity incorporated in England and Wales, received an electricity generation license in June 2020.
The new UK license arrives as Tesla continues expanding its global energy business.
Last year, Tesla Energy retained the top position in the global battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator market for the second consecutive year. According to Wood Mackenzie’s latest rankings, Tesla held about 15% of global market share in 2024.
The company also maintained a dominant position in North America, where it captured roughly 39% market share in the region.
At the same time, competition in the energy storage sector is increasing. Chinese companies such as Sungrow have been expanding their presence globally, particularly in Europe.
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