Lifestyle
My journey to the Model 3 event: Not paying attention to airlines
I was unable to select seats for the return flight to Philadelphia from LAX when booking, but brushed it off. The adrenaline was still in full force after learning about being selected for the Model 3 unveiling event, and I was in a rush to secure the most affordable flights left. On the way there, my husband and I will be in the middle seats of two consecutive rows. At least we’re not too far back on the plane, as time will be limited between arrival and the start of the event. I hear folks in LA are always late, but that’s not how I roll. My plan is to step onto the Tesla property no later than 6:59pm.
Wednesday evening, I was pondering what to wear to the event. As I started mentally packing, I realized that for being in LA fewer than 48 hours, I’d need very little clothes. Shoes are the problem. One decent pair for the event and one comfortable pair for everything else would be needed. There’s no good way for a woman to get around packing a second pair of shoes. That is, unless she’s willing to wear heels through an airport. No thanks. Even just one carry-on plus our little under seat “trolley tote” will be plenty large for both of us to pack a second pair, despite the fact that a second pair of men’s shoes usually takes up at least 1/4 of the available space in the carry-on.
Thursday morning, I took to Google to see how I could go about selecting seats for our return flights. Spirit Airlines is who that flight is with. I navigated to their website not yet knowing what they were all about. Then it happened: I learned that Spirit is a no frills airline with zero unnecessary services: no drinks, snacks or free carry-on bags. They allow you to take on one personal item each. This personal item can be no larger than 16” x 14” x 12”. Carry-on bags cost $40 each! A checked bag a little less at $35. That assumes you purchase that option before you check in to the flight. Prices rise from there.
As soon as I got home I ran for the tape measure. My beloved trolley tote fits a generous amount of clothing. Whew, it just barely meets the size restrictions. That handles one of our free personal items. The other will need a bag with easy access to the bag o’ liquids, iPad, chapstick, earbuds and the like. Usually, a small tote bag works for this purpose, but now my husband and I are challenging ourselves to make our entire luggage needs fit within the confines of each having one small personal item, so a simple tote bag won’t do.
I went through our collection and found nothing else that worked. Anything that met the size limit was too small to reasonably add clothing to and did not take advantage of the generous 12″ thickness.
Apparently, I’m the last to know about Spirit Airlines. 2 minutes on Amazon.com told me there were plenty of luggage pieces marketed as fitting within their restrictions. Buying new luggage defeats the purpose of trying to save on bag fees. Adding a low quality piece to our collection is pointless as well. The next best option was a very low cost bag – $16 for a simple nylon tote – that took the best advantage of all three dimensions.
But marriage, in a nutshell, is explained by what happened next. I told my husband about the $16 bag during halftime of the Duke game. He said hang on and went to the garage. Our garage is well organized, as is the rest of our home, so I had no idea what he was getting at. It turns out, he recently brought home his fourth company logo bag since he started working there under a year ago: a small duffle. It was in the garage presumably because he was hiding it from me. That bag hadn’t yet made it into the house since being brought home because dear husband knew I’d complain that we didn’t need more “stuff.” Like most Americans, we have too much already. An entire closet is dedicated to luggage, and none of the duffle type bags in there have ever been used. But in this moment, tape measure in hand, I was pretty happy to see that duffle.
I guess I won’t be walking through the airport in heels after all. Besides, Spirit’s self processed “cozy” seats will likely hand me more than enough discomfort for one day.
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Lifestyle
Tesla hit by Iranian missile debris in Israel
A Tesla in Israel absorbed a direct hit from missile debris, and the glassroof held.
On March 30, 2026, Lara Shusterman was in Netanya, Israel when Iranian ballistic missiles triggered air raid sirens across the city. While she remained in safety, her 2024 Tesla Model Y did not escape untouched. A heavy piece of missile debris struck the car’s massive glass roof, leaving a deep crater but without shattering. In a Facebook post to the Tesla Israel community the following morning, Shusterman described what happened: “The glass did not shatter into dangerous shards. She stopped the damage and pushed the metal part to the ground.” She closed by thanking Elon Musk and the Tesla team for building what she called “security and a sense of trust even in extreme situations.”
Netanya is a coastal city in central Israel, roughly 18 miles north of Tel Aviv and has been among the areas most frequently struck during Iran’s ongoing missile campaign, following coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian military infrastructure. Falling shrapnel from intercepted missiles is a common occurrence.
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- Tesla Model Y glass roof shattered from a piece of falling Iranian missile debris
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- A piece of Iranian missile debris that struck Lara Shusterman’s Tesla Model Y in Netanya, Israel on March 30, 2026, after being intercepted by Israeli air defenses.
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- Tesla Model Y glass roof shattered from a piece of falling Iranian missile debris
Source: Tesla Israel Facebook Group
The incident is a testament to Tesla’s structural engineering. Tesla’s glass roof is designed to support over four times the vehicle’s own weight. That strength has shown up in real-world accidents too. In 2021, a Model Y in California was struck by a falling tree during a storm, with the glass roof holding firm and the cabin remaining intact. In another widely reported incident, a Tesla Model Y plunged 250 feet off the cliff at Devil’s Slide in California in January 2023, with all four occupants, including two young children, surviving.
Disturbing details about Tesla’s 250-foot cliff drop emerge amid initial investigation
Tesla officially launched sales in Israel in early 2021 and captured over 60 percent of Israel’s EV market in the first year. The brand’s foothold in Israel remains significant. Tens of thousands of Teslas are now on Israeli roads, making incidents like Shusterman’s easy to corroborate. On the same week her Model Y took the hit, the U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $178.5 million contract to launch missile tracking satellites, a separate but fitting reminder of how intertwined the Musk ecosystem has become with the realities of modern conflict.
Elon Musk
NASA sends humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972 – Here’s what’s next
NASA’s Artemis II launched four astronauts toward the Moon on the first crewed lunar mission since 1972.
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket launches carrying the Orion spacecraft with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, commander; Victor Glover, pilot; Christina Koch, mission specialist; and CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, mission specialist on NASA’s Artemis II mission, Wednesday, April 1, 2026, from Operations and Support Building II at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Artemis II mission will take Wiseman, Glover, Koch, and Hansen on a 10-day journey around the Moon and back aboard SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft launched at 6:35pm EDT from Launch Complex 39B. (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
NASA launched four astronauts toward the Moon on April 1, 2026, marking the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 in December 1972. The Artemis II mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center aboard the Space Launch System rocket at 6:35 p.m. EDT, sending commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on a 10-day journey around the far side of the Moon and back.
The mission does not include a lunar landing. It is a test flight designed to validate the Orion spacecraft’s life support systems, navigation, and communications in deep space with a crew aboard for the first time. If the crew reaches the planned distance of 252,000 miles from Earth, they will set a new record for the farthest any human has ever traveled, surpassing even the Apollo 13 distance record.
As Teslarati reported, SpaceX holds a central role in what comes next. The Starship Human Landing System is under contract to carry astronauts to the lunar surface for Artemis IV, now targeting 2028, after NASA restructured its mission sequence due to delays in Starship’s orbital refueling demonstration. Before any Moon landing happens, SpaceX must prove it can transfer propellant between two Starships in orbit, something no rocket program has done at this scale.
The last time humans left Earth’s orbit was 53 years ago. Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17 were the final people to walk on the Moon, a record that stands to this day. Elon Musk has long argued that returning is not optional. “It’s been now almost half a century since humans were last on the Moon,” Musk said. “That’s too long, we need to get back there and have a permanent base on the Moon.”
The Artemis program involves 60 countries signed onto the Artemis Accords, and this mission sets several firsts beyond distance. Glover becomes the first person of color to travel beyond low Earth orbit, Koch the first woman, and Hansen the first non-American astronaut to reach the Moon’s vicinity. According to NASA’s live mission updates, the spacecraft’s solar arrays deployed successfully after liftoff and the crew completed a proximity operations demonstration within the first hours of flight.
Artemis II is step one. The Moon landing and the permanent lunar base come later. But after more than five decades, humans are heading back.
Elon Musk
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
Tesla’s Optimus robot left the Hollywood Diner within months of opening. Now Musk is planning its return with a bigger role and a major Gen 3 upgrade underway.
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner.jpg)
Tesla’s Optimus robot was one of the most talked-about features when the Tesla Diner opened on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood on July 21, 2025. Dubbed “Poptimus” by Tesla fans, the Gen 2 robot stood upstairs at the retro-futuristic, drive-in theater and Tesla Supercharging station, scooping popcorn into bags and handing them to guests with a wave.
The diner itself had been years in the making. Elon Musk first floated the idea in 2018 with a tweet about building an “old-school drive-in, roller skates & rock restaurant” at a Hollywood Supercharger. What eventually opened was a unique two-story neon-lit space, with 80 EV charging stalls, and Optimus serving as a live demonstration of where Tesla’s ambitions were headed.
If our retro-futuristic diner turns out well, which I think it will, @Tesla will establish these in major cities around the world, as well as at Supercharger sites on long distance routes.
An island of good food, good vibes & entertainment, all while Supercharging! https://t.co/zmbv6GfqKf
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2025
But Optimus did not stay long, and was gone by December 2025.
Now, the robot is set to return with a more demanding job. Musk has ambitions for Optimus to take on a food runner role in 2026, delivering meals directly to cars at the Supercharger stalls. While the latest Gen 3 Optimus is likely to initially take on its previous popcorn-serving role, it wouldn’t be out of the question for Optimus to see a quick promotion. With improved hand dexterity that features 50 total actuators and 22 degrees of freedom per hand, and significantly more powerful processing through Tesla’s latest AI5 chip that includes Grok-powered voice interaction, Musk described Optimus at the Abundance Summit on March 12, 2026, as “by far the most advanced robot in the world, Nothing’s even close.”
Back to work
See you at Tesla Diner tomorrow pic.twitter.com/H3tTajrUbu
— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) March 30, 2026
That confidence is backed by a major manufacturing shift. At the Q4 2025 earnings call in January, Musk announced Tesla would discontinue the Model S and Model X and convert those Fremont production lines to build Optimus. “It’s time to basically bring the Model S and X programs to an end,” he said, calling for a pivot that reflects where the Tesla’s future lies.
Tesla broadens most-wanted Model Y to eight new markets
Tesla hit by Iranian missile debris in Israel
