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Obama joins Musk’s call for humanity to become a multi-planetary species

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President Obama joined the call for humanity to become a multi-planetary species.

“We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America’s story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remain there for an extended time,” the President said in an op-ed piece published by CNN. “Getting to Mars will require continued cooperation between government and private innovators, and we’re already well on our way. Within the next two years, private companies will for the first time send astronauts to the International Space Station.”

Obama’s statement comes shortly after Musk gave a talk at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico in which he set forth his plan for colonizing Mars. According to Musk’s vision, SpaceX’s largest and most powerful rocket ever built will carry 100 settlers to the Red Planet. Crew will build a fuel processing facility on Mars that will provide a source of power for the inhabitants and SpaceX’s Interplanetary Transport System that will transport humans from Mars back to earth.

Following the president’s editorial on humans taking the giant leap to Mars, SpaceX spokesperson Phil Larson told The Observer, “SpaceX was founded with the ultimate goal of helping make humans a multi-planetary species. As Elon said at his recent talk, it will take a combination of public and private efforts to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. It’s exciting to see President Obama advocate for the next frontier in human spaceflight, and we look forward to participating in the journey.”

Obama will convene the White House Frontiers Conference in Pittsburgh later this week. Hosted by Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the conference will bring together “America’s leading scientists, engineers, innovators and students in Pittsburgh to dream up ways to build on our progress and find the next frontiers,” the president said.

SpaceX is not the only company pushing a Mars agenda forward. NASA is developing a Space Launch System to be used with the Orion spacecraft created by Lockheed Martin. The plan is to set up a “Mars Base Camp” space station in Martian orbit using SLS and Orion rather than going straight to landing people on the surface of Mars. That effort is targeted for sometime after 2030.

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Not to be left behind, Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenburg stated last week that his company will be the first to transport humans to Mars. In addition, he foresees at number of tourist destinations orbiting the earth that people will be able to fly to in order to leave their earthly cares behind.

Getting to Mars will require cooperation from many public and private organizations. Competition is good, but building three different rockets and three different space transport systems would seem to be wildly inefficient. No doubt there will be some convergence between the various programs over time.

But Musk, as usual, is the one pushing the envelope the furthest and the fastest. He plans to send an unmanned mission to Mars as early as 2018 and expects the first Mars colony to be operational within a decade. SpaceX may need the help of NASA and others to meet its goals, but there is no question that, when it comes to Mars, Elon Musk plans to get there first.

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Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer

Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.

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Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.

On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.

Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.


Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.

Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.

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The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.

The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.

Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.

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Starlink Mini 2 arrives with one feature for true off-grid connectivity

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX officially launched the Starlink Mini 2 on November 10, delivering the first portable Starlink terminal designed around independent power.

Invitation-only preorders for select U.S. customers are priced at $999 plus tax, a figure that includes a full year of Roam Unlimited service valued at roughly $2,100. A refundable $100 deposit reserves the kit, with the balance due at shipment, expected to begin in mid-December. Broader availability is listed as coming soon.

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The headline feature is the quick-swap 71 Wh battery. Clipped to the rear of the dish without tools, it delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity on a single charge.

The 490-gram pack includes its own USB-C port and LED indicators, so users can charge a spare separately and swap it in seconds while staying online. Starlink notes that the terminal can continue operating while the battery charges or run directly from a 60 W USB-C source. The retail box includes one battery, a 60 W USB-C charger, and a 3-meter cable.

Beyond power, the Mini 2 is thinner at 23.1 mm (versus 38.5 mm on the original Mini) while measuring 263 × 314 mm. With the battery and kickstand attached it weighs 1.6 kg.

Built-in Wi-Fi 6 expands coverage to up to 1,800 square feet, an IP67 rating protects against dust and water, and a standard 1/4-20 tripod thread plus physical power button round out the design. Field of view remains 110 degrees, and the unit retains support for mobile use.

For travelers, campers, and remote workers, the swappable battery removes the longstanding requirement for an external power bank or vehicle outlet that defined the first Mini. Spare packs sold separately further extend runtime, turning the compact terminal into a more self-contained solution.

While the bundled $999 invitation price sits well above the original Mini’s current $149 starting point, the included year of service and genuine untethered operation mark a clear step forward in portable satellite internet.

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SpaceX’s $24B Starbase supercomputer plan slipped past a key roadblock

SpaceX wants a Starbase tax break for a $24 billion gas plant and supercomputer campus.

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Concept rendering of SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell overlooks the company’s Hawthorne, California headquarters as an American flag flies over the campus at sunset.

SpaceX is asking its own company town for a tax break on a $24 billion natural gas power plant and supercomputing facility at Starbase, Texas, and the land it picked sits just outside the reach of a data center moratorium that took effect in neighboring Brownsville last week.

A City of Starbase public hearing notice says SpaceX “proposes to construct, own, and operate a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility” on roughly 444 acres between Boca Chica Boulevard and the Port of Brownsville. The $24 billion figure covers only the initial phases, and the notice leaves room for future expansions. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement and a related economic development agreement at a 7 p.m. hearing on December 9. The notice does not disclose the size or length of the abatement, or how much computing capacity the site would hold.

The location has a history. Over the summer, SpaceX asked Brownsville to remove the tract from its city limits and offered $220 million for water and wastewater projects in return. Brownsville approved the move in August, and Starbase later annexed the land. Brownsville’s own 90-day pause on data center applications took effect last week, and had the tract stayed inside the city, the project likely would have needed a different home.

The power side is already in front of state regulators. SpaceX has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for air permits covering 35 mobile gas turbines producing roughly 750 megawatts, according to Politico, which also noted that two of the three Starbase commissioners voting on the incentives are SpaceX executives.

Building its own plant lets SpaceX skip the Texas grid. Gov. Greg Abbott paused new data center grid connections in August pending an audit, but a facility that generates its own electricity does not need one. The air permit still has to clear the TCEQ, where Abbott also ordered a halt on data center permits.

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The bigger test arrives in January. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who unseated Abbott last week, has said she will block data center approvals until the legislature passes new protections, and she has already asked state officials to hold off on any sale of Boca Chica State Park to SpaceX until she is sworn in. Tesla and SpaceX shares both fell the day after the election, and Musk’s first reaction on X was “Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now.”

That line points to Starmind, SpaceX’s orbital compute constellation. Musk has said terrestrial compute will be “peanuts compared to orbital compute” and expects monthly orbital deployments to pass ground deployments around the end of 2028, as Teslarati reported. Until then, SpaceX still needs gigawatts on the ground. It ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute, is targeting 2.5 to 3 GW by the end of this year and wants at least 10 GW more in 2027. Its existing Colossus sites around Memphis already run on gas turbines and face a lawsuit from residents over emissions.

Local reaction is split. The South Texas Environmental Justice Network has announced a protest, citing air quality, water use and energy bills, while some Brownsville residents told the Tribune they welcome the jobs. SpaceX did not respond to the Tribune’s questions about the project.

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