Lifestyle
Bio-tech firm to create human embryo in space, aims to birth first extraterrestrial in 2024
When it comes to entrepreneurship in space, all kinds of ideas come to mind: Selfies, asteroid mining, hotels… Human reproduction? Why not? Elon Musk once endeavored to achieve something similar to mice.
At first glance, a story about a human mother giving birth while in orbit may come across as a tabloid feature. However, after considering the details behind one company’s objective to do this very thing, the realism sets in. With off-planet colonization seemingly in our near future, SpaceLife Origin has taken up the mantle of the inevitable next steps in our species’ long-term plans.
While companies like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin aim to use tourism as a mechanism to increase the human presence in space, SpaceLife Origin wants to help preserve its customers’ DNA. The company is currently planning missions for the year 2020 which will use patent-pending technology inside capsule “arks” full of one thousand protected tubes of human reproductive cells each.
Some of these arks will be stored in locations on Earth, and some will be stored in an orbiting space satellite with live footage available any time for customers whose “seeds” are stored on the vessel. The cells will be protected for at least 100 years from any Earth-based catastrophe, or so goes the company’s stated objective. With the cost of satellite launches decreasing thanks to the growing “new space” industry, this step in the plan is perhaps the most achievable of the three steps it has named.
The second step in the company’s plan is to achieve conception in space by 2021 via its “Lotus” mission. Using a proprietary “Space-Embryo-Incubator”, male and female reproductive cells will be united in orbit, returned to Earth, and then implanted into their mothers assuming the technology succeeds in both fertilization and achieving viability. Here is where the science fiction aspect really begins; however, SpaceLife Origin is arguably just expanding on existing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) technology from Earth to include a freefall environment.
The final step in SpaceLife Origin’s goal of achieving off-planet human reproduction is its “Cradle” mission. By 2024, the company hopes to have succeeded in enough technology innovation to support the birth of a human baby in space. The company will likely face many hurdles in creating this reality, ethical questions being a major point, but the challenge doesn’t appear to be a deterrent.
According to a recent press release, SpaceLife Origin estimates an available customer base of 30+ million individuals worldwide. With its ark missions price range beginning at $30,000 and conception missions beginning at $250 million, the company clearly hopes to have the financial backing for its technological development needs. Also of interest is SpaceLife Origin’s status as a non-profit: For every 750 commercial DNA tubes on its arks, 250 will be hosted non-commercially to ensure diversity. The company emphasizes its concern with social responsibility in its marketing, and “free” tickets to space for non-affluent customers’ DNA is an obvious nod in that direction.
Space as a viable market for business development is getting closer to reality every day, and the currently planned missions to the Moon and Mars will likely increase the existing interest in off-planet innovations. As demonstrated by SpaceLife Origin, the challenges awaiting resolution are many, and solution proposals have willing listeners in the form of investors and advisers. This company has one answer today – what will come tomorrow?
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
SpaceX wants to catch Starship for launch 14, Elon Musk says
Tesla to open source Model S and Model X designs and software
