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
How to use Grok Bot to block spam calls and texts
Musk told users to ask Grok Bot to scrub their phone numbers from spam lists.
Elon Musk has a new use case for Grok Bot, and it is the spam call. On Thursday he replied to an X user named Arash with a short instruction: “Ask your @Grok @Bot to remove your phone number from spam call & text lists!” Arash had said he got tired of the calls, had an AI bot find his number on listing sites and file removal requests, and packaged the process as a free skill for others.
The skill is called Spam-Call Scrubber, which is described to find a phone number on people search sites and data brokers, submits the opt outs, completes the confirmation emails those sites send back, and rechecks on a schedule the user picks. Using it requires the Grok Bot app. The pitch is time saved, since most broker opt outs sit behind separate forms on separate sites.
Ask your @Grok @Bot to remove your phone number from spam call & text lists!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2026
Musk said Grok Bot now gives each bot its own email address, and that it can detect scam emails. On Thursday he also said SpaceX would make users whole if the bot botches a purchase or leaks a card, then told users to shop away from Amazon after the retailer blocked the agent, as Teslarati reported. The terms of service we reviewed at the time put responsibility for what an agent does on the user.
For Tesla owners, Grok Bot is not just a phone app. Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles on September 22, and we argued earlier this week that the Cybercab’s real advantage may be the errands it runs during a ride. Every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet has it enabled. The more routine tasks like this one become, the more a rider has reason to hand over something personal in the back seat.
The new Spam-Call Scrubber skill can be downloaded for free and works on sites that honor removal requests, while noting that listings can reappear, and illegal robocallers do not check any registry. Whether Spam-Call Scrubber cuts anyone’s call volume is something the first wave of users will find out, and Musk’s endorsement guarantees that wave is coming.
Lifestyle
Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi’s real advantage won’t be the ride service
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.