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Bio-tech firm to create human embryo in space, aims to birth first extraterrestrial in 2024

Credit: Creative commons via Pixabay.com

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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.

The first mission of SpaceLife Origin, “Ark 2020”, seeks to preserve human DNA in specialized capsules on both Earth and in an orbiting satellite for at least 100 years. | Credit: SpaceLife Origin

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.

SpaceLife Origin customers with DNA samples on its “ark” satellite will be able to view their samples in real-time while in orbit. | Credit: SpaceLife Origin

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.

Part of the company’s “cradle” mission to enable pregnant women to give birth in space. | Credit: SpaceLife Origin

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?

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Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

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Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory

Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.

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Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.

The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.

The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.

Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.

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Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years

Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.

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Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.

In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.

The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.

Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.

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This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.

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Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip

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A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.

“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.

Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.

Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.

He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.

Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.

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The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.

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