Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: Elon Musk – Page 49

Jason Shawhan, Tesla’s director of manufacturing at Giga Texas, recently gave a rare talk about the facility’s existing operations and the company’s plans for the future. The executive shared the information during a keynote address at the State of Manufacturing conference and expo, which was held by the Austin Regional Manufacturers Association.

Tesla is the world’s most valuable automaker by market cap, and its CEO, Elon Musk, is one of the most visible chief executives in the auto industry. Despite this, Tesla has a reputation for being tight-lipped when it comes to the details of its operations. Rare appearances from high-ranking executives such as Shawhan, who serves as director of manufacturing at Gigafactory Texas, are therefore very interesting.

Shawhan did not disappoint, as he did share a number of important insights about the facility. As noted in a report from the Austin Business Journal, the executive confirmed that Giga Texas has become the second-largest private employer in the region because the factory currently employs over 20,000 workers today. This is a notable increase from the 12,277 employees that Tesla confirmed at the end of 2022. Considering Gigafactory Texas’ growth so far, it would appear that the facility would be outpacing Musk’s estimates.

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Long charging times and limited access to fast chargers can be the dealbreakers for electric vehicle buyers today. But technology advancements are often fast-paced, and it’s hard to predict how close, or far, we are from the next big breakthrough. However, battery scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) might have a solution for charging speeds.

ORNL’s paper highlights a new lithium-ion battery that can not only recharge to 80 percent in 10 minutes but also sustain the fast charging ability for 1,500 cycles. For those new to the EV language, battery charge, and discharge occur when ions travel between the positive and negative electrodes through a medium called an electrolyte.

Getting to fifteen hundred charging cycles isn’t a new development. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted in 2019 that the Model 3’s battery modules were designed to last 1,500 cycles or between 300,000 and 500,000 miles.

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The SpaceX Super Heavy Starship is already the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. Elon tweeted that future versions will be 10% to 20% longer. If the 20% longer development happens then the stacked rocket will be 144 meters long. Adding 24 meters would be over 60% of the length of the Space Shuttle orbiter which was 37 meters long.

Likely to be 10% to 20% longer in later versions.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 9, 2023

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Neuralink’s brain implants could help protect humanity from the risks of artificial intelligence, Elon Musk said on Wednesday, as the company prepares to launch its first in-human trials for the chips it hopes could restore lost functions to people with paralysis.

Neuralink will hopefully play a role in cutting the “civilizational risk” artificial intelligence poses to humanity, Musk said in a post on X.

The implantable tech will allow humans to interact with computers with their thoughts alone and should improve our abilities to communicate with AI “by several orders of magnitude,” Musk explained.

In the shorter term, Musk said Neuralink could help restore body movement and when combined with Tesla’s robotics could make the “Luke Skywalker solution” a reality.

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Past tests have been conducted on pigs.

On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s Neuralink announced it was ready to start its first human trials. “We are happy to announce that we’ve received approval from the reviewing independent institutional review board and our first hospital site to begin recruitment for our first-in-human clinical trial,” noted a blog on the company’s website.

The PRIME Study (short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface) – a groundbreaking investigational medical device trial for our fully-implantable, wireless brain-computer interface (BCI) – aims to evaluate the safety of our implant (N1) and surgical robot (R1) and assess the initial functionality of our BCI for… More.

NurPhoto/Getty Images.

We are happy to announce that we’ve received approval from the reviewing independent institutional review board and our first hospital site to begin recruitment for our first-in-human clinical trial, noted a blog on the company’s website.

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The Seattle-based company aims to build a “100% reusable” spacecraft capable of an ambitious 24-hour mission turnaround time.

Seattle-based startup Stoke Space successfully landed its reusable second-stage rocket this week following a brief hop test reminiscent of SpaceX’s early Starship tests.

The recent test, called Hopper 2, allowed Stoke Space to successfully test several novel engineering concepts, some of which were considered by Elon Musk’s SpaceX but ultimately discarded.

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Time to link up or shut up.

Sept 19 (Reuters) — Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup Neuralink said on Tuesday it has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruitment for the first human trial of its brain implant for paralysis patients.

Those with paralysis due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may qualify for the study, it said, but did not reveal how many participants would be enrolled in the trial, which will take about six years to complete.

The study will use a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface (BCI) implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, Neuralink said, adding that its initial goal is to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone.

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will perform 14 launches for Telesat, taking 18 satellites each to the low-earth orbit.

Aerospace seems to be the new buzzword in the technological arena, with multiple new entrants aiming to make a mark in the industry.

To that extent, Canadian satellite operator Telesat and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which designs and manufactures rockets and spacecraft, have agreed to deliver the former’s Lightspeed constellation to low-earth orbit.

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