Enlarge / A pedestrian walks past a flown Falcon 9 booster at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, on Tuesday, the same day Elon Musk said he will relocate the headquarters to Texas. (credit: Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)
Elon Musk said Tuesday that he will move the headquarters of SpaceX and his social media company X from California to Texas in response to a new gender identity law signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Musk's announcement, made via a post on X, follows his decision in 2021 to move the headquarters of the electric car company Tesla from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, in the wake of coronavirus lockdowns in the Bay Area the year before. Now, two of Musk's other major holdings are making symbolic moves out of California: SpaceX to the company's Starbase launch facility near Brownsville, Texas, and X to Austin.
The new gender identity law, signed by Governor Newsom, a Democrat, on Monday, bars school districts in California from requiring teachers to disclose a change in a student's gender identification or sexual orientation to their parents. Musk wrote on X that the law was the "final straw" prompting the relocation to Texas, where the billionaire executive and his companies could take advantage of lower taxes and light-touch regulations.
Enlarge / Numerous pieces of ice fell off the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket during its climb into orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. (credit: SpaceX)
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket suffered an upper stage engine failure and deployed a batch of Starlink Internet satellites into a perilously low orbit after launch from California Thursday night, the first blemish on the workhorse launcher's record in more than 300 missions since 2016.
Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, posted on X that the rocket's upper stage engine failed when it attempted to reignite nearly an hour after the Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, at 7:35 pm PDT (02:35 UTC).
After departing Vandenberg to begin SpaceX's Starlink 9-3 mission, the rocket's reusable first stage booster propelled the Starlink satellites into the upper atmosphere, then returned to Earth for an on-target landing on a recovery ship parked in the Pacific Ocean. A single Merlin Vacuum engine on the rocket's second stage fired for about six minutes to reach a preliminary orbit.
Enlarge / Precision’s Layer 7 Cortical Interface array. (credit: Precision)
Work toward brain-computer interfaces has never been more charged. Though neuroscientists have toiled for decades to tap directly into human thoughts, recent advances have the field buzzing with anticipation—and the involvement of one polarizing billionaire has drawn a new level of attention.
With competition amping up in this space, Ars spoke with Ben Rapoport, who is a neurosurgeon, electrical engineer, and co-founder of the brain-computer interface (BCI) company Precision Neuroscience. Precision is at the forefront of the field, having placed its BCI on the brains of 14 human patients so far, with two more scheduled this month. Rapoport says he hopes to at least double that number of human participants by the end of this year. In fact, the 3-year-old company expects to have its first BCI on the market next year.
In addition to the swift progress, Precision is notable for its divergence from its competitor's strategies, namely Neuralink, the most high-profile BCI company and headed by Elon Musk. In 2016, Rapoport co-founded Neuralink alongside Musk and other scientists. But he didn't stay long and went on to co-found Precision in 2021. In previous interviews, Rapoport suggested his split from Neuralink related to the issues of safety and invasiveness of the BCI design. While Neuralink's device is going deeper into the brain—trying to eavesdrop on neuron signals with electrodes at close range to decode thoughts and intended motions and speech—Precision is staying at the surface, where there is little to no risk of damaging brain tissue.
Enlarge / Each of Precision's microelectrode arrays comprises 1,024 electrodes ranging in diameter from 50 to 380 microns, connected to a customized hardware interface. (credit: Precision)
Brain-computer interface company Precision Neuroscience says that it has set a new world record for the number of neuron-tapping electrodes placed on a living human's brain—4,096, surpassing the previous record of 2,048 set last year, according to an announcement from the company on Tuesday.
The high density of electrodes allows neuroscientists to map the activity of neurons at unprecedented resolution, which will ultimately help them to better decode thoughts into intended actions.
Precision, like many of its rivals, has the preliminary goal of using its brain-computer interface (BCI) to restore speech and movement in patients, particularly those who have suffered a stroke or spinal cord injury. But Precision stands out from its competitors due to a notable split from one of the most high-profile BCI companies, Neuralink, owned by controversial billionaire Elon Musk.
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