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NASA just handed Elon Musk a very public reality checkand virtually threw its own moon plans into the trashcan, although the U.S. space agency wont be admitting that. SpaceX isn’t necessarily the shoo-in to land the first Americans on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission 52 years ago. Instead, NASA is opening the contract to other companies, like Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin. While this doesnt mean that SpaceX wont get it, its the agencys way of slamming SpaceX for its delays and lack of focus on the lunar program. Reopening the marquee Artemis crewed landing contract to competition is an admission that the Starship wont be ready on time. Americas return to the lunar surface needs a plan B. Its a big shift that weakens SpaceXs grip, yes, but also rattles Artemis, andcruciallytilts the new space race toward China. Im in the process of opening that contract up, NASAs acting chief Sean Duffy said on Fox & Friends, pointing squarely to Starships mounting schedule slips. He added that he expects companies like Blue Origin and possibly others to bid, putting Jeff Bezoss Blue Moon lander back in contention two years before the alleged scheduled landing date. NASA also told SpaceX and Blue Origin to deliver accelerated landing plans by October 29, and it will solicit proposals from the wider industry to increase the cadence of moon missions, a NASA spokesperson said. Blue Origin is widely expected to compete; Lockheed Martin has already convened an industry team to respond. As expected, Musk is enraged. He didnt need to convene anything to respond on X: The person responsible for Americas space program cant have a 2 digit IQ, he said in response to Duffy. Delays everywhere To recap: The Artemis program is a multi-contractor, multibillion-dollar campaign to restore a sustained U.S. presence on the moon. Artemis III is the mission that, if it doesnt get cancelled, will put American boots back on the surface of the moon. It is a critical step for America to remain ahead of the new space race with China, which aims to colonize the solar system in this century. Whoever gets to the moon first and establishes the first base in its south polewhere water is abundant for life and, more importantly, the cooking of new rocket fuel to launch ships to Mars and beyondwill have the advantage for the next few decades. Artemis III was planned for 2027 with SpaceXs Starship as the human landing system (HLS). This is how it works: Boeings Space Launch System (SLS) rocket launches four astronauts in Lockheed Martins Orion to lunar orbit; SpaceXs Starship HLS then docks with Orion and ferries astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back. That last piecethe lunar Starshipis the fulcrum. NASAs own advisers now say that the 2027 date could slip years due to SpaceXs competing priorities. The agency has grown uneasy with SpaceXs lack of progress on lunar-lander-specific milestones. Internally and publicly, Musk insists the company is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. But lightning alone doesnt meet Artemiss deadlines. Of course, nobody else in the program, including Boeings SLS and Lockheed Martins Orion, is meeting the deadlines either, but lets discuss that later. SpaceXs broader Starship campaignrapid, testtofailure flights to mature a super heavylift systemmatters for Starlink and Mars. The lunar variant is a tougher ask. As NASA program veterans point out, the HLS Starship needs to be markedly different from the prototypes flying today, then cleared for astronaut operationsa stretch for any organization on tight timelines. Meanwhile, the White House wants the moon landing done before January 2029, adding political pressure to an already complex schedule. Artemis IIthe 10day crewed loop around the moon that sets up Artemis IIIremains on track for April and could even get moved to February, NASA officials have said. Duffy seems to imply that Artemis IIIs landing hinges on HLS being ready, but blaming Musk alone ignores the larger truth: The program is struggling on multiple fronts. The SLS core rocket is expendable and costs more than $4 billion per launchan eyewatering figure that undermines longterm cadence like he says NASA needs. Lockheed Martins Orion capsule suffered significant heat shield erosion on Artemis Is reentry. Not even the lunar suits are ready. NASAs Inspector General reports tally roughly $4.3 billion in SLS overages and about three years of delays. And the programs architecturemany contractors, many interfaces, shifting prioritiesis a recipe for disaster. Even former NASA administrator Mike Griffin called the Artemis program excessively complex with an unrealistic price tag. Advantage China While the U.S. wrangles contracts, hardware, and schedules, Beijing is seemingly executing to plan. China has already completed a full landing-and-ascent test of its crewed lunar lander, Lanyue (embrace the moon), a vehicle that is closer to Apollos lunar module than NASAs own program. While Apollos lunar module had two sectionsthe main engine to land on the moon and its cockpit, with a propulsion system to take off from the moon once the mission is doneLanyue is one single spaceship. Like Apollo, it is designed to carry two Chinese astronauts between lunar orbit and the surface, supporting life support, power, and data for the surface stay. It is not as ambitious as Blue Moon or Starship HLS, but Beijing has taken the practical, less problematic route. The Long March 10 heavylift rocketthe equivalent to NASAs Saturn V or its SLSis advancing according to officials, who insist that the overall development of crewed lunar missions is progressing smoothly. Chinas target is to put astronauts on the moon before 2030, which is actually earlier than its original projections. The CNSAChinese National Space Administrationis going further and faster than NASAs plans at this point. One shocking example: It has already deployed multiple satellites in lunar orbit to support its manned missions and its future base in the moons South Pole, which Beijing says will be operating in 2035. By 2050, the South China Morning Post reports, the CNSA expects to have bases in the South Pole, the lunar equator, and the far side of the moon. And thas worrying for the United States and its flagging space supremacy. This isn’t flagplanting theater like in the 1960s. The South Poles permanently shadowed craters harbor large deposits of water ice. Ice means drinkable water, breathable oxygen, and rocket propellanteverything you need for permanent basing and a new space economy that will make trillions of dollars. The first nation to stand up reliable access to polar ice writes the rules of that economy. Any country that wants to establish mining and manufacturing on the moon or in asteroids on Earths orbit, will need a strategic permanent base on our satellite. From there, you could theoretically take over the entire solar system with an ease that you would not have from Earth. This is because launching a spacecraft from the moon takes a lot fewer resources than launching from our planet, where you have to counter 10 times the gravity force. Its a race the U.S. cant afford to lose and yet, each Artemis delay shifts the space race eastward. While NASAs decision to open the Artemis III landing contract is a necessary one, it is also an admission that the current plan wont land on schedule. In fact, Duffy himself said that it wont fly until 2028, which NASA confirmed. You can say that a 2028 launch still gives the U.S. two years before China’s mission but, since Artemis’s history can be measured in schedule setbacks, at this point its very hard to believe that the calendar-wreaking havoc is over. We are going to need a series of miracles for that to work out and we just cant rush astronaut safety. But the biggest problem for NASA is that, today, China is marching on with a centralized, fully state-backed, long-term program to put taikonauts on the moon before the end of the decade, like Apollo once did. While NASA’s decision was a necessary one, if the U.S. wants to lead in the moontoMars-and-beyond era, it must lock an operational lander as soon as possible, fix existing and future hardware issues in record time, and increase mission cadence. Right nownot some time later in the decade. Otherwise, the first footprints of this centurys lunar age will belong to Beijing.
Category:
E-Commerce
I slip on a pair of Nike running shoes. I clip a chunk of metal to the heel, which wraps around my lower leg like a shin guard. The battery goes on last, hugging it all like a high ankle bracelet. In all of 30 seconds, Ive turned my legs into robots. I’m wearing Nikes new exoskeleton footwear, dubbed Project Amplify. My legs feel heavier for sure. But with each step, theres a little kick in my heel. Like a cherry bomb exploding underfoot. And when it launches next year under a new name for an undisclosed price, Project Amplify will power runs up to 10 kilometers long on a single charge, increasing your energy output by 15% to 20% along the way. Think of it as an ebike for your feet, says Michael Donaghu, a VP at Nike who leads the Project Amplify team. [Photo: Nike] The long road toward amplification Exoskeletons offer the possibility to completely reimagine human movement, so it might not be surprising to learn that Nike has been pursuing the possibilities of exoskeletons for 14 years. As Donaghu explains, he began at Nike decades ago working for the cofounder mad scientist running coach Bill Bowerman himself, who had a penchant for saying that an ounce on your foot was worth a pound on your back. As such, much of Nike innovation is about subtractioneliminating weight to ensure the product doesnt get in the way of your body. Nikes marathon-busting Vaporfly shoes offered some rebuttal to this idea, as Nike studied the possibilities of energy return, developing carbon plates and foams that could give back an extra 4% of your stride. What if, instead of playing subtraction, we could give you more? Donaghu muses. And exoskeleton research was right along these lines, albeit taken to the extreme. The problem a decade ago, however, was that the components needed for robotic assistance never quite added up. The technology was too heavy, or not powerful enough, Donaghu says. The theory just didn’t play out in practice. Rather than dissuading Nike, Donaghu says it kept the company focused on the longer gameand every once in a while, a new PhD would walk through the doors and reignite interest in the idea, just to keep the coals burning. I think you can have a lot of shared intuition as a group of designers and researchers, and sometimes technology just isn’t ready to do it, or you’re not smart enough to figure it out, he says. By 2021, the team opted to try again in earnest, dedicating full-time researchers to the project longer term. Quite a few developments helped. Algorithms, sensors, and microprocessors had all matured. But most of all, Donaghu credits the drone industry, fueled by a new wave of lightweight, high-RPM motors, with providing one of the most fundamental components of Project Amplify. That mass adoption made smaller, more energy-dense motors of the size that you would want to put on a body, he says. [Photo: Nike] Designing the first consumer-friendly exoskeleton The design of Project Amplify is inspired by the human body. Developed in partnership with Dephy, it’s essentially a robotic version of your Achilles tendonthe connection between your calf muscles and heel that powers running and jumping. As you walk, onboard sensors track your gait and attempt to power your step at just the right moment. Donaghu likens the challenge to pushing someone on a swing. Too early, it feels weird. Too late, and its pointless. The task requires accuracy in the milliseconds, while accommodating for the fact that everyones gait is a little different. [Photo: Nike] Nike hasnt mastered this work yet. As I take my first jog in Project Amplify, I find myself fighting the machine. I dont feel puppeted, as I have with larger exoskeletons in the past, but I dont feel like a super version of myself, either. Instead, theres a bit too much pressure on my shin, and my heel slips slightly out of the shoe. Allow me to admit, its a bit infantilizing to find yourself struggling to run at Nike HQ, and Im admittedly despondent when another tester trying Amplify for the first time flies by me effortlessly. Tweaking the level of support and response time (simple buttons and sliders in an app) does help. And while Im still a bit awkward, and the footwear never feels weightless, they also got my ass up a 500-foot training hill, leaving me reasonably but not devastatingly winded. For me, an elite running shoe feels like Im running on flubber, and an e-bike can straight-up feel like driving a motorcycle. I wanted one sensation or the other in a way that wasnt quite there yet in Project Amplify. But taking it off? A dream! All you do is pull a tab on the heel, and the robot ulatches. Im reminded of the handful of people necessary for me to don an exoskeleton pant made with Arcteryx. Meanwhile, Nike really has developed something that I believe most people could slip on with relative ease. [Photo: Nike] Polishing Amplify for launch Despite the fact that hundreds of people have taken more than 2.4 million steps with Project Amplify, Donaghu knows the product isnt fully cooked yet, and hes even a bit self-conscious as the team shares a platform theyve yet to perfect with journalists such as myself. Could we already be in the market right now? Yeah, we actually are getting really good functional testing results and feedback from most people. It just doesn’t meet the threshold of, like, is it swoosh-worthy yet? he says. I just think we have a responsibility to make sure that this thing ends up being really aspirational. Like, it really disappears visually. Functionally, it’s just something that’s there helping you. And if we can’t get to that threshold, then for some of us, it’s not going to be good enough. For now, Nike reaching that threshold means continuing to tweak the algorithms so that people like me dont face a learning curve when using the product. He also suggests that the team still has levers to pull to lighten the technology while increasing its power output. And, of course, it has to look fire on your foot. To this aim, the design team has developed a mockup of Project Amplify thats more svelt, graceful, and all-around Nike-vibing than the chunkier prototypes theyve built thus far. Now its just up to the poor engineering team to bring that vision to life. As for where Project Amplify fits in the market, its too much power for competitive sport, but perfect for recreation. Longer term, Nikes own CEO isnt making any bold predictions about revenue potential or market size, but the writing is on the wall that the age of exoskeletons is coming. That’s especially for those aging with lower mobilitythese technologies will revolutionize quality of life. There are so many ways that it doesn’t fit perfectly into our business model. It’s a bigger swing, says Donaghu, who a few beats later admits that it feels wonderful to be making such a swing, to launch a product on the true edge of the companys capabilities. That’s Nike at its best, when we’re just being a little more bold to say we’re responsible for trying to change this industry and just help people move by and large. What are all the things that we’re not releasing that would do that?
Category:
E-Commerce
Bethenny Frankel is a marketing maven. Shes best known for starring in the Real Housewives of New York City, and for launching the Skinnygirl lifestyle brand, starting with the now-famous skinny girl margarita. She then found a partner to help her manufacture the cocktail, which launched in 2009. In 2011, Frankel sold Skinnygirl for an estimated $100 million, but kept the rights to use the name. Since then, shes launched Skinnygirl salad dressing, shapewear, and popcorn, among other items. Frankel has 4 million-plus followers on Instagram and 3.3 million on TikTok, where she sounds off on everything from coffee to handbags. Frankel is also the queen of affiliate and brand dealsnetting $7 million in 2024, a figure shes on track to exceed this year. In May, she launched The List, where fans can shop her closet as well as her obsessions, which range from furniture to makeup. Shes also an investor in Cumulus Coffee, ShopMy, and several other companies. Frankel sat down with Fast Company to talk about her career pivotsand what it means to be a marketer in todays social-media-driven business world. She points out that consumers respond to authenticity and personal branding more than ever before, but also discusses the danger of blowback from putting your brandand yourselfout there. Lets start at the beginning. Youve said going on Real Housewives was purely a business decision. Can you tell us about that? Well, I turned it down for a month saying I wanted to be a natural food chef. But I realized it’s not that easy to get on TV. And if this fails, no one will know about it. And if it succeeds, then it’s a great platform. I definitely did not think it was going to be a cultural phenomenon. How did you think about riding that zeitgeist? My instincts were just right there always. I think I’m a born marketer. When I was a little kid I used to want to be a copywriter, and came up with slogans and names for people’s businesses and stores. I just have always been a person that leads with marketing first. I had an agent who also represented the Kardashians, and they followed suit with monetizing the Kardashians after what I did with Housewives and the Skinnygirl margarita, which no one had ever done before. No one had monetized reality TV. Now the audience is turned off by that. Everybody’s followed in my footsteps, and everything is a photo shoot and a book cover and a launch party and a fashion line that may or may not really exist. Versus on Housewives, it was me being flawed and using that platform to go through the struggles and possibilities of building a business, whether or not it would look negative or positive to the audience. It was just a true experience that I was going through. What marketing advice do you have based on that experience? The actual lesson was that people werent buying the product that I was selling. They were buying the authenticity of me. They believed that I was being truthful about all areas of my life, so then they believed in what I was doing. And I think that’s where everybody’s lost their way, because everybody’s just trying to sell something to make a quick buck in the short term, but the audience is extremely savvy. While you may make money on a brand deal right now, in the long run they probably won’t trust you if you’re not telling the truth. And that’s what’s key in social media, which is the new television. How do you draw boundaries between your personal life and your professional life? Attention is the new oil. I’m so grateful and so fortunate and so humbled by the fact that I have the attention of the people. There’s a handful of people in the world right now who have the attention of the people, because even in the last year, I’ve watched it change. Everyone’s desperate because there are more people in the store. So how do you get people to come up to your counter? It is very manic and it probably really affects people’s mental health. So how do I deal with that? I don’t have to do any of this. And I think that’s what really separates me from the influencers and the content creator landscape. I wasn’t broke when I accidentally started doing this stuff and it was doing well. I was just sort of lonely. I was emotionally broke, I was sort of bored, with low-grade depression. I was at home screwing around. I found a real home in this medium. [Photo: Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images] You mentioned authenticity is your superpower for engaging with people. What happens when theres backlash because youre putting your authentic self out there? It’s such a trap because they want me to comment, because I opine. I never rate higher than when I’m commenting. But then if you comment, people always want to know what youre thinking. Everyone was mad at me because I wasn’t posting about Charlie Kirk. I had never heard of Charlie Kirk in my entire life, until the mob was mad at me for not posting thoughts and prayers. A couple of hours later, I said to everyone, Sit the fuck down. I’d like to get educated. Sorry if you think I’m dumb, I can’t know what I don’t know. The thing is I don’t get to have the fluffy buffer of just doing a TikTok dance and people wanting that. People want my opinion. I am in the impact zone often, but that’s okay. How do you deal with being in the impact zone? You go through the storm; you deal with it, and then it passes. You don’t apologize if you’re not sorry, and you don’t beg. You decide what you truly think is the right thing to do. And you do that. I’ve advised so many celebrities who have called me literally when they hit rough waters. I’m like, this is what you do. Theyre like, I don’t know how you do this.
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E-Commerce
As Nvidias value has soaredbecoming the first public company to hit $4 trillion in market capitalization earlier this yearits been pouring money into AI startups. Its venture arm, NVentures, is also backing less expected bets. The latest: Redwood Materials, the EV battery recycling company, which just raised $350 million in a new funding round. Redwood launched in 2017 with the aim to build a U.S. supply chain for critical metals by pulling materials like cobalt and lithium from used EV batteries. But the company spun up another major business this yearusing secondhand EV batteries as a low-cost form of energy storage at data centers. [Photo: Redwood Materials] I think people misname them as a recycling company, says Joe Fath, a partner at Eclipse, which led Redwoods new Series E round. Recycling is really just the wedge. The company is a recycling giant, and currently processes around 90% of the lithium-ion batteries that are recycled in North America. But their energy storage business is equally important, and can help solve one of the biggest challenges for the AI industry right now: how to source the energy that data centers need. “Power generation, storage, and cost to drive those GPUs is increasingly becoming a bottleneck, says Patrick Moorhead, CEO and chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. For a company like Nvidia, which makes the energy-intensive hardware used in data centers, helping scale up energy storage for its customers helps its own business continue to quickly expand. (Nvidia declined to comment, saying that it doesnt discuss its investments.) [Photo: Redwood Materials] In some cases, data centers can use batteries to help them go completely off the grid, as in a solar-and-battery-powered project that Redwood built with Crusoe this year. Some customers also plan to use the companys batteries to store energy produced with natural gas. Redwood makes both the battery hardware and the software and electronics to run the system. Speed to energy is paramount, says Redwood Materials CEO JB Straubel. By using storageand in particular a very modular, flexible approach like were doingpeople are able to bypass some of the very long interconnection queues to get electricity sourced directly from the traditional grid. In other cases, the batteries can connect to the grid and pull electricity from it when its cheapest. They also provide resilience if the grid goes down. [Photo: Redwood Materials] The approach also saves money. Cost is probably the leading advantage, because we’re refurbishing and using assets that were previously deployed in a different application. For the most part, we’re able to dramatically reduce our deployment costs, Straubel says. Nvidia has also invested in other energy companies, including participating in a $863 million funding round for Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup that aims to put fusion power on the grid by the 2030s. But Redwood’s technology is ready for use now. “Redwood is a leader in this market, and Nvidia is planting a flag in the sand on this key market,” says Dan Ives, global head of tech research at Wedbush Securities. “Nvidia is focused on building a vertical ecosystem, and Redwood investment is a perfect fit.”
Category:
E-Commerce
As Portland, Oregon, residents protest President Donald Trumps immigration policy outside an ICE facility, theyre also using a less expected tactic: the citys zoning code. Portlands Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility sits in a remodeled bank in the citys South Waterfront neighborhood, not far from apartment buildings, restaurants anduntil it recently moved because of worries about ICEa local school. (As demonstrations increased, law enforcement used chemicals and munitions that ended up on the school’s playground.) When the federal government first wanted to lease the building in 2011, it had to get land-use approval as required by the city’s zoning laws. Portland put strict conditions in place in the approval process: Detainees couldnt be held for more than 12 hours or overnight. Activists have said for years that ICE is violating those conditions and that the city should reconsider its land-use approval. In 2018, when protestors gathered at the same site to rally against the first Trump administration for separating thousands of immigrant children from their parents, activists argued that the violations should be cause to close the facility. At the time, elected officials were saying it wasnt possible, says Holly Brown, one activist. But when Trump took office again earlier this year, protestors restarted their efforts to get the building shut down. This year, the city acted. It took a lot of community pressure, Brown says. Weve been doing a lot of protests at City Hall. Weve shut down city meetings and refused to let them conduct their meetings until they deal with this. We also had someone file an official complaint with the city. In July, the city’s permitting bureau launched an investigation, using data from the Deportation Data Project, a nonprofit that uses Freedom of Information Act requests to get detailed records from the government at detention facilities across the country. The data showed that the ICE facility had violated the citys rules 25 times over a 10-month period, according to the city. In September, the permitting bureau issued a land-use violation to Stuart Lindquist, the property owner who rents the space to ICE for $2.4 million a year. Lindquist has challenged the citys action, asking for a formal administrative review in which a facilitator will determine whether the city correctly applied its land-use codes. He isnt exactly sympathetic to protestors: He reportedly hit one protestor with his Mercedes in 2018 and told a reporter that he wanted to fight activists. Id be glad to take them on one at a time. Bring em on, Lindquist told the Willamette Week newspaper in 2018. Neither ICE nor Lindquist responded to a request to comment for this article. If the city shows that ICE is still violating the original agreement, Lindquist could face fines. But the citys process has also kicked off another possibility: Sixty days after it issued the noticein mid-Novemberit has the option to reconsider the land-use approval completely. The city could have a hearing on whether or not it still fits the original use that it was intended for, Brown says. In this case, I would say it does not. A city spokesperson told Fast Company that if Portland does reconsider the terms of the land-use approval, that wouldnt necessarily mean revoking the approval; it might mean renegotiating the terms. Still, activists are pursuing the hope that this unlikely path could help shut the facility down. Its something that wouldnt work everywhere, since many ICE facilities are in federal government buildings or rented from private prison companies in areas with fewer zoning restrictions. Portland also had unusually specific conditions in its agreement. But its one example of a creative way to take on a government agency that has few restraints. This is definitely an example of the city and people who live in the city using the levers of power we have available to clamp down on ICE, Brown says. Even if other cities don’t use this particular approach, they can look for other ways to act. “Every city can and should be looking at whatever creative opportunities exist within their own laws to prevent collaboration with the Trump administration,” says Matthew Lopas, director of state advocacy and technical assistance at the nonprofit National Immigration Law Center. “The Trump administration has shown so much disregard for the independence and the safety of cities that it should be a priority of every city to protect their own community by refusing to collaborate to the fullest extent possible with this administration and their efforts to terrorize immigrants and entire communities,” Lopas adds. Some cities have refused to let ICE use local prison space for detention sites, for example. When ICE has a contract in place, some states have chosen not to renew it. As ICE continues to ramp up arrests and detentionswith a tripling of its budget for enforcement and another $45 billion for new detention facilitiesit will continue to look for new space to operate, and some other states and cities may be able to turn to zoning laws to make it harder to build. Activists in Portland are also trying to garner more protections for residents, including asking the city to ban face masks on ICE agents and adopt new policies to help limit where ICE can go. As in other cities, ICE arrests have surged in Portland this year. (One arrest this summer involved a father dropping off his child at a preschool; the man, who is married to an American citizen and was in the process of getting a green card, reportedly had no criminal history.) Focusing on ICE’s land-use violation is a first step, Brown says. Its a learning period for us in what we can do. Were definitely going to keep moving forward and find other ways we can get the city to put pressure on ICE to back down.
Category:
E-Commerce
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