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After acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy this month called out SpaceX for Starship delays, Elon Musk’s company has come back with an update defending its progress and offering a speedier plan to get astronauts back on the moon as part of the Artemis program.

“Starship continues to simultaneously be the fastest path to returning humans to the surface of the moon and a core enabler of the Artemis program’s goal to establish a permanent, sustainable presence on the lunar surface,” reads a statement published to SpaceX’s website on Thursday.

Duffy said he would open back up a contract that SpaceX had won in 2021 to be the human landing system for the Artemis III mission that looks to return humans to the surface of the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.

“I love SpaceX. It’s an amazing company,” Duffy said. “The problem is they’re behind. They push their timelines out, and we’re in a race against China.”

That mission is the follow-on to Artemis II, which is slated to fly around, but not land on, the moon as early as February next year. Artemis III was on NASA’s roadmap to launch by summer 2027, but Duffy said that timeline has been threated, and he was reopening the contract that could bring in Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin potentially to service that mission instead. read more

By Nilesh Christopher, Los Angeles Times

Scrolling through the Sora app can feel a bit like entering a real-life multiverse.

Michael Jackson performs standup; the alien from the “Predator” movies flips burgers at McDonald’s; a home security camera captures a moose crashing through the glass door; Queen Elizabeth dives from the top of a table at a pub.

Such improbable realities, fantastical futures, and absurdist videos are the mainstay of the Sora app, a new short video app released by ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

The continuous stream of hyperreal, short-form videos made by artificial intelligence is mind-bending and mesmerizing at first. But it quickly triggers a new need to second-guess every piece of content as real or fake.

“The biggest risk with Sora is that it makes plausible deniability impossible to overcome, and that it erodes confidence in our ability to discern authentic from synthetic,” said Sam Gregory, an expert on deepfakes and executive director at WITNESS, a human rights organization. “Individual fakes matter, but the real damage is a fog of doubt settling over everything we see,” read more

Issues with the septic system at the new home of Austin’s Coffee have forced the owners to delay reopening the Winter Park mainstay for local arts and entertainment.

The shop located for decades at 929 W. Fairbanks Ave. closed its doors Saturday with plans to reopen a week later at 2240 W. Fairbanks Ave. — about a mile west of its current site near Interstate 4.

But co-owner Angela Whitmer told the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday afternoon that the building’s septic system is problematic and the building needs to be connected to the city sewer system.

“We’re looking at two, possibly three weeks. I’m hoping not to be down that long,” Whitmer said. “Everything else is going good and smooth.”

She owns Austin’s with her brother, Richard Whitmer, and Preacher Lawson, a nationally known comedian who honed his style on the shop’s stage years ago during its weekly Comedy Night. The trio bought it earlier this month from Jackie Moore, who owned it for many years with two others.

Whitmer said they became aware of the septic issues a few days ago and are trying to get permits and work completed — along with required health inspections — as quickly as possible. read more

By HOLLY RAMER

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Don’t be fooled by the fog machine, spooky lights and fake bats: the robotics lab at Worcester Polytechnic Institute lab isn’t hosting a Halloween party.

Instead, it’s a testing ground for tiny drones that can be deployed in search and rescue missions even in dark, smoky or stormy conditions.

“We all know that when there’s an earthquake or a tsunami, the first thing that goes down is power lines. A lot of times, it’s at night, and you’re not going to wait until the next morning to go and rescue survivors,” said Nitin Sanket, assistant professor of robotics engineering. “So we started looking at nature. Is there a creature in the world which can actually do this?”

Sanket and his students found their answer in bats and the winged mammal’s highly sophisticated ability to echolocate, or navigate via reflected sound. With a National Science Foundation grant, they’re developing small, inexpensive and energy-efficient aerial robots that can be flown where and when current drones can’t operate. read more

By JOSH FUNK, AP Business Writer

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — American farmers welcomed China’s promise to buy some of their soybeans, but they cautioned this won’t solve all their problems as they continue to deal with soaring prices for fertilizer, tractors, repair parts and seeds.

The Chinese promise to buy at least 25 million metric tons of soybeans annually for next three years will bring their purchases back in line with where they were at before President Donald Trump launched his trade war with China in the spring. But the 12 million metric tons that China plans to buy between now and January is only about half the typical annual volume.

“This is a very good thing. I’m very grateful,” said Iowa farmer Robb Ewoldt, who is a director with the United Soybean Board. “I don’t want to sound like a ungrateful farmer, but it doesn’t cure everything in the short term.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said China also agreed to remove all its retaliatory tariffs on American ag products, which should open the door for sales of other crops and beef. Plus, China promised to resume buying U.S. sorghum, which is another crop largely used for animal feed that depends on that market. More than half the sorghum and soybean crops are exported every year with much of that going to China. read more