| Cult of Mac

Elon Musk splashes $3 billion to become Twitter’s largest shareholder

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Elon Musk spends $3 billion on Twitter
What's next for Musk and Twitter?
Image: Elon Musk/Twitter/Cult of Mac

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has acquired a 9% stake in Twitter worth almost $3 billion. The purchase, revealed in a recent regulatory filing, gets Musk a whopping 73,486,938 shares in the popular social media platform.

Despite being described as a passive investment, one analyst believes the move is “just the start” of Musk’s involvement with Twitter.

Celebrate Elon Musk’s SpaceX Mars ambitions with custom iPhone 12 Pro

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Musk on Mars phone
All yours for around $5,000.
Photo: Caviar

The iPhone 12 isn’t out yet, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has yet to fulfill his ambition of landing on Mars — but Russian luxury firm Caviar is getting ahead of the game.

This week, it announced a new limited series of 19 “Musk Be On Mars” iPhone 12 Pro handsets. Rather than being blinged out with gold and diamonds like previous Caviar iPhones, these special-edition units will feature “a piece from the SpaceX spaceship that was in space,” bas relief of the Dragon spacecraft, and a laser-engraved Musk signature.

All yours for a starting price of $4,990.

Grab this out-of-this-world SpaceX wallpaper [Wallpaper Wednesday]

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"Human Kind" by Tristan Eaton would make a great wallpaper for your iPhone.

Today was supposed to be the day that NASA and Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent a manned mission to the International Space Station — the first launch from American soil in nine years, and the first manned rocket launch by a private company.

Instead, due to bad weather, the launch was scrubbed and rescheduled for Saturday afternoon. If it goes off as planned, some striking artwork by Tristan Eaton will accompany astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley into space.

The pieces Eaton made are called “Human Kind” and we are highlighting them for Wallpaper Wednesday.

SpaceX abort system can carry astronauts to safety in five seconds

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SpaceX is a step closer to manned flights after a successful test of a launch pad abort system. Photo: Space X
SpaceX is a step closer to manned flights after a successful test of a launch pad abort system. Photo: Space X

When the rocket you are about to ride has 3.9 million pounds of thrust under the seat, it’s comforting to have an exit strategy should something go wrong.

The private company SpaceX recently had a successful test of a launch abort system as it moves closer to having manned flights on its manifest.

Astronauts inside a Dragon spacecraft can be propelled a third of a mile away from the rocket in five seconds in the event of an emergency. SpaceX already has had seven successful unmanned cargo missions to the International Space Station and hopes to start carrying astronauts into space by 2017.

Flatworms in space might hold key to human immortality

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Flatworms are headed to the International Space Station and their sacrifice in the name of research gets a salute on the Kentucky Space mission patch.
Flatworms are headed to the International Space Station. Their sacrifice in the name of research gets a salute on the Kentucky Space mission patch. Photo: Kentucky Space

Flatworms are the darlings of the molecular biology field. What scientist doesn’t love a species that can lose an organ or body part — even its head — and grow it back?

It’s quite a trick. We’ll see if they can do it in space.

About 150 planarian flatworms, creatures that are happiest living in rivers or under a log, have first-class tickets aboard the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship, which will take them to the International Space Station for an experiment that could unlock the key to human immortality.