Often after the announcement of job cuts, companies’ stock prices skyrocket, but investors, however, did not react as expected to the latest news from the electric car maker.

Tesla shares plunged 29% in the first quarter, the worst period since late 2022 and the third-largest drop since the company’s initial public offering in 2010. Shares are 60% below the peak reached in November 2021.

In 2018, when Tesla laid off 9% of its employees, the stock rose more than 3%. In 2022, the stock fell 9% on the initial announcements surrounding the layoffs, but recovered after Musk commented on his decision.

Today, however, market pessimism is taking over shareholders.

Earlier this the company reported a drop in vehicle shipments in the first quarter – the first annual decline since 2020, when production ceased during the pandemic. In China, Tesla has faced an onslaught of competition from domestic electric vehicle makers, including BYD and phone maker Xiaomi.

Last week, the company announced it was halving the subscription price of its premium driver-assistance system, offered as “full self-driving” (FSD), for U.S. customers. According to the latest data available from Kelley Blue Book, electric vehicle prices were down 9.7% year-over-year in March, and Tesla prices hit an all-time low in January, although there was a spike in March.

Tesla executives Drew Ballino and Rohan Patel announced Monday they are leaving the company. Drew Baglino has worked at Tesla since 2006. Rohan Patel joined in 2016 after serving as a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama on climate and other issues.

Regarding the layoffs, Musk said it was “critical to look at every aspect of the company to reduce costs and increase productivity.”

However, analysts and investors see a demand problem. According to FactSet, 18 analysts have lowered their price targets on Tesla stock this month, while none have become more optimistic.

Tesla is forecasting lower growth in 2024 compared to the previous year, with no plans for this year yet.

The company faces strong competition as well as the unpredictability associated with Musk’s actions. In addition to all the issues he has with regulators, Musk is involved with a host of other ventures such as SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Co. Despite his claims that he doesn’t miss important meetings at Tesla and keeps an eye on every single event at the company, it seems that it is shaping up to be a challenging year in which the electric car company needs to regain the trust of its investors and customers.

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The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology has launched a consultation on a white paper in preparation for the development of legislation addressing the risks inherent in the deployment of AI in society.

In the foreword to “An Approach to Regulating AI to Support Innovation”, Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology Michel Donnellan stated that the risks associated with AI can “include everything from physical harm, undermining national security, and mental health risks”.

However, the British government has rejected the risk-based approach taken by the EU, instead advocating a framework designed to “ensure that regulatory measures are proportionate to context and outcomes.”

“A heavy-handed and rigid approach can stifle innovation and slow AI adoption. That is why we set out a proportionate and pro-innovation regulatory framework. Rather than target specific technologies, it focuses on the context in which AI is deployed. This enables us to take a balanced approach to weighing up the benefits versus the potential risks.”

said Michelle Donelan.

Hundreds of computer scientists, industry leaders and artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter calling for a halt to the training of artificial intelligence systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months.

Among the signatories are Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, AI researcher and NYU professor emeritus Gary Marcus, and Grady Butch, an IEEE computing pioneer and IBM member.

“AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts.If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium”

the letter said.

The news of the passing of a law to regulate AI came with news from Belgium that a man had committed suicide, apparently after several weeks of conversation with an online chatbot based on the open-source GPT-J language model. Yesterday, the Belgian minister of digital technology said after speaking to the family that the situation was “a serious precedent that needs to be looked at very seriously”.

In the US, the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 came into force on 1 January 2021. It aims to provide a coordinated program across the federal government to accelerate AI research and application for the nation’s economic prosperity and national security.

Whether the chatbot really provoked the man to commit suicide and whether the UK will be able to legislate on AI remains to be seen.

The billionaire entrepreneur tweeted that the technology will “also be important for Mars”. On Monday, Musk published on the social media:

“SpaceX is starting a program to take CO2 out of atmosphere & turn it into rocket fuel. Please join if interested”.

The statement came days after the SpaceX and Tesla founder was named Time magazine’s person of the year.

A “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman” in its piece – that’s how the magazine called him.

The Financial Times newspaper also named him as their person of the year on Wednesday.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was surpassed by Musk`s nomination as the world’s wealthiest person this year.

There is currently no further information on the carbon capture plans from SpaceX.

It is not yet clear how SpaceX would capture carbon and turn it into rocket fuel. Scientific processes do exist, such as the one used by Canadian company Carbon Engineering, which is making liquid fuel with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere which is then combined with hydrogen from water.

Rocket Lab is the only other company besides SpaceX, which has successfully recovered the first-stage booster twice in its history to achieve reusability.

Two BlackSky Earth were sent to geospatial imaging satellites to low Earth orbit. That was part of a rapid five-launch agreement on behalf of BlackSky between Rocket Lab and launch services provider Spaceflight Inc. 

The satellites will join seven others already in orbit, as the geospatial intelligence company’s aims to grow its constellation to 14 satellites by the end of this year.

This mission marks Rocket Lab’s twenty-second Electron launch and the fifth mission this year.

This is going to happen on the National Academies’ first virtual Space Studies Board. The CEO’s presentation, which is titled “SpaceX Starship Discussion,” is scheduled  on November 17th and will likely be his first Starship-specific update since September 2020 and. Most importantly, it will be streamed live.

Since Musk’s last partial update, SpaceX has made a spectacular amount of progress. Then proceeded to rapidly build and fly four more prototypes in about as many months. The culmination is in Starship SN15’s near-perfect launch, descent, and soft landing in May 2021.

The pace of SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy assembly and testing has been exceptionally slow over the last few months, causing the company to sail past a number of schedule predictions made by Musk himself. At the meeting the CEO will also be able to shed some light on the last few months of activity in Starbase and why some of those activities appear to have slowed down.

The team went out into space itself, wearing the famous thick astronaut suits as they made their way through zero gravity on the outside of the International Space Station.

The team was comprised of four astronauts, NASA’s Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, the European Space Agency’s Thomas Pesquet of France, and Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. They encountered some hurdles during their half-year stay in space, most notably when a Russian module botched its attachment to the ISS and pushed the space station out of its place.

The crew also met some inconveniences on their way back when the capsule’s bathroom malfunctioned, leaving them with no option but to wear adult diapers for the rest of their trip to home. McArthur was not thrilled about the situation but commented:

“Spaceflight is full of lots of little challenges. This is just one more that we’ll encounter and take care of in our mission, so we’re not too worried about it.”

SpaceX and NASA have been co-running missions on the ISS so that to ensure the station always has a team of astronauts getting the most from its facilities’ potential. NASA spent almost a decade lacking the necessary spacecraft to reach the ISS and have astronauts in space for long periods of time. Now with the help of SpaceX they are able to send teams out continually, with the next group preparing to head to the ISS immediately.

“Another step towards a future where space is accessible to all of us”, said Bezos about the first all-civilian mission to orbit.

Congratulations to @ElonMusk and the @SpaceX team on their successful Inspiration4 launch last night. Another step towards a future where space is accessible to all of us.

— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) September 16, 2021

Richard Branson also sent greetings to Musk, the SpaceX team and Inspiration4 crew on reaching orbit, another great moment for space exploration.

Congratulations to @ElonMusk & the @SpaceX @Inspiration4x crew on reaching orbit, another great moment for space exploration #Inspiration4

— Richard Branson (@richardbranson) September 16, 2021

The crew of Inspiration4 had an incredible first day in space. They have completed more than 15 orbits around planet Earth since liftoff and made full use of the Dragon cupola.

“Missions like Inspiration4 help advance spaceflight to enable ultimately anyone to go to orbit and beyond”, sait Elon Musk after the successful launch of Inspiration4.

Missions like Inspiration4 help advance spaceflight to enable ultimately anyone to go to orbit & beyond

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 16, 2021

Inspiration4 is the world’s first all-civilian mission to orbit. The mission will be commanded by Jared Isaacman, the 38-year-old founder and Chief Executive Officer of Shift4 Payments and an accomplished pilot and adventurer. Named in recognition of the four-person crew that will raise awareness and funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, this milestone represents a new era for human spaceflight and exploration.

Inspiration4 crew in orbit

Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin with the vision of enabling a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth. In order to preserve Earth, Blue Origin believes that humanity will need to expand, explore, find new energy and material resources, and move industries that stress Earth into space. Blue is working on this today by developing partially and fully reusable launch vehicles that are safe, low cost and serve the needs of all civil, commercial and defense customers.

Richard Branson is the co-founder of Virgin Galactic – an American spaceflight company. It is headquartered in California, USA, and operates from New Mexico. The company is developing commercial spacecraft and aims to provide suborbital spaceflights to space tourists.

“Filing legal actions against SpaceX is *actually* his full-time job,” Musk tweeted about the Blue Origin executive, echoing an earlier tweet that referenced Bezos’ retirement as Amazon’s CEO.

The tweet comes a day after SpaceX issued a response to a protest letter from Amazon about SpaceX’s plans to expand its Starlink network of internet satellites.

In the letter to the FCC, SpaceX called Amazon’s request a “continuation of efforts by the Amazon family of companies to hinder competitors to compensate for Amazon’s failure to make progress of its own.”

Amazon’s initial letter called for the FCC to require SpaceX to submit a new proposal because its proposal offered two options for how it would expand its satellite system, instead of one.

The SpaceX letter pointed out that Bezos’ companies including Amazon and Blue Origin have averaged about one complaint every 16 days over the past year. It said that the lawsuit’s have “become a bigger bottleneck than the technology,” harking back to Bezos’ own words regarding the impact of regulatory issues like lawsuits and protests on the progress of his space company, Blue Origin.

His brilliance caught the attention of admissions offices at colleges. He said that his dream school was Georgia Tech where he’d hope to major in aerospace engineering. Anderson was accepted to Georgia Tech in Spring 2021.

His dream came true. Last Monday, he was among the thousands of students welcomed to Georgia Tech’s campus for the first day of fall classes. While most 13 year olds are starting middle school, Anderson started his first day as a sophomore with an integral calculus class.

Anderson described his first day there as “pretty interesting”. He called the campus “massive”. Despite the size, he said he felt like home at the campus. He shared that as the day of classes went on, his nerves subsided, and he was excited to be starting this journey. He added:

“This is the kind of school I have been wanting to go to for a very long time, and I am finally here.”

His parents, Kobi and Claire Anderson, were right by his side for his first day. The Andersons beamed with pride about the experience but also expressed that it was unnerving. “Have we prepared him enough?” his mother questioned. “Have we taught him enough about failure?” But his father’s answered: “He’s willing to be stretched. He knows how to get back from a punch … and continues to strive.”

Anderson is the youngest student on Georgia Tech’s campus, and he doesn’t take that for granted. As a young African American boy, he understands the magnitude of being a positive and inspirational influence in his community.

He also says that some people believe that things come easily to him, but that is not the case. His mom said:

“I am really proud of him, but I am really grateful to Georgia Tech for opening a door of opportunity to a student like Caleb.”

While on campus, Anderson is hoping to join clubs like the Ramblin’ Rocket Club. Earning a master’s degree from Georgia Tech, pursuing a career at SpaceX and starting his own company are some of his long-term goals.  His top goal is to pay it forward, saying, “I want to help others that may just need nurturing and resources.”

You can find out more here. 

Blue Origin’s federal suit accuses NASA of having been “unlawful and improper” in its evaluation of proposals concerning its human landing system program, SpaceNews reported.

In April, NASA awarded a nearly $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX to collaborate with the agency to design and develop a lunar lander to carry astronauts to the moon — ensuring that SpaceX will likely play a big role in the first lunar landing with humans since 1972.

In July, Blue Origin argued in an open letter that NASA gave SpaceX an unfair advantage during the proposal process. Bezos’ company also said by choosing only one company to receive a contract, the space agency made it possible for one firm possibly to “have insurmountable leverage over NASA.”

Without competition, Blue Origin said:

“Short-term and long-term lunar ambitions will be delayed, will ultimately cost more, and won’t serve the national interest.”

In the letter, Blue Origin offered to sacrifice up to $2 billion in future payments should NASA amend its decision.

Blue Origin and Dynetics, another private company, filed a formal complaint with the Government Accountability Office over NASA’s decision to work solely with SpaceX.

But the GAO concluded in July that NASA did nothing wrong. NASA said in its initial announcement that the agency had the option of issuing multiple awards, a single one or none at all, dependent on funding, GAO said. NASA in the end went with only one company because it didn’t have enough funding for more than one award. The GAO also said that NASA evaluated all proposals fairly.

NASA must respond to Blue Origin’s suit by Oct. 12, according to BBC News. However, the details of the suit will likely remain a mystery; Blue Origin was granted a protective order, sealing details of the case, on Monday, according to Space.com.

Representatives for NASA told The Verge that they are “currently reviewing” the case.