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The U.S. Space Force on Friday announced it will assign five of seven critical military missions for the coming fiscal year to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The awards are a $714 million boon to SpaceX, underscoring the companys continued dominance over Pentagon space contracts, despite Musk and U.S. President Donald Trumps public falling out earlier this year. United Launch Alliance (ULA) will undertake the two other launches; it was awarded $428 million for two launches, according to a press release viewed by Space News. SpaceX pulls ahead on Pentagon launches The awards are made under the National Security Space Launch Program, which earlier this year selected SpaceX, ULA, and Jeff Bezos Blue Origin for 54 missions scheduled between fiscal 2027 and 2032 as part of its National Security Space Launch Program (NSSL)contracts worth $13.5 billion. Space is the ultimate high ground, critical for our national security, said U.S. Space System Command official Col. Eric Zarybnisky in a release, per Air Space and Forces. We continue to assure access to that high ground. Delivering assets to the warfighter is our ultimate mission, and we rely on our strong government-industry partnerships to successfully achieve that goal,” Zarybnisky said. Fast Company has reached out to the Space Force for comment. The missions assigned to SpaceX include launches for a communication satellite, three classified payloads, and a reconnaissance satellite. The Space Force makes its awards two years in advance, so these launches will likely take off in 2027. Blue Origin pushes for Mars mission The awards also underlined the fact that Blue Origins New Glenn rocketthe companys rival to SpaceXs Falcon Heavyhas yet to be certified for national security launches. No missions were assigned to the third provider, Blue Origin, which has its next opportunity for a mission in FY27, Space Systems Command said in a statement, per SpaceNews. Blue Origin’s New Glenn is slated to launch a NASA mission to Mars as soon as the end of this monthdelayed since 2024that could bring it closer to receiving certification, however.
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E-Commerce
OpenAIs new video generation app Sora is barely a week old, but CEO Sam Altman is already dropping updates to address some major potential issues with the app. In the days since Sora launched, the app has soared to the top of the U.S. Apple App Store as users flocked to try iteven though it is still invite-only. And just as its popularity has skyrocketed, experts increasingly sounded the alarm over the likelihood that OpenAI may face legal action over Soras ability to generate copyrighted characters, logos, and other intellectual property. Thats what the new updates appear geared to address. In a Friday blog post, Altman said Sora will undergo two major changes: The first change is aimed at giving rights holders “granular control over generation of characters,” he wrote, similar to the companys opt-in model for likenesses. The second will be tweaking the app to create revenuein part so that some proportion of the apps takings can be shared with rights holders, according to Altman. It’s unclear when the changes will take effect, with Altman only writing they would be coming “soon.” Sora’s fan dilemma We are hearing from a lot of rightsholders who are very excited for this new kind of interactive fan fiction and think this new kind of engagement will accrue a lot of value to them, but want the ability to specify how their characters can be used (including not at all), Altman wrote, caveating that some edge cases might sneak through the cracks. Generated videos featuring characters from SpongeBob SquarePants, South Park, and a number of other television shows and movies could already be found on the app in the days after its release, CNBC reported. People are eager to engage with their family and friends through their own imaginations, as well as stories, characters, and worlds they love, and we see new opportunities for creators to deepen their connection with the fans, Varun Shetty, OpenAIs head of media partnerships, told CNBC in a statement. Well work with rights holders to block characters from Sora at their request and respond to takedown requests,” Shetty told the outlet. Fast Company reached out to OpenAI for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication. Other publications that tested the app found that it wouldn’t generate certain images, including of celebrities who hadn’t given OpenAI permission to use their likeness. The app also wouldn’t create violent content, as well as some political content, according to The New York Times. AI copyright concerns growing The concerns over OpenAIs new app come months after Disney and Universal filed a copyright lawsuit against another AI image-generator, Midjourneymarking the first time a global entertainment company sued an AI platform over copyright. Disney has also sent a cease-and-desist to Character.AI over alleged copyright violations, CNBC reported. In his blog post Friday, Altman nodded to the remarkable creative output of some Sora users, writing that people are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences. Altman wrote that the app will continue to change over the coming months, in a “trial and error” process. Our hope is that the new kind of engagement is even more valuable than the revenue share, he wrote.
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E-Commerce
When Scott Belsky talks about creativity, he uses words like output and production. Creativity is the source, with the problem of mining, says the founder, author, and early stage investor. It requires machinery and practice and discipline and whatever else. Belsky joined A24 as the head of A24 Labs in early 2025. Before that, he founded Behance, a global portfolio site that he sold to Adobe in late 2012. He had a long run at Adobe, serving as its chief product officer and later chief strategy officer. This month he became the newest member of the Cornell Tech Council, and has written books like The Messy Middle and Making Ideas Happen. Belsky sits at the intersection of ideas and infrastructure, with the keen ability to frame the creative process in a way thats both practical and magic. Still, Belsky doesnt romanticize any of this. Im always thinking about the inputs in my life and trying to make sure I dont get too stagnant and boring, says Belsky. All of the things youre exposed to act as outputs. Belsky has worked for years building his own creative system of production and the nuggets he shares here are a result of the fact that his system is equally rooted in two worlds: I have always straddled one foot in the creative world and one foot in the business world. When I get too businessy it compromises the ingenuity that I can bring to the product and the things Im trying to create or write. It is a tension to constantly maintain in order to ensure youre not just basking in the stuff youve done before. Im constantly, constantly capturing stuff. It takes a little bit of the romanticism out of it, but Ive come to believe a lot of creativity is simply capturing things the moment they hit, and then tending to them with such consistency that you start to connect little pieces into a bigger thing. And then when you connect little things to big things and then bigger things into each other, then you end up with something amazing. It can be a book or a screenplay or some sort of business strategy or a new business. If I look at myself over the last couple of decades, it’s all about capturing things and then servicing them with the right moment and in the right way. Another thing that comes to mind is the role of others. Sometimes they have the missing pieces to the thing youre building. Sometimes I’ll meet somebody who has an idea or has a skill that captures something I had thought of years ago and suddenly I realize they are part of this project or puzzle. I work to graft them onto it in such a way that makes it come to life. That wouldnt have been possible had it not been for the discipline of going back and tending to the pieces that seemed dormant and irrelevant until suddenly they werent. I pick places to go and I sometimes say yes to things Id ordinarily say no to just get a fresh dose of surprise and exposure to something different. It can come in the form of a speaking engagement somewhere super inconvenient thats not even paying me, but Ill do it because I have a sense this will take me out of my comfort zone in some way. I also try to listen to new music and read things that are from new sources. I have a bit of a paranoia that somehow my input could get stale and my output would then become uninteresting to me and others. There is something to extract from everywhere if you have the skeleton key for itwhich is usually the right dose of curiosity. The ultimate test is when I go to a dinner I was dragged into. Ill say to myself this is going to be completely uninteresting. I try to find the skeleton key to the person or topicit will usually be me mining curiosity, like how does that work or why is that the way it is? Ill go deep into some backstory and it unlocks a door of intrigue and new material that is input, again. It’s like squeezing water from air. If you have the technology, water is everywhere; you dont have to look for the well. Ive also been impacted as a parent. When you have a kid, their inputs are just what you expose them to. Its a closed room experiment. Only for a short period of time, before they go out in the world and start watching TVbefore they start getting inundated with inputs that cannot be traced, you have this previous zone where everything they do you can trace back to the input they were exposed to. Its this fascinating laboratory of understanding creativity. Suddenly you can see the whole system and you can extrapolate how it impacts you and others because they are in the world. Texture and friction are how we remember time. The hardest, hardest vacations to remember are beach vacations; they all kind of blend together. You just remember sitting on the beach. I love the beach, but theres no friction in sitting and relaxing all day. Therefore, its hard to discern between the beaches you sat on in your vacations. Juxtapose that with getting lost on some street in rural Italy or arduously climbing some mountaintop or something like that. You remember those vividly because they were friction-filled. Time with friction is what makes us remember it. I have these two realizations: One is that at the end of your life, you will have felt like you lived longer based on how much time had texture and how much time you remember. In that essence, texture and time is what makes life longer. The other is that maybe it’s the inputs that have texture and friction that impact us the most. I definitely believe that pain is a source of creativity. I hate to say it but it’s true. You look at Billy Joel. His greatest albums came out of a divorce or his addiction. Everyone suffering is rife with texture and friction. It also probably rife with inputs and emotion, struggle, insight, realization. Whenever I struggle, theres a part of me thats grateful I still have kindling. I learn to appreciate the troughs of life. Lets do something with this. Ive become very purposeful with my time. Im in a startup environment building something new. I run product, design, and development teams. I have a sacred three hours every week that we call concepting. It is a block of time when we review product and have a more product and design driven controlled meeting, as opposed to an engineering one. Its not a meeting to talk about the cost of doing something. Its a meeting about, Whats the best product? Thats a mistake a lot of teams make. Theyll include engineers in that first product design meeting. And if you have engineers, its okay. But they cant be thinking, How am I going to implement this and is that going to be too expensive in time or money? They have to be thinking, Whats possible? How do we solve this problem? Thats a really sacred time. Every team Ive ever managed, I have these concepting blocks. My team, we are very empowered. We have a standup every Monday. Every Friday, everyone gives an update on every project they lead. Everyone is entrusted to use their time and energy to make the greatest impact. Its important to have a team that can be trusted. Full transparency. Everyone does it. Including me. I am one that always looks ahead. I have to make choices. I have a list in Notion of the things that are most important to me and I try to look at it every few days to pressure check myself against my calendar on how Im using my time. Whats important to me right now? One of them might be a project that has many short-term deliverables. I have one for work, one for the companies Im investing in and supporting, and I have one for my personal lifemy ealth and fitness, my relationships with my family. I just think that a quick glance over it is a recalibration of your brain that helps you make better decisions every day. Writing is my craft of processing and testing things myself and then testing things with others. Im tending to these fragments and these ideas. Both books I wrote were the result of lots of different pieces I captured. The Messy Middle was seven years of just capturing stuff and finally seeing the way they come together. I find writing a great form of getting ideas out there. I have forced myself to write this thing called Implications, which is one way I test ideas on the technology side and I learn what people engage with or disengage with. I do the same thing with social media. I dont consume a lot of social media but everything I do, I share on X. Its an instant way of engagement and testing ideas. Its an amazing tool. It helps me triangulate where I should put my focus and energy. I try to run three to five miles every morning. Its a principled period of time where Im forced to unplug. I listen to music but I never look at my phone. I just think and its also a great part of my chemistry and how my brain works. I swear by it. Do I even listen to the music? For some reason the music makes it easier to run. Do I love running? Or, do I just love everything that happens because of the running? When Im running I force myself to complete the run and almost always the idea has become much better. It taught me to wait and not capture and move on from the idea so fast, to sit with something. Should we be careful not to capture actions so quickly and stick with a creative process long enough so ideas build? This is the art and science of creativity. By capturing something so quickly were making ourselves at ease with the fact that weve captured it. When I tend to something over time, is that the equivalent of running and having to think about it more? The best practice would be to have both. Dont let something go. Capture it when it hits and tend to it over time so the pieces fit together. Let yourself keep going. Force yourself not to capture it so quickly.
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E-Commerce
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