"When not wasting money on bureaucracy," he wrote, "The Department of Education has been funding anti-Americanism, gender nonsense and anti-meritocratic racism." By the end of the month, the department had been stripped to the bone, dismantled by Donald Trump and Musk's DOGE. And on Thursday, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who has said her agency's "final mission" would be to send education programs "back to the states," was on hand as the president signed an executive order to begin eliminating what remained of the department. The companies' founders share an admiration for Musk and desire to help their students replicate his success. At the same time that federal support for public education is imperiled, two private online education programs whose seeds were planted with Musk and SpaceX are getting a second wind.

Jim Bridenstine says you have to go to the moon to get to Mars. The Brad Pitt-helmed space epic "Ad Astra" sets a new standard for science fiction films, a former NASA engineer who served as a technical consultant for the movie told Fox News. "In my view, it sets a new standard for science fiction films, updating for all to see on the big screen some of the most fantastic imagery we have obtained of our solar system since films like '2001: A Space Odyssey' were released over 50 years ago," said Robert Yowell, who served as an engineer at NASA for 11 years and as a senior mission manager for SpaceX. The new film, set in a future in which humanity has colonized a few far-flung parts of the galaxy but still hasn't reckoned with its own existential torments, is three films rolled cohesively into one: a visually stunning movie about astronauts exploring places like Mars and Jupiter; a poignant father-son tale about coming to grips with abandonment and growing up with a certain kind of dad; and a social commentary on 21st-century concerns over environmental degradation, capitalism and our place in the world. Roy McBride, a man on a mission to the edge of our galaxy that he can't really refuse.

It may be the most exclusive school in the world. Housed somewhere inside the sprawling Hawthorne, Calif., headquarters of rocket manufacturer SpaceX, Ad Astra reportedly has less than 50 students between seven and 14-years old, perpetually-evolving curriculum, and no formal grading. Instead, Ars Technica reports, the mysterious not-for-profit school functions like a "venture capital incubator" in which students work in teams to drill into some of the most daunting topics of our time: robotics, nuclear politics and the dangers posed by artificial intelligence. The latter is no surprise considering that Ad Astra was founded by Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor who has been stridently warning about the risks posed by intelligent machines for several years now. "I just didn't see that the regular schools were doing the things that I thought should be done," Musk told a Chinese TV station in 2015.

If Elon Musk doesn't like something, he'll create his own version. That's exactly what he's done for his children's education by starting a radical ultra-exclusive school at his SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. For the past four years, the non-profit'experimental' school has been educating the billionaire's five sons, children of some SpaceX employees and a number of gifted students from Los Angeles. The school has some unconventional teaching methods. Reports suggest it allows students to skip subjects they don't like, build flamethrowers and'defeat evil AIs'.

Autonomous drones are important for ocean research, but today s drones don t make decisions on the fly, said Steve Chien, one of the research team s members. Chien leads the Artificial Intelligence Group at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. In order to study unpredictable ocean phenomena, we need to develop submersibles that can navigate and make decisions on their own, and in real-time. Doing so would help us understand our own oceans -- and maybe those on other planets...