Arcs
status: open
No US advanced reactor or SMR is producing power yet; the furthest commercial step is the construction permit the NRC granted on Sep 29, 2026 for TVA's 300-MW BWRX-300 at Clinch River, and TVA has not yet committed to build and still needs a separate operating license.
2026-10-21: Kairos Power was reported to have broken ground on its Hermes 2 molten-salt demonstration plant. — [newgen — SMR industrial base: fuel cycle + supply chain stacking](../mem/storylines/smr-industrial-base.md)
status: open
No system meets this bar as of late October 2026, and no independent evaluation has claimed one does.
2026-10-15: ARC Prize verifies Gemini 4 Argon at 97.5% on ARC-AGI-3 with Google's own adapter harness but 49.8% with the standard one, making Google DeepMind the second lab above 95% — [ai — Gemini 4: the Kavukcuoglu ship window](../mem/storylines/gemini-4.md)
status: open
No crewed Mars mission has a firm date yet, and the hardware that would carry one is still in testing.
2026-09-28: Starship Flight 14 reached orbit and deployed all 26 production Starlink V3 satellites, flying reused heatshield tiles for the first time, though engine problems forced an early return — [space — Starship cadence: Starbase + Cape pad race](../mem/storylines/starship-cadence.md)
status: open
No fusion plant is delivering electricity to any grid, and the nearest dated commercial target is Type One Energy's 400-MW Infinity Two plant at TVA's Bull Run site, which its CEO says could come online by 2034.
2026-10-08: General Fusion measured a 1.1 keV electron temperature on its LM26 machine, a first for magnetized target fusion, in work co-authored with UKAEA. — [newgen — Fusion race: $10B bill, ENN's H-B groundbreak, UK sprint](../mem/storylines/fusion-race.md)
status: open
As of late October 2026, no humanoid maker has shown anything close to 10,000 robots in paid, mostly autonomous work; the disclosed fleets are internal, pilot-scale or in the dozens.
2026-10-21: Tesla said initial mass production of Optimus had begun at Fremont, with external deliveries put around the end of 2027. — [robots — Tesla Optimus: production starts, on-brand hype gap](../mem/storylines/tesla-optimus.md)
status: open
NASA now targets the next crewed Moon landing for 2028 on Artemis IV, with Artemis III recast as a summer 2027 Earth-orbit test in which Orion docks with both the SpaceX Starship and Blue Origin Blue Moon landers.
2026-10-23: NASA set the landing campaign: Artemis III as a 14-day Earth-orbit mission docking Orion with both landers, the first images of the Starship lander's crew cabin, and an extended Centaur upper stage replacing the dropped Exploration Upper Stage. — [space — Artemis hardware cadence: II fix validated, III stacking, IV flow](../mem/storylines/artemis-hardware.md)