Tag: Elon Musk

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Elon Musk gets set for a big rocket chat with fans

BFR launch
Artwork shows SpaceX’s BFR launch vehicle blasting off from a floating pad. (SpaceX via YouTube)

Two weeks after SpaceX founder Elon Musk updated his vision for a monster rocket designed to take settlers to the moon and Mars, he’s due to take questions from his fans this weekend during a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session.

The precise coordinates for the chat depend on Musk’s schedule, but the Reddit’s SpaceX forum is sure to have the definitive word when it comes.

In the meantime, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell provided further details on Oct. 11 at a forum presented by the Stanford Student Space Initiative, with venture capital guru (and SpaceX board member) Steve Jurvetson hosting a Q&A.

SpaceX’s BFR (“Big Falcon Rocket”) was Topic A.

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‘Star Trek’ rates Elon Musk with Wright Brothers

'Star Trek: Discovery'
The starship Discovery’s captain, Gabriel Lorca (played by Jason Isaacs), lists Elon Musk among the pioneers of propulsion in a 23rd-century scene from “Star Trek: Discovery.” (CBS via All Access)

SpaceX founder Elon Musk hasn’t yet scored a cameo on the Star Trek stage, as fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos did last year, but he won a high-level shout-out on this week’s episode of “Star Trek: Discovery.”

Apparently, Musk will be held in as much esteem as the Wright Brothers and the builder of Earth’s first warp drive, Zefram Cochrane, by the year 2256.

That’s the time frame for “Star Trek: Discovery,” the latest manifestation of the 51-year-old space saga on CBS All Access, the TV network’s streaming video service.

Musk, who celebrated this year’s 14th successful launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rockettoday, gets name-checked during a key scene in the Oct. 8 episode, during which the captain of the starship Discovery tells the science officer that his careful study of space mushrooms would have to be put aside for a high-risk activation of an experimental “spore drive.”

“How do you want to be remembered in history?” Captain Gabriel Lorca asks. “Alongside the Wright Brothers, Elon Musk, Zefram Cochrane? Or as a failed fungus expert? A selfish little man who put the survival of his own ego before the lives of others?”

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Elon Musk is willing to rebuild Puerto Rico’s grid

Puerto Rico debris
Puerto Rico National Guard soldiers and volunteers work to clear road debris after Hurricane Maria. (U.S. Army Photo / Spc. Hamiel Irizarry)

A Twitter conversation about beefing up Puerto Rico’s hurricane-hit power grid with solar power and heavy-duty batteries is turning into what may be Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s next grand project.

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Sizing up Elon Musk’s big bet on a big rocket

BFR at space station
An artist’s conception shows SpaceX’s BFR super-rocket docked to the International Space Station. (SpaceX Illustration)

SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s rocket roadmap just got much bigger than Mars. Now the question is, who else will follow the map?

The first answers to that question may well start emerging next week, when government officials and space industry leaders — almost certainly including a SpaceX representative — come together for the first meeting of the White House’s National Space Council.

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Elon Musk has big rocket plans for … Earth?

BFR on moon
An artist’s conception shows the SpaceX vision for “Moon Base Alpha.” (Elon Musk via Instagram)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has added moon missions to his grand plan for Mars, in a bid to capitalize on what’s expected to be the Trump administration’s shift in space policy.

Lunar operations at “Moon Base Alpha” are among the big updates that Musk unveiled today before a packed house at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia.

The rocket being planned for missions to the moon and Mars — nicknamed the BFR, for “Big Frickin’ Rocket” — could also come into play for trips to the International Space Station, satellite launches and travel between spaceports on Earth.

Today’s presentation followed up on last year’s big reveal at the IAC meeting in Mexico, during which Musk laid out a plan to build a monster rocket and send thousands upon thousands of settlers to the Red Planet starting as early as 2024.

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Elon Musk sets up SpaceX fans for a surprise

Elon Musk
One year after unveling his Mars plan at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico, SpaceX founder Elon Musk will return to the stage this week in Australia. (SpaceX via YouTube)

SpaceX founder Elon Musk says he’ll unveil “major improvements and some unexpected applications” this week when he updates his plan for sending thousands of settlers to Mars starting in the 2020s.

The update is coming in a talk Musk is giving to the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, set for about 9:30 p.m. PT Sept. 28 (2 p.m. Sept. 29 in Adelaide). The IAC’s organizers say the talk will be live-streamed.)

This week’s talk follows up on Musk’s appearance at the IAC last September in Mexico, during which he laid out a detailed plan to develop a new type of monster spaceship and booster for Mars trips, known as the Interplanetary Transport System or ITS.

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SpaceX’s Elon Musk shows off full spacesuit

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYyvO2WA3Ra/

We’ve already gotten our first peek at the spacesuit that astronauts will wear when they’re riding in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spaceship, but SpaceX CEO Elon Musk set hearts racing once again today when he sent out a picture showing the spacesuit being modeled next to the Dragon 2.

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Germany’s WARR team wins Hyperloop race

Elon Musk at Hyperloop pod race
SpaceX founder Elon Musk looks over to the WARR Hyperloop team as he announces the group’s winning time in the second Hyperloop pod competition. The portal to the test tunnel is to the right of Musk. (WARR Hyperloop via Facebook)

The speediest team from SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s first Hyperloop pod competition has done it again: WARR Hyperloop from Germany’s Technical University of Munich won today’s second contest by sending its magnetic-levitation pod through a nearly mile-long test tunnel at a peak speed of 201 mph.

Musk announced WARR’s victory to a crowd in the stands at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., and on Twitter as well.

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Elon Musk reveals SpaceX’s spacesuit

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYIPmEFAIIn/

The spacesuit designed to be worn aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule turns up the coolness dial for spaceflight, as befits a company that’s a corporate cousin of the Tesla electric-car venture.

“Was incredibly hard to balance esthetics and function,” Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of both companies, said today in a first-look Instagram post. “Easy to do either separately.”

Musk said the suit has already gone through rounds of pressure tests in a vacuum chamber. “Worth noting that this actually works (not a mockup),” he wrote.

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Elon Musk hails AI bot’s video game victory

USB stick
A security staff member at The International Dota 2 Championships holds up a plug-in USB stick for an AI bot programmed to play esports. Dota 2 master Dendi stands onstage in the background, waiting to do battle in Seattle. (OpenAI via YouTube)

The Dota 2 esports tournament in Seattle, known as The International, demonstrates how video games have become hugely popular team sports — and today alpha geek Elon Musk took the occasion to tout a different kind of team effort.

Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, is also a big supporter of OpenAI, a nonprofit research company aimed at boosting artificial intelligence architectures and applications that benefit humanity.

Today, OpenAI showed off an AI bot that vanquished Danylo “Dendi” Ishutin, one of the world’s top Dota 2 players, in a one-vs.-one demonstration match.

“OK, this guy is scary,” Ishutin said as he battled the bot’s minions. The crowd at KeyArena groaned when the bot crushed Ishutin’s game avatars.

Ishutin was beaten badly in the first match, forfeited a second match, and refused to play a third.

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