Tag: Elon Musk

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Elon Musk makes the big pitch for Mars settlement

Elon Musk
SpaceX founder Elon Musk presents his vision for sending settlers to Mars. (Credit: SpaceX)

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made some ambitious sales pitches in his career, but today’s big reveal about his plan to transport a million settlers to Mars over the next few decades has to be the topper.

The billionaire began his 95-minute talk with the existential concern over Earth’s long-term future, and the need to set up a civilization beyond Earth to safeguard the species.

“I hope you’d agree this is the right way to go. Yes? … That’s what we want,” he told a crowd of 3,000 attendees at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara.

From there on, Musk laid out a step-by-step blueprint that culminated in a vision of a totally reusable super-spaceship that could transport 100 to 200 passengers and their luggage to the Red Planet.

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Elon Musk tweets sneak peeks at Mars plan

SpaceX Raptor engine test
SpaceX’s Raptor rocket engine undergoes its first test firing. (Credit: Elon Musk via Twitter)

GUADALAJARA, Mexico – In advance of this week’s big reveal, SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, is dropping hints about the scale of his plans to send colonists to Mars.

Musk is scheduled to talk about what used to be known as the Mars Colonial Transporter in Guadalajara on Sept. 27 at the International Astronautical Congress.

The “late-breaking news” begins at 11:30 a.m. PT (1:30 p.m. CT) Sept. 27. Streaming video of the talk should be available via SpaceX and YouTube as well as via the IAC and Livestream.

Musk has been building up to this presentation for months, arguably for more than a year. It’s the highlight of this year’s annual conference. Although he’s been coy about the details, Musk has let some hints slip out – for example, that the rocket should be capable of sending 100 tons of payload to Mars, or 100 passengers.

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Why Tesla is relying on radar (and the cloud)

Image: Tesla Autopilot
Radar readings and camera views are fed into the Autopilot system on Tesla cars. (Credit: Tesla)

Tesla car owners are getting an upgrade to their Autopilot semi-autonomous driving software, but this won’t be your standard software upgrade: CEO Elon Musk says Autopilot 8.0 will put more emphasis on radar readings as well as crowdsourced, networked information about potential hazards on the roadway.

Musk said the upgrade might have prevented the kind of collision that led to the death of a Tesla Model S driver in May. “These things cannot be said with absolute certainty, but we believe it is very likely that, yes, it would have,” Musk told reporters during a teleconference on Sunday.

That accident involved a crash between the Model S and a freight truck that was making a left turn from the opposing direction. Preliminary data suggest that Autopilot’s camera system did not recognized the reflective signature of the truckagainst the background of a brightly lit sky. As a result, the car smashed with full force into the truck, killing Tesla driver Joshua Brown.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it’s investigating the accident.

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Feds approve $2.6 billion Tesla-SolarCity merger

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Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk talks about the Model 3 during its unveiling in April. (Credit: Tesla)

The Federal Trade Commission has given its approval for Tesla Motors’ acquisition of the SolarCity power panel company, saying that the combination would create no antitrust concerns.

The go-ahead removes another hurdle to the $2.6 billion all-stock deal, which was proposed in June. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is the largest investor in both companies. He’s the CEO of Tesla, and the chairman of SolarCity.

Musk argues that the deal will create a consumer-friendly, one-stop energy shop for electric cars, solar panels and battery storage systems.

The next hurdle is a vote by the disinterested shareholders of the two companies, which will exclude the shares held by Musk and other executives. That vote is expected to clear the way for the merger to take effect later this year.

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Elon Musk touts power-generating solar roofs

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SolarCity says it will start making integrated power-generating roofs next year. (Credit: SolarCity)

The bad news is that SolarCity, the power-generating company that has Elon Musk as its chairman, is losing money. The good news is that it’ll be rolling out a new product: a roof with built-in solar arrays.

“It’s not a ‘thing’ on the roof, it is the roof,” Musk said Aug. 9 during a conference call with analysts.

He said the integrated, power-generating roofing structure would be a “fundamental part of achieving a differentiated product strategy” for SolarCity.

Peter Rive, SolarCity’s chief technology officer and Musk’s cousin, said the company would ramp up production of the roofing components at its factory in Buffalo, N..Y., in the second quarter of next year.

SolarCity is counting on such innovations to boost its sales as it heads toward a $2.6 billion merger with the Tesla electric-car and battery company, which has Musk as its CEO.

 

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Tesla, SolarCity strike $2.6 billion merger deal

Tesla and Gigafactory 1
A Tesla electric car is parked on an overlook with a view of Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 facility in Nevada. (Credit: Tesla Motors)

The boards of directors for Tesla and SolarCity, two companies that have billionaire Elon Musk as a top executive, have given the green light for a $2.6 billion merger.

The two companies said the combination would create “the world’s only vertically integrated sustainable energy company,” bringing together Tesla’s electric car line and its home battery offerings with SolarCity’s power-generating business.

“By joining forces, we can operate more efficiently and fully integrate our products, while providing customers with an aesthetically beautiful and simple one-stop solar + storage experience: one installation, one service contract, one phone app,”Tesla and SolarCity said in a joint press release.

The approvals came after a review of Tesla’s merger proposal, the terms of which were laid out publicly last month. Musk helped orchestrate the deal, but he stayed out of the review or the board vote to head off conflict-of-interest concerns. He serves as the CEO of Tesla, and he’s the chairman of SolarCity as well as the biggest shareholder of both companies.

In a tweet, Musk emphasized that his privately held space venture, SpaceX, does not figure in the deal and would never merge with Tesla.

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Elon Musk unveils new Tesla master plan

Image: Tesla and Powerwall
Tesla’s lines of business include the Model S electric sedan as well as the Powerwall home battery system, seen at left. (Credit: Tesla)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has just shared his once-secret master plan for the electric-car company, which he now casts as a solar power and energy storage company as well. Here is the plan, as summarized by Musk in a post on the Tesla site.

  • Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage
  • Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments
  • Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning
  • Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it

The expansion of Tesla’s product line will include “heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport,” Musk says in the post. “Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year. We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate.”

– Story by Todd Bishop and Alan Boyle

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Feds investigate Tesla Autopilot fatality

Tesla Autopilot
Tesla Motors stresses that its Autopilot feature is still in beta. (Credit: Tesla Motors)

Tesla Motors says it’s cooperating with federal authorities in the investigation of the first known traffic death involving a driver who was using the Autopilot self-driving feature on the company’s Model S electric car.

In a report posted online today, Tesla said it had just learned that the National Highway Transportation Safety Board was opening a preliminary evaluation into Autopilot’s performance during a fatal crash. In a statement, the NHTSA said the opening of an investigation shouldn’t be construed as a determination that “there is either a presence or absence of a defect in the subject vehicles.”

Tesla’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, expressed his condolences to the victim and his family today in a tweet.

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Elon Musk teases SpaceX plan to colonize Mars

Image: Mars Colonial Transporter
An animation shows a lander separating from the rest of the Mars Colonial Transporter. Later concepts suggest that the entire MCT would land as a unit. (Credit: Michel Lamontagne / ESA via YouTube)

SpaceX’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, is providing increasingly detailed previews of his plan to send colonists to Mars starting in 2024, more than a decade in advance of NASA’s Red Planet timetable. But there’s one part of the plan that’s not yet clear: how to bring people back.

“It’s dangerous and probably people will die – and they’ll know that,” Musk told The Washington Post this week. “And then they’ll pave the way, and ultimately it will be very safe to go to Mars, and it will be very comfortable. But that will be many years in the future.”

The journey starts getting real in September, when Musk is due to lay out his detailed Mars colonization plan at the International Astronautical Congress in Mexico. “This is going to be mind-blowing,” he said. “Mind-blowing. It’s going to be really great.” (Careful, Elon … you’re starting to sound a little Trumpish there.)

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Blue Origin and SpaceX revisit rocket landings

Image: Blue Origin view
A view from the “vent cam” on Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital booster shows a West Texas landscape during an April 2 flight, plus a “toasty brown” ring fin at the top. (Credit: Blue Origin)

Will seeing a spaceship land on its feet ever get old? The novelty is still there in newly released videos from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, showing new perspectives on their most recent rocket landings.

Blue Origin’s video recaps the April 2 flight of its New Shepard suborbital space vehicle, as seen from a camera pointing out from one of the booster’s vents. The 2:38 clip begins with a shot of the curving blue Earth below the blackness of space – a view that paying passengers could see as early as 2018.

Then there’s the supersonic descent back through the atmosphere. If you look closely at the full-frame, high-definition video, you might be able to pick out the Rio Grande River running through the West Texas landscape surrounding Blue Origin’s launch and landing site.

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