Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Twitter habit has sparked gyrations in the stock market. (Tesla via YouTube)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is in trouble again with the Securities and Exchange Commission, this time over a 13-word tweet.
The SEC filed a motion in federal court on Feb. 25, claiming that a tweet that Musk sent out last week violated the terms of an agreement aimed at settling a securities fraud case brought last September. After the motion came to light, Tesla’s shares lost as much as 5 percent of their $298.77 market-close value in after-hours trading. The price crept back to somewhere around its previous level overnight, however, as traders digested the news.
It’s the latest in a series of ups and downs caused by Musk’s Twitter habit.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk checks out the nozzle of a full-scale Raptor rocket engine in advance of its first test firing. (Elon Musk via Twitter)
SpaceX CEO celebrated the first test firing of a full-scale, built-for-flight Raptor engine for his Starship super-rocket in the usual way tonight: by tweeting about it.
“So proud of great work by @SpaceX team,” Musk wrote in a series of tweets from SpaceX’s test facility near McGregor, Texas.
Scaled-down versions of the methane-fueled Raptor rocket engine went through testing as far back as two and a half years ago, but Musk said this weekend’s test marked the “first firing of Starship Raptor flight engine.”
Which is the illustration, and which is the actual Starship Hopper test rocket? The real rocket is on the left — and take note of the Starman standing by one of the fins. (Elon Musk via Twitter)
For weeks, photographers have been snapping pictures of a retro-looking, shiny stainless-steel rocket that’s been taking shape at SpaceX’s launch site in South Texas — and tonight, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk declared that assembly of the first Starship short-hop test rocket is complete.
A Tesla Model X electric car with retractable wheel gear sits inside the Boring Company’s test tunnel. The company’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, says the apparatus turns the car into a “rail-guided train.” (Elon Musk via Twitter)
The Boring Company’s hole in the ground in Hawthorne, Calif., got a Hollywood-style debut tonight courtesy of the company’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk.
Musk stood just outside a 1.14-mile-long test tunnel, illuminated in blue light, and spoke glowingly to a VIP crowd about how tunnels could turn the “soul-crushing” gridlock of urban traffic into a sci-fi experience.
“They’re sort of like wormholes,” he said. “You’re driving around, you think, ugh, I need to get to the other side of L.A., New York, whatever. Drop down the wormhole, pshew, pop out the other side and you just drive normally. I think this is, like, really a panacea.”
Tonight’s first tours served as a curtain-raiser for Musk’s Loop concept, which involves building a 3-D network of tunnels, elevators and ramps — and then sending autonomous electric cars equipped with retractable guide wheels zipping through those tunnels at speeds of up to 150 mph.
That’s a departure from Musk’s previous idea of using custom-built “skates” to carry cars and people.
Axios’ Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen interview SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. (Axios / HBO via YouTube)
As NASA prepares for its next Mars landing, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is giving himself a 70 percent chance of moving to Mars. But in an Axios interview airing tonight on HBO, he emphasizes that it won’t be a billionaire joyride.
“Your probability of dying on Mars is much higher than Earth. Really, the ad for going to Mars would be like Shackleton’s ad for going to the Antarctic,” Musk said, referring to explorer Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing 1914-1917 expedition. (The apocryphal ad supposedly was headlined “Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey.”)
“It’s going to be hard,” Musk said. “There’s a good chance of death, going in a little can through deep space. You might land successfully. Once you land successfully, you’ll be working nonstop to build the base. … There’s a good chance you die there. We think you can come back, but we’re not sure. Now, does that sound like an escape hatch for rich people?”
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner are being developed to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA. (SpaceX / Boeing Illustrations)
NASA has ordered a review of workplace safety at SpaceX and Boeing, the two companies developing spaceships to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station, in the wake of a video showing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk smoking pot and drinking whiskey on a YouTube talk show.
The safety review, first reported by The Washington Post, could involve site inspections and hundreds of interviews. It’s not yet clear whether the review could hold up the first crewed demonstration flights of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon or Boeing’s Starliner capsule. Those flights are currently scheduled for June and August of 2019, respectively, but that schedule could well slip due to technical snags.
The name change comes just days after Musk tweeted that the design for the spaceship is being radically revised once again. “New design is very exciting! Delightfully counter-intuitive,” he wrote.
A worker knocks dirt off the Boring Company’s tunneling machine after its emergence into a vertical shaft. (Elon Musk via Twitter)
The Boring Company’s “cutting-edge technology” got a shout-out from billionaire founder Elon Musk tonight after the venture’s tunneling machine, nicknamed Godot, broke through into a vertical exit shaft in Hawthorne, Calif.
The breakthrough apparently finishes up the heavy-duty boring job for a test tunnel that connects a parking lot next to SpaceX’s headquarters to another piece of property purchased by the Boring Company.
Musk mandated the project to demonstrate a low-cost, small-bore approach to urban tunnelling. The first mile-long section of the Hawthorne Test Tunnel — including a spur line to the exit shaft, known as O’Leary Station — is scheduled to open for invitation-only tours starting on Dec. 10.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk watches February’s ascent of the Falcon Heavy rocket in a scene from National Geographic’s “Mars: Inside SpaceX.” (National Geographic / RadicalMedia via YouTube)
Science fiction blends with fact in tonight’s double dose of Mars from National Geographic’s TV channel.
Truth to tell, there’s more fact than fiction: The first show in the double feature is “Mars: Inside SpaceX,” which wraps a tale of past and future space exploration around an inside look at SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy launch in February.
Then there’s the season premiere of “Mars,” the semi-scripted, semi-documentary series that’s serving up a second set of six episodes.
Elon Musk speaks at a space conference in 2016. (SpaceX Photo)
Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is really psyched about the electric pickup truck he’s got on the drawing board — and he’s also cool with the Space Force and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space effort.
Those are just a few of the talking points that emerged when he sat down for an 80-minute Q&A on Halloween, after months of cajoling from Recode alpha-geek Kara Swisher.
