Friday, November 22

Tag: SpaceX

Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. Is that profitable?
13Dec By adminNo Comments
Technology

Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars. Is that profitable?

Austin, TX CNN Business  —  Elon Musk has spent nearly two decades rallying SpaceX fans around his goal of colonizing Mars, something world governments aren’t currently attempting — in part because of the unfathomable price tag such a mission will entail. Musk, the company’s CEO and chief engineer, refers to his interplanetary ambitions more like a sci-fi protagonist with a moral calling than an entrepreneur with a disruptive business plan. “If there’s something terrible that happens on Earth, either made by humans or natural, we want to have, like, life insurance for life as a whole,” Musk said during a virtual Mars conference on Aug. 31. “Then, there’s the kind of excitement and adventure.” ...
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If Elon Musk Had Been a Happy Child, Would He Still Be Launching Rockets?
16Sep By adminNo Comments
Technology

If Elon Musk Had Been a Happy Child, Would He Still Be Launching Rockets?

I meet with Walter Isaacson in a small conference room in the offices of book publisher Simon & Schuster. The walls are festooned with framed covers, including of course Isaacson’s mega-bestseller Steve Jobs. I’m sure somewhere else in the office are covers representing his other subjects—Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Jennifer Doudna—which together have earned him the sobriquet “biographer of genius.” It’s a unique and enviable shift in career focus for Isaacson, whose main gig for years has been as a top editor and administrator for Time Magazine, the Aspen Institute, and CNN. Now I am putting myself among his countless interlocutors ahead of an epic book tour for what might be his biggest book yet. It’s a forest-clearing doorstop of prose based on two years spent observing the...
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SpaceX Must Fix 63 Issues Before Its Starship Can Fly Again
8Sep By adminNo Comments
Technology

SpaceX Must Fix 63 Issues Before Its Starship Can Fly Again

As the dust settled following SpaceX’s brief, explosive test launch of Starship in April, both the company and the Federal Aviation Administration dug into investigating the aftermath. The gigantic rocket’s flight lasted just four minutes before it blew up near SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site on the Texas coast. Images and news reports posted in the days afterward showed boulders of concrete and rebar blasting into the air during liftoff, and there were accounts of particulates raining down on nearby Port Isabel.Today, both SpaceX and the FAA released statements on their joint “mishap investigation,” which was led by the company and overseen by the FAA, with NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board acting as observers. The results had to be evaluated and approved by FAA officials...
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Justice Department sues SpaceX for alleged hiring discrimination against refugees and others
27Aug By adminNo Comments
Money

Justice Department sues SpaceX for alleged hiring discrimination against refugees and others

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday sued SpaceX, the rocket company founded and run by Elon Musk, for alleged hiring discrimination against refugees and people seeking or already granted asylum.The complaint, filed in an administrative court within the department, asserts that SpaceX wrongly claimed that federal export control laws barred it from hiring anyone but U.S. citizens and permanent residents. As a result, it discouraged refugees and asylum seekers and grantees from applying for jobs at the company, according to the complaint.Export controls typically aim to protect U.S. national security and to further national trade objectives. They bar the shipment of specific technologies, weapons, information and software to specific non-U.S. nations and also limit the sharing or rele...
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Ronan Farrow on the Rule of Elon Musk
24Aug By adminNo Comments
Entertainment

Ronan Farrow on the Rule of Elon Musk

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You ListenIn this week’s magazine, Ronan Farrow has published a major story about the business practices of Elon Musk. Farrow, who has reported extensively on abuses of power for The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how Musk has become an essential yet unofficial part of American governance, holding the keys to the green transition, the space race, and even the war in Ukraine. The reason for this, Farrow explains, is not Musk’s outrageous personality; it’s the structures of neoliberal capitalism that allowed a person like Musk to ascend. Read more by Ronan Farrow on Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, Britney Spears’s conservatorship, and the Israeli surveillance agency Black Cube.
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Viasat reveals problems unfurling huge antenna on powerful new broadband satellite
16Jul By adminNo Comments
Money

Viasat reveals problems unfurling huge antenna on powerful new broadband satellite

A next-generation Viasat communications satellite launched atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on April 30 has run into problems deploying its huge mesh antenna, a key element in the relay station's ability to provide hemispheric access to high-speed internet, company officials said.In a statement posted Wednesday, the company said "an unexpected event occurred during reflector deployment that may materially impact the performance of the ViaSat-3 Americas satellite." An artist's impression of the ViaSat-3 satellite in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the equator with its huge mesh antenna fully deployed. Viasat "Viasat and its reflector provider are conducting ...
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