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Elon Musk spoke at The Mars Society on making Starlink for Mars and Moonship on October 17, 2020 and highlights (recap) are here. Within this online conference Elon announced many interesting things. Self sustaining city on Mars is the core aim for Elon Musk's SpaceX and Starship spacecraft prototype. Elon Musk speaks that humanity have to made self sustaining city on Mars before the World War III start. The goal is to put enough people to Mars and enough tonnage. Metane is the general propellant. When the Starship will make stratosphere flight is currently secret. Elon said that Starship will...

In recent weeks, the media landscape has been awash with stories declaring the beginning of the end of the age of hydrocarbons in America and around the world. The facts on the ground, however, paint a different story. As of this year, renewable generation accounted for only 17.5% of the US’ energy mix. While Deloitte predicts this number will grow to just shy of 50% by 2050, it would be naïve to assume that fossil fuels won’t continue to play a significant role in our lives for the foreseeable future. The road to the energy system of the future is...

Speaking on the New York Times opinion podcast Sway, Musk told host Kara Swisher that he and his family would not be taking a coronavirus vaccine because he doesn't believe the virus poses a serious enough risk to their health. “I’m not at risk, neither are my kids,” Musk said. Musk said sweeping restrictions on movement and business enacted due to the coronavirus had “diminished" his "faith in humanity." The entrepreneur said that instead of sweeping lockdowns, governments should focus on isolating those most at risk while allowing the rest of society to continue with normal life. Musk told Fisher...

Two years ago, planetary scientists reported the discovery of a large saltwater lake under the ice at Mars’s south pole, a finding that was met with excitement and some scepticism. Now, researchers say they’ve confirmed the presence of that lake — and found three more. The discovery, reported on 28 September in Nature Astronomy1, was made using radar data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) orbiting Mars Express spacecraft. It follows the detection of a single subsurface lake in the same region in 2018 — which, if confirmed, would be the first body of liquid water ever detected on the...

Tesla Inc. unveiled battery innovations and increased efficiencies that appeared to underwhelm investors late Tuesday at its much anticipated “Battery Day.” Tesla stock’s TSLA, -8.89%, which had gained more than 4% after an upbeat post-shareholder-meeting presentation, turned south as soon as Chief Executive Elon Musk said that some of the innovations showcased at the event were “close to working” and some three years away from fruition. Shares fell as much as 7.6% in Tuesday’s after-hours session, but have pared some gains to trade down 6.0% in Wednesday’s premarket session. “It does work but not [yet] with a high yield,” Musk...

The two dozen tech geniuses who endorsed Joe Biden in a recent New York Times letter showed an obliviousness all too typical of the industry. Biden and running mate Kamala Harris “listen to experts before setting public policy,” they claim — which evidently means they’ll favor the tech industry’s preferences when it comes to immigration policy. The 24 winners of the Turing Award, aka the Nobel Prize of programming, don’t run the Big Tech companies. But they clearly join in the industry’s upset over H-1B visas, which normally allow for the recruitment of immigrants with specialized skills — until President...

Elon Musk, head of SpaceX, has announced via Twitter that the company's SN8 rocket will take a test flight sometime next week. The plan is for the rocket is to soar up to 60,000 feet (18,300 meters) and then return to Earth in a controlled landing. SN8 is one in a line of SpaceX's Starships that are predecessors to vehicles for missions to the moon and Mars. SN5 and SN6 recently completed tests of 500 feet each, which the company calls short hops, before returning to Earth. They were meant to test the integrity of the steel walls of...

Recently, SpaceX has completed short, 150 meter (just under 500 feet) test flights of two earlier Starship prototypes, SN5 and SN6 – and SN8, which is currently set to be done construction “in about a week” according to Musk will have “flaps & nosecone” and ultimately is intended for a much higher altitude test launch. The prototypes that SpaceX has flown and landed for its so-called ‘short-hop’ tests over the past few weeks have been full-sized, but with a simulated weight installed on the top in place of the actual domed nosecone that will perch atop the final production Starship...

Elon Musk test-drove the ID.3 when he made a final stopover to meet with one of his biggest competitors, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess. Musk also inspected the ID.4 electric SUV that Volkswagen will launch later this month. Before Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk returned to the US after a three-day visit to Germany, he made a final stopover to meet with one of his biggest competitors - Volkswagen AG CEO Herbert Diess. The two auto executives met at a small airport in Braunschweig for about two hours on Thursday evening and Musk test-drove VW’s ID.3 electric-car, according to...

Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk are no strangers to critics, and in the past, YouTube personality Steven Crowder of the “Change My Mind” series fame has counted himself among them. However, a search for the best Autopilot functionality to help his wife’s recent health issues led the conservative comedian to reconsider the merits of the all-electric carmaker’s products. “It’s not even close… It’s pretty damn cool. It is so fun to drive,” he expressed matter-of-factly on Tuesday’s Louder with Crowder episode. “That wasn’t the case back when I had a friend who had a Prius… [The Tesla] is more...

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk says that while his plan to establish a self-sustaining Mars colony may have slipped behind schedule, he still hopes to see Starship’s first orbital flight test in 2021. However, he warned those going there might not make it back. He said: “I want to emphasise that this is a very hard and dangerous, difficult thing, not for the faint of heart,” he added. “Good chance you’ll die, it’s going to be tough going, but it will be pretty glorious if it works out.”

Something's stirring over at Tesla. The company's highly anticipated Battery Day is just on the horizon, and ahead of the event, CEO Elon Musk shared some insight into energy density via Twitter. Replying to a Twitter thread surrounding the possibility of an electric airplane, Musk said batteries with 400 watt hours per kilogram are highly likely in the next three to four years. And not just one-off units, either, but mass produced batteries with long lifecycles, too. This type of energy density could provide 50% more energy density compared to today's batteries, noting today's batteries used in the Tesla Model...

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has heaped praise on China's 'smart, hardworking' people when it comes to manufacturing electric vehicles and says 'entitled' and 'complacent' Americans are now taking things for granted. In an interview with the Automotive News podcast, the 49-year-old billionaire specifically criticized New York and California, which are two states that have given his businesses tax breaks and other government help. When asked his thoughts on China being a global electric vehicle strategy leader, Musk said: 'China rocks in my opinion.' 'The energy in China is great. People there, there's like a lot of smart, hard...

Back in April, according to Space News, a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report assessing NASA's major programs put the estimated development cost of SLS at $8.75 billion and the ground infrastructure, called Exploration Ground Systems (EGS), at $2.33 billion. (Both figures are estimates from January, which were only published in April.) The new figures represent slight increases over the GAO estimates. But NASA is more likely comparing the new numbers to its baseline 2014 estimates for the SLS and EKG programs. According to Space News, SLS was then expected to cost $7.02 billion and EGS $1.84 billion; the new...

It’s not the first, but will it be the one to gain momentum? Among tech billionaire Elon Musk’s many projects is a smallish one called Neuralink, which is working on brain-computer interfacing. Last week, Musk released a video demonstrating Neuralink’s current status, in the form of a chip implanted in the brain of a domestic pig. So how big a deal is this? Chips implanted in animal brains are not particularly new; electrodes attached to brains in order to monitor their activity have been around for decades. Many older systems enabled physical actions with brain activity alone. In other words,...

Tech mogul Elon Musk unveiled his latest foray into science fiction Friday night: a brain chip implant to allow people who are paralyzed to operate technology, such as smartphones or robotic limbs, with their thoughts. "I think it's going to blow your minds," Musk said. "It's like a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires." But the coin-sized chips, developed by Musk's secretive startup Neuralink, are a ways off from being useful to humans. Friday's livestreamed YouTube demonstration was on a pig named Gertrude, who Musk said had a brain chip implanted two months earlier.

Science fiction is rapidly becoming fact as 59-year-old scientist Dr Peter Scott-Morgan tries to cheat death and battle muscle-wasting motor neurone disease by becoming a cyborg A scientist is taking a leaf out of sci-fi novels as he embarks on a mission to transform himself into a real-life human cyborg. In 2017, 59-year-old scientist Dr Peter Scott-Morgan was given the devastated news he had the muscle-wasting motor neurone disease – similar to that of Stephen Hawking. Instead of accepting the diagnosis as a death sentence, Peter wants to use it as the motivation to transform himself with hi-tech "upgrades". He...

Musk demoed the company’s brain-computer interface technology on Friday in live pigs. He described it as “like a Fitbit in your skull.” Musk said the Neuralink can help fight blindness, memory loss, insomnia, and other medical conditions. lon Musk’s brain-machine interface company, Neuralink, conducted a live demo of its technology on Friday, showing a coin-sized device without wires. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO brought along three pigs, who had varying levels of interest in cooperating. Eventually, the audience was shown real-time neural signals from one of the pigs, which Musk named Gertrude. According to Musk, Gertrude has had the implant...

CarPervert Jonny Smith reminds us that the Volkswagen ID.3 is just the beginning of a brand-new era for Volkswagen... The ID.3 is arguably not incredible to look at, but neither is the Golf. These cars are designed for a global audience of mass-market buyers. It banks on compact, practical, and affordable, which are all keys to adoption. Smith wrote: "The exterior is pleasant, with its side profile being a grower. The space inside is phenomenal, given its dimensions. The layout of the interior is pleasing, however there are more hard plastic surfaces than the equivalent Golfs. An e-Golf probably feels...

United Launch Alliance early Thursday delayed the launch of a triple-core Delta 4-Heavy rocket — the largest launcher in the company’s fleet — until Saturday to allow engineers more time to resolve an issue with a ground pneumatics control system. The launch company planned to fire the Delta 4-Heavy rocket into space at 2:12 a.m. EDT (0612 GMT) Thursday from Cape Canaveral with a classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office, the U.S. government’s spy satellite agency. But the ULA launch team halted the countdown to give technicians time to troubleshoot an issue with a nose cone heater. Ground crews...