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he first tests of Elon Musk's revolutionary high-speed transport system could begin soon after Hyperloop One, one of 12 companies competing to make the idea a reality, completed its test track. The company has finished work on its 500 metre long testing tunnel, which is situated in the Nevada desert, near Las Vegas, and has a diametre of 3.3 metres. It is expected to run initial trials on the near-supersonic speed train in the first half of this year. Hyperloop One announced the news alongside 11 proposed routes for the super-fast transport, all of which are in the US. The...

Elon Musk announced plans to start digging a traffic-easing tunnel under Los Angeles “in a month or so”, but city planning bodies say he doesn’t yet have permission.The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has been mulling the idea since December, when he revealed his frustrations with congestion in the city. “Traffic is driving me nuts. Am going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging,” he said on Twitter.“It shall be called The Boring Company,” he added. “Boring, it’s what we do.”At the time it wasn’t clear whether he was joking, but today’s announcement suggested he was not. Elon...

Opening his first official week in office, President Donald Trump warned business leaders Monday that he would impose a “substantial border tax” on companies that move their manufacturing out of the United States, while promising unspecified advantages to companies that manufacture domestically. “All you have to do is stay,” he said during a morning meeting in the White House’s Roosevelt Room. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin were among the executives who attended the meeting. The gathering kicked off a jam-packed day for the new president, including an evening reception with lawmakers from both parties and...

In a Trump administration, which is focused on economic prosperity, job creation, and sovereignty, Elon is going to have to shelve some of his progressive ideals that were rejected in this past election and embraced by the very people he could one day employ—-without tax-payer subsidies? Time will tell. Trump doesn’t seem to be the right guy. He doesn’t have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States. —Elon Musk President-elect Donald Trump has put together a strong list of appointees to serve in his new administration. Many of his appointees have been his longest and most...

To be fair, the list is 13 risks long and it’s mostly populism driven. But there is some Elon, as advertised: And note, as Barc’s commods team does, that “Indices are already pricing in record levels of volatility as 2017 begins, and investors are specifically concerned about geopolitical developments.” Finally by way of additional context, and as a reminder that commods did ok in 2016: Hard to disagree with Citi's Matt King – the orderliness of markets recently – even with the bond sell-off – has been striking and strange: pic.twitter.com/wUZppgxjRC — Tracy Alloway (@tracyalloway) January 5, 2017

Twitter was told it was "bounced" from Wednesday's meeting between tech executives and President-elect Donald Trump in retribution for refusing during the campaign to allow an emoji version of the hashtag #CrookedHillary, according to a source close to the situation. Twitter is one of the few major U.S. tech companies not represented at Wednesday afternoon's Trump Tower meeting attended by, among others, Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and Tesla's Elon Musk — an omission all the more striking because of Trump's heavy dependence on the Twitter platform. With some 17.3 million followers of his account, the...

Tesla’s Elon Musk struck back at Robert Murray, chief executive of Murray Energy Corp., after the latter called Tesla “a fraud” in an interview. In a tweet, Musk said the real fraud was denying “climate science” and went on to add that the subsidies Murray spoke against in his interview with CNBC were pennies on the dollar, unlike what Big Coal gets from the government. The reason Murray lashed out at Tesla, which was in an interview with CNBC, was because the company, according to him, had failed to generate a profit despite the subsidies it receives, but he went...

Musk tweeted about the loss of the Falcon 9 hours after the incident, noting that the explosion appeared to originate "around upper-stage oxygen tank" but the cause was "still unknown." SpaceX provided more updates about the incident on Sept. 2. Then, Musk's account went quiet until about 12:30 a.m. EDT this morning (0030 GMT), when he began tweeting actively about the explosion. "Still working on the Falcon fireball investigation. Turning out to be the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had in 14 years," Musk wrote. "Important to note that this happened during a routine filling operation. Engines...

The explosion of a SpaceX rocket last Thursday will have an impact across the space industry, far beyond the losses on the launchpad at Cape Canaveral. An Israeli satellite operator’s deal to sell itself to a Chinese company is imperiled. Planned launches of communications satellites that support international mobile phone service and digital television are delayed and put in doubt. NASA’s cargo deliveries to the International Space Station will probably be disrupted. All of them are customers of the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, whose rocket exploded in Florida. The private space launch company, led by the entrepreneur Elon...

According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the Cape Canaveral mishap was not an explosion but a "fast fire." yes. This seems instant from a human perspective, but it really a fast fire, not an explosion. Dragon would have been fine. On Thursday, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blew up on the launch pad, shaking nearby buildings and spewing smoke into the sky

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk, under pressure after a fatal crash involving one of his electric cars, went on Twitter Sunday to say he’s working on another “Top Secret Tesla Masterplan.” He said he hoped to publish details this week. The tantalizing message echoes an August 2006 blog post, titled “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me),” in which Musk unveiled the cars that became the Tesla Model S four-door family car and the Tesla 3 sports sedan. …

In “Our Town” the Pulitzer Prize-winning play authored by Thornton Wilder, one of the characters, Rebecca Gibbs, tells her older brother George about the sick friend of hers, Jane Crofut, who received a strangely-addressed letter from her minister: Jane Crofut The Crofut Farm; Grover’s Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; The Earth; The Solar System; The Universe; The Mind of God. Nearly 80 years after “Our Town” was first performed at McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey, Elon Musk appeared this month at Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The...

The Sunday Times March 19, 2006 Nasa to put man on far side of moon Jonathan Leake , Science Editor NASA, the American space agency, has unveiled plans for one of the largest rockets ever built to take a manned mission to the far side of the moon. It will ferry a mother ship and lunar lander into Earth orbit to link up with a smaller rocket carrying the crew. Once united they will head for the moon where the larger ship will remain in orbit after launching the lunar lander and crew. The design emerged during a space science...

Dream on you loopians, just don't expect me to fund your crazy ideas! There is a new company, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) that intends to revolutionize high speed continental travel. It’s CEO, Dirk Ahlborn, recently announced an agreement with the Slovakian government to build Hyperloops from Vienna, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia, and from Bratislava to Budapest, Hungary. Its competitor, Hyperloop One, recently tested an open air propulsion test of a vehicle with its “Blade Runner” test rig. The Japanese “bullet trains” going at 200 mph are like snails in comparison. The new hyper-things are envisaged to do about 760 mph....

A new report suggests that young educated South Africans plan to leave the country to work abroad, rather than plough their knowledge back into the local economy. The report comes from PPS, an insurance, investment, healthcare and financial planning specialist for graduate professionals. The company’s latest Student Confidence Index (SCI), conducted among over 1,500 South African students, revealed that 54% of the respondents plan to move abroad for work purposes in the next five years following their graduation. It follows a report published by New World Wealth, which showed that white millionaire numbers have decreased dramatically in SA – from...

Atheists are embracing Gods and creationism Elon Musk, the billionaire inventor and entrepreneur, the twenty-first century’s answer to Howard Hughes, believes we are living in a computer simulation. The chances that we exist in ‘base reality’ are billions to one, he says.Last week he told an audience of Silicon Valley tech evangelists: ‘Forty years ago we had Pong. Like, two rectangles and a dot. That was what games were.’‘Now, 40 years later, we have photorealistic, 3D simulations with millions of people playing simultaneously, and it’s getting better every year. Soon we’ll have virtual reality, augmented reality.’‘If you assume any rate...

U.S. officials appear poised to make history by approving the first private space mission to go beyond Earth's orbit, according to people familiar with the details. The government's endorsement would eliminate the largest regulatory hurdle to plans by Moon Express, a relatively obscure space startup, to land a roughly 20-pound package of scientific hardware on the Moon sometime next year. It also would provide the biggest federal boost yet for unmanned commercial space exploration and, potentially, the first in an array of for-profit ventures throughout the solar system. The expected decision, said the people familiar with the details, is expected...

The nation cannot afford to simply put all of that critical intelligence gathering “on hold” for several years No matter which party wins the White House in November our next Commander in Chief will inherit a world far more unstable than at any point in recent history. From the rapid expansion of ISIS, to recent nuclear tests in North Korea, to the many problems in Afghanistan and Iraq, the very real threats to America and its allies have never been more evident. Roughly 150,000 U.S. troops are stationed in more than 150 countries around the world and they are the...

"Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute's annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering. The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended. So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory...

The outcome of dueling versions of the National Defense Authorization Act could determine how much the U.S. lines Russia's pockets before what some lawmakers hope is a speedy transition to a domestically produced rocket engine. The RD-180 engine is built by NPO Energomash, a manufacturer mostly owned by the Russian Federation. It's used in the Atlas V rocket, built by Lockheed Martin and Boeing's United Launch Alliance. The House version of the NDAA approves all of the 18 requested engines. In the Senate, where there has been a lengthy battle over buying from Russia, the NDAA authorizes nine engines. Either...