Lifeboat Foundation

Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk took to Twitter this week to decry the slow and costly pace of U.S. infrastructure projects, and thus a challenge — or boast — was born: The Boring Co. could build a tunnel across the San Francisco Bay far cheaper and far faster than current available estimates.

Musk was pointing to a San Francisco Chronicle editorial favoring a new Transbay Tube for public transportation over another cross-bay bridge to alleviate chronic traffic woes and public-transportation overcrowding in the Bay Area. The editorial cited a starting price of $12 billion for the new tunnel.

Probably about a tenth of the cost and a fifth of the time— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2018

Continue reading “Elon Musk’s latest Boring Co. boast: A San Francisco Bay tunnel at 1/10th the cost” »

When SpaceX launched the world’s biggest rocket ship on Feb. 6, that kind of seemed like a big deal — but not everyone is impressed.

Previewing the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, The Wall Street Journal seemed perplexed. Yes, the Falcon Heavy is big, admitted the Journal. But as a “heavy-lift booster,” it said, it is a product designed to serve a market that’s suffering “significantly eroded commercial demand” and “uncertain commercial prospects.”

The problem, as the Journal (correctly) pointed out, is that thanks to advances in rocketry, electronics, and materials technology, “both national security and corporate satellites continue to get smaller and lighter” (and cheaper).

Continue reading “Could Elon Musk Lose the Satellite Market -- and Win the Solar System?” »

Elon Musk has revealed his personal cryptocurrency holdings.

The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla told Twitter followers that he in fact has never purchased cryptocurrency, and only holds a small amount of Bitcoin gifted by a friend.

Not sure. I let @jack know, but it’s still going. I literally own zero cryptocurrency, apart from .25 BTC that a friend sent me many years ago.

Continue reading “Elon Musk Reveals Personal Crypto Holdings” »

The man who brought the world Teslas can start excavating along the city’s New York Avenue, an early step in his plans to develop a new mode of transportation.

Image: Stratolaunch Billionaires are taking to space the way wistful young men take to the sea in 19th Century novels. Last week, Elon Musk launched his Tesla Roadster at the astroid belt using the world’s most powerful rocket currently in operation. Not to be outdone, Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen also has a big plan (and a big plane) for going to space. In December of last year, the Stratolaunch performed its first taxi at the Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave, CA. While that doesn’t seem terribly exciting, it’s the first step to getting the Stratolaunch, the world’s largest plane eve…

Elon Musk’s company has been working on launching satellite broadband for years. Its first test starts soon.

It is 09:30 a.m. on her ranch in Texas, and we are talking to the 30th Via Satellite Executive of the Year, Gwynne Shotwell about everything from her history at SpaceX, her relationship with its founder and CEO, Elon Musk — the man she still calls “the boss” — and what it means for her to be the recipient of our award in its 30-year anniversary. Shotwell talks honestly, will answer the tough questions, and you feel like it is a genuine conversation, rather than a series of scripted answers that have gone through an entire communications department before you are allowed to be on the phone.

We know SpaceX is a great company. We know they are the “cool kids” of space right now and, while Elon Musk obviously takes a lot of credit for his vision and bravery to come up with SpaceX, in Shotwell he found the perfect executive to run it like a finely oiled machine. In 2016, SpaceX suffered a huge setback when a high-profile test failure led to the loss of the Spacecom satellite Amos 6, making headlines across the world. It is said we learn more about ourselves when we deal with adversity, and this would be the case with Shotwell and SpaceX. She fronted up, and led the team back from this demoralizing setback to unprecedented heights in 2017. She is one of the most admired and respected executives in our industry, and an inspiration for young women around the world. When it came to selecting our 30th Satellite Executive of the Year, there was really only one choice this time around, SpaceX President and COO, Gwynne Shotwell is our Satellite Executive of the Year 2017.

Elon Musk has agreed to build what is being hailed the “world’s largest virtual power plant”, by rolling out solar panels and Tesla batteries to 50,000 homes in South Australia. The scheme, which will be completed over the next four years, will see any excess energy stored in each battery fed back into the grid to provide power to the rest of the state whenever required. The South Australian government claims participating households will generate a total of 250MW of electricity – about half as much energy produced by a typical coal-fired power station. Read more — Elon Musk about to launch…

A so-called ‘Starman,’ which is a life-size mannequin wearing a production version of the SpaceX crew spacesuit; a miniature car created by Hot Wheels to commemorate the Roadster and its primary passenger; and something called an Arch (pronounced “Ark”), which is not so easy to summarily describe.

The Arch on board is a data crystal (sort of like a Jedi Holocron if you’re mad for Star Wars lore) that contains all three books from Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation trilogy. It’s actually a modest amount of data relative to the possibilities of the storage medium – in this case, a quartz silica structure which, using 5D optical storage techniques, can eventually achieve a max storage capacity of 360 terabytes on a disk just 3.75 inches in diameter.

But why shoot a tiny quartz disc into space? Why Foundation, and why aboard the Falcon Heavy, the crowning achievement of Elon Musk’s SpaceX private launch venture thus far?

Continue reading “The special data device SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy sent to orbit is just the start” »