Lifeboat Foundation

Elon Musk said on Monday that he’s testing out SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet on his private jet.

“I am testing Starlink on the plane. Some polishing needed, but it’s working quite well,” Musk tweeted. He also wrote in the Twitter post that he works while traveling on the jet.

His tweet was part of a Twitter thread about SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell defending Musk, following sexual misconduct claims involving a flight attendant working on the billionaire’s plane, which Insider first reported on Thursday.

SpaceX announced this week that it is launching a Starlink internet service option designed with RV owners in mind.

The company is rolling out an optional $25 monthly fee for customers who want to relocate their satellite dishes, CNBC’s Michael Sheetz first reported. The extra cost will be added on to the Starlink base service price of $110 per month and will be billed in one-month increments. The users will be able to pause and restart their service at any time.

However, the company says that the internet service will not be active while the RV is in motion and will be limited to an “as-needed basis at any destination where Starlink provides active coverage,” according to a press release.

The United States’ reliance on China for rare earth elements could soon come to an end, thanks to a new process that pulls the valuable metals from the ash left over when we burn coal.

Why it matters: The 17 rare earth elements aren’t actually rare — they’re all more common than gold, and one is more abundant than copper. But getting our hands on them is difficult because they’re widely dispersed in Earth’s crust and hard to extract through mining.

Continue reading “‘Fly ash’ contains rare earth elements needed for electronics” »

“Spacecraft antenna designs are challenging due to their conflicting requirements for high gain, wide bandwidth, and low weight,” Mitsubishi announced. “High gain and wide bandwidth necessarily require a large aperture, but economical orbital deployment conventionally dictates that designs be lightweight and small enough to fit or fold inside a launch vehicle or satellite deployment mechanism.”

Mitsubishi also claimed that, with its new technology, ‘additive-manufacturing in space has now become possible.’ However, it’s worth noting that the International Space Station already features a 3D printer launched to the orbital station back in 2014. The European Space Agency also announced last year it would experiment with 3D printing in space using scrap metals from the Moon.

Still, the company’s new method has the potential to reduce the cost of satellite launches significantly, and it could pave the way for the construction of other vital parts for future space missions.

The sunrise SpaceX Starlink launch included dazzling views of the sun and moon.

A stunning SpaceX Starlink satellite fleet launch on May 18 included amazing views of the moon and sunrise.

In over six decades since the first satellite, the mode of communication hasn’t changed. Now, this technology will herald a new era of secure, faster connections.

“there’s a new record to report: a new solar cell has hit 39.5 percent efficiency ”.

Scientists keep on pushing the efficiency of solar panels higher and higher, and there’s a new record to report: a new solar cell has hit 39.5 percent efficiency under the standard 1-sun global illumination conditions.

That 1-sun marker is simply a standardized way of measuring a fixed amount of sunlight, and almost 40 percent of that radiation can now be converted into electricity. The previous record for this type of solar panel material was 39.2 percent efficiency.

Continue reading “New Quantum Well Solar Cell Just Set a World Record For Efficiency” »

Len RosenFalcon 9 has been a spectacular success for SpaceX. The purpose of the Falcon Heavy is likely to be superseded by Starship which likely means the Heavy will be discontinued sooner than later.

Eric KlienAuthor.

Len Rosen Actually, Starship will rapidly grab all of the Falcon 9 payloads, except for humans which will be much slower to transition. In fact, it looks like the first orbital Starship launch will try to launch some Starlink satellites.

Continue reading “U.S. health officials say a third of people live in areas with so much virus they should consider masks indoors” »

The reason the Falcon Heavy hasn’t flown in about 3 years is that the Falcon 9 ended up having about twice the capacity that was planned for and so the Falcon 9 took away many missions from the Falcon Heavy. (There will finally be some more Falcon Heavy missions later this year…)

Anyway, SpaceX has again increased the capacity of the Falcon 9. They have changed certain timings during flight like igniting the MVac engine a few seconds earlier than on other missions and are separating the fairing closer to stage separation to shed dead weight earlier in the flight.

Continue reading “SpaceX launches Starlink 4-15 mission, expands booster fleet” »