Lifeboat Foundation

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Space X and Tesla founder Elon Musk has a vision for colonising Mars, based on a big rocket, nuclear explosions and an infrastructure to transport millions of people there. This was seen as highly ambitious but technically challenging in several ways. Planetary protection rules and the difficulties of terraforming (making the planet hospitable by, for example, warming it up) and dealing with the harsh radiation were quoted as severe obstacles.

Undeterred, Musk took a first step towards his aim in February this year with the launch of a Tesla roadster car into an orbit travelling beyond Mars on the first Falcon Heavy rocket. This dramatically illustrated the increasing launch capability for future missions made available by partnerships between commercial and government agencies.

I think we have finally entered the rapid exponential runaway phase of the technological Singularity. As we’ve already seen in the last year year-and-a-half, we are in an era of unprecedented chaos and innovation. The invention of multifidus AI is, of course, the driver of the singularity and as we move forward people like Musk will become ever more importance to the future of our species.

Having a president like Donald Trump can I think, be taken as just another symptom of this period of time. It might not seem like Donald Trump has anything to do with the singularity. He, PERSONALLY, doesn’t, really. But the methods of his madness are the salient data point here. His use of Twitter VERY quickly changed the way millions of people communicate. It changed how they view the world, and their place within it. They have fallen to theiir knees in hypocritically and ENTIRELY UNFORGIVEABLE SUBMISSION to the SICKLY malevolent STUPIDITY that is embodied in the orange, spoiled meat named Donald J Trump. The Right has finally drunk the Kool-Aid that they’ve been serving everyone else for years and found it to be most unpleasantly bitter. They have been bitten by the hand that feeds them.

Tesla is cutting back on plastic with its new car delivery system. On Monday, CEO Elon Musk shared the story of how he personally delivered a Tesla Model 3 to Devin Scott in Los Angeles, using a new method where instead of arriving in plastic wrap, the car is delivered with an enclosed trailer directly from factory to home.

The new method is a marked change from the previous process, where several cars would ship out on a truck to a delivery hub and move out later. It means less packaging, and potentially fewer steps in getting some of the approximately 7,000 cars produced per week into the hands of buyers. Tesla produces around seven times more cars per week than it did when the Model 3 first started production a year ago, and this rapid expansion has led to big changes in the company’s processes to fulfill the 400,000 or so $1,000 reservations for the Model 3. In a March 2017 earnings call, Musk said his goal was to make deliveries “more streamlined, less paperwork, less bureaucracy.”

Elon Musk’s rocket company launched the final iteration of its workhorse rocket carrying the biggest communications satellite ever.

It was a hyperloop hat trick by a team of German engineering students at the third annual SpaceX pod competition on Sunday. WARR Hyperloop from the Technical University of Munich took home the top prize — and set a new record — with their self-propelled pod reaching a top speed of 284 mph (457 km/h).

WARR Hyperloop was one of three finalists to participate in the competition. The teams were tasked with developing a pod to travel down the 1.2-kilometer (0.75-mile) tube, as part of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s vision for a futuristic, high-speed transportation system. The pod that reached the maximum speed would be crowned the winner. The only other requirement was that all pods be self-propelled. In addition to WARR, the other qualifying teams were Delft University from the Netherlands and EPF Loop from Switzerland.

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“I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”-Elon Musk.

The super fast, futuristic transportation was first envisioned by Elon Musk in 2013. Now it’s coming to China.

The Block 5 is the only Falcon 9 the company will fly from now on.

Early Sunday morning, SpaceX is slated to launch its second Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket — the final and most powerful version of the vehicle the company plans to make. After launch, SpaceX will attempt to land the vehicle on one of its autonomous drone ships in the Atlantic. And landings should become fairly routine now, as all of SpaceX’s missions will utilize the Block 5 from now on.

Continue reading “Starting this weekend, SpaceX is about to land a whole lot more rockets” »

Starting July 22, SpaceX will have the chance to further cement itself as the best wide receiver in the aerospace game. Elon Musk’s rocket company is scheduled to make a total of five recoveries in less than two weeks, including three Falcon 9 autonomous spaceport done ships recoveries, a rocket fairing recovery, and a Dragon capsule retrieval.

This will require SpaceX’s fleet of recovery vessels to kick into overdrive. Both of its drone ships — Of Course I Still Love You in the Atlantic Ocean and Just Read The Instructions in the Pacific — will be serving as a landing platform for two separate Falcon 9 rockets. While two boats, including the newly upgraded Mr. Steven and NRC Quest will be tasked with bringing back a Falcon 9 fairing and the Dragon Capsule, respectively.

SpaceX prides itself on pioneering the use of reusable rocket parts and space vessels to make space travel more affordable than it has ever been. These five recoveries will put the company’s most iconic retrieval systems to the test.

Continue reading “SpaceX Is About to Tackle One of Its Biggest Recovery Challenges Yet” »