SpaceX founder Elon Musk has famously said he’d like to die on Mars — “just not on impact.” But where will humans live in space? That was the focus of a good-natured debate that took place at this week’s “New Space Age” conference at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.
Chris Lewicki, president and CEO of Redmond, Wash.-based Planetary Resources, took up the case for going to asteroids and Mars. Seattle-area entrepreneur Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Florida-based Moon Express, spoke for the moon.
Space tourism will take-off in 2018. As the race between spaceflight companies Virgin Galactic and SpaceX heats up, those who can afford it will be able to travel to low Earth orbit and possibly even around the moon.
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In late 2018, tourists will be heading into space and there is a race on to get them there. Virgin Galactic will at last take paying customers beyond the stratosphere. But their efforts might be eclipsed by SpaceX, a company planning to send two tourists around the Moon. Taking them farther into space than any human since 1972.
There is a new breed of would-be astronauts for whom the sky is no limit. But it is not in everyone’s reach. Multi-millionaire entrepreneur, Per Wimmer will be one of the first tourists to go into space with private company, Virgin Galactic.
If it all goes to plan, in 2018, Virgin Galactic will launch Mr Wimmer to the edge of the atmosphere where he’ll be able to look back down on Earth.
But Elon Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, plans to go one step further on a flyby loop around the Moon. Only 24 astronauts have ever made the almost 240,000-mile voyage to Earth’s nearest neighbour.
Elon Musk released this weekend the first image of the Boring Company’s new tunnel under Los Angeles and also expanded on the company’s plans for future segments of the project.
Sophia is Hanson Robotics’ most advanced robot. After receiving her citizenship, she was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin in Riyadh. During the course of her interview, she took a dig at Elon Musk and Hollywood movies for portraying the artificial intelligence in a questionable light.
One man not among Musk’s critics is Scott Kelly, a retired astronaut who set the record in 2015 for total accumulated days in space, during the single longest mission by an American.
“When Elon Musk said he was going to launch his rocket and then land the first stage on a barge, I thought he was crazy,” Kelly told “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “And then he did it. I’m not going to ever doubt what he says, ever again.”
Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s announcement last week accelerating plans for manned flights to Mars ratchets up political and public relations pressure on NASA’s efforts to reach the same goal.
With Musk publicly laying out a much faster schedule than NASA — while contending his vision is less expensive and could be financed primarily with private funds — a debate unlike any before is shaping up over the direction of U.S. space policy.
On Friday, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that the company was halfway done building the battery bank that will become the world’s biggest battery once it’s complete. Musk made the announcement at a party overlooking the project’s construction, ABC News Australia reported.
Tesla is building the 129-MWh battery with French energy company Neoen. The battery will be draw energy from Neoen’s Hornsdale wind farm that’s 142 miles north of Adelaide. The electricity will be delivered to South Australians during peak grid times to reduce the number of blackouts in the area, which are frequent in summer months.
“The system is a big battery, a battery big enough to power 50,000 houses — the biggest in the world,” Neoen global COO Romain Desrousseaux previously told Business Insider.
