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SpaceX’s announcement that they will launch two tourists on a trip around the moon has captured imaginations with renewed speculation about the future of space travel and accessibility to the beyond.

“We are excited to announce that SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission,” Musk wrote in their announcement. “Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration.”

However, it really is not fair to a number of other companies that are revolutionizing space travel all the same but don’t have the substantial resources or notoriety of Elon Musk’s gargantuan company. Musk’s celebrity status makes his every tweet a news story (not totally unlike, but in many ways extremely unlike, the newest US president). With that sort of figure, it is hard to capture people’s attention if you are running one of SpaceX’s “pretenders” and competitors. The Hawthorne, Cali company not only operates its own mission services using rockets it built itself, but also sells those rockets to other launch providers.

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In Brief

  • Yesterday, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said that his private spaceflight company would have a notable announcement today at 4pm EST (1pm GMT).
  • It seems that humans are going back to the Moon. Here’s what you need to know about this new revelation and what it means in relation to humanity’s journey into the cosmos.

Rocket science isn’t easy. Ask any engineer. Rocket science isn’t cheap. Just ask NASA. Fortunately, in recent years, a number of commercial spaceflight companies have stepped up to the plate in order to help national space agencies extend their reach into the final frontier.

Innovative companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have accelerated the development of reusable rockets exponentially. In so doing, they have dramatically reduced the cost of leaving our pale blue dot, improving both our ability to explore the cosmos and scientists’ capacity to conduct research beyond Earth.

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“The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining.” — Stephen Hawking.

Automation is inevitable. But we still have time to take action and help displaced workers.

Automation is accelerating. The software powering these robots becomes more powerful every day. We can’t stop it. But we can adapt to it.

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Pilot-less Flying Taxis: If you head to Dubai this summer, you could be one of the few people to actually try out a flying pilot-less taxi. The 184 has one passenger, eight propellers, four arms and NO pilot. Would you be willing to go for a ride?

Boring Company: Elon Musk posted on Twitter in December that he was tired of sitting in traffic and said he wanted to bore a hole under the freeways to alleviate it. It looks like he was serious, because he is now drilling test holes in the SpaceX parking lot!

Each week, we gather a round table of tech experts from the Digital Trends staff, along with the occasional celebrity guest, to discuss all things tech. Topics range from the big tech stories of the week to predicting the future, all while maintaining a somewhat civil decorum.

At 2:45 pm Pacific we answer your questions live.

Please subscribe and share Trends with Benefits and send in your questions to [email protected]. We also broadcast the show live on YouTube every Thursday at 2:30 p.m. Pacific.

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Excellent article in Wired this morning. My novel “The Transhumanist Wager” quoted quite a bit to add context to some of Elon Musk’s statements: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/elon-musk-humans-must-become-cyborgs #transhumanism


The Tesla and SpaceX founder warned that a future where AI is smarter than us will be ‘dangerous’ and we must all become cyborgs to survive.

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Wish he & a couple of others would join this ranks that others are on which makes way more sense plus benefits the masses tremendously. Musk needs to join others in their work to enhance humans via Quantum Biosystems as this work is already showing signs of success across multiple areas such as anti-aging, disease elimination, intelligence & communications, security, reduction in costs of healthcare & social programs, advancements in new creative innovations in technology & medicine, new industry new growth/ economic expansion, elimination of starvation, etc.


How can humans stay relevant in an age of artificial intelligence? Elon Musk thinks cyborgs are the answer.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO discussed the need for a “merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence” during a talk on Monday at the World Government Summit in Dubai, CNBC reported.

One of the main advantages computers have over humans is the speed at which they can send out information, Musk said. While humans are limited by the speed of their typing, a computer can send out information at “a trillion bits per second,” Musk said. As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more advanced, humans will also need to evolve to remain relevant, he added.

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