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Category: Elon Musk

Internet on Mars!!

Elon Musk’s ‘Starlink’ is currently providing services in parts of the US and Canada and has plans to enter India by the end of 2021. Tech mogul Elon Musk, via his recent tweet, revealed that his satellite broadband company ‘Starlink’ will extend its services to Mars. Musk informed about this idea while replying to a user’s tweet last week, as per reports by The Science Times. Currently, the broadband internet provider is undergoing public beta testing in parts of the US and Canada.

Starlink will strengthen Starship’s communication Musk’s idea came to light when a user asked if Starlink will be deployed between Earth and Mars to strengthen communication for Starship is SpaceX’s ambitious project that is being touted as the vehicle that will ferry cargo and crew to the red planet and back in the coming years. In response to the user’s tweet, Musk amplified the excitement with one word, “yeah”.

Yeah

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reiterated his support for terraforming Mars, as part of his long-term goal to make humanity into a multi-planetary species.

On Sunday, the day after SpaceX’s all-civilian mission to orbit returned to Earth, the CEO took to Twitter to suggest that he’s still got his sights set on the long-term goal of making Mars a more Earth-like world. In response to a post about Mars temperatures, which claimed the average surface temperature is around minus 63 degrees Celsius (minus 82 degrees Fahrenheit), Musk responded: “Needs a little warming up.”

The comments hint at Musk’s goal, stated multiple times over the years, that he would like to transform the planet’s atmosphere to make it more hospitable to human life. It forms part of his overall goal with SpaceX: reduce spaceflight costs, use it to establish permanent human presences elsewhere in space, and transform humanity into a multi-planetary species.

In the wake of the Inspiration4 mission, it’s a reminder that Musk wants to do more than send private citizens into space for orbital trips.

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk helped achieve the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital fundraising goal of the Inspiration4 spaceflight, just hours after his company returned the crew from orbit.

The main goal of the Inspiration4 mission, which launched on Wednesday and splashed down on Saturday, was to raise $200 million for St. Jude.

Inspiration4 commander Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur who purchased the flight from SpaceX, donated $100 million personally to St. Jude. The Inspiration4 mission had raised another $60.2 million in donations, before Musk pledged to contribute $50 million himself – pushing the campaign’s total raised to more than $210 million.

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This glass dome is where the toilet is, crew member Jared Isaacman, who purchased the four seats for the mission, told Insider’s Morgan McFall-Johnsen in July.

SpaceX CEO Musk tweeted on Thursday that he had spoken with Isaacman, Hayley Arceneaux, Sian Proctor, and Chris Sembroski, the four people on board.

“All is well,” Musk said in his Twitter post. He didn’t mention what was discussed.

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Get ready.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will use personal driving data to determine whether owners who have paid for its controversial “Full Self-Driving” software can access the latest beta version that promises more automated driving functions.

Musk tweeted late Thursday night that the FSD Beta v10.0.1 software update, which has already been pushed out to a group of select owners, will become more widely available starting September 24.

Owners who have paid for FSD, which currently costs $10,000, will be offered access to the beta software through a “beta request button.” Drivers who select the beta software will be asked for permission to access their driving behavior using Tesla’s insurance calculator, Musk wrote in a tweet.

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Going to hear the SpaceX fans complaining about this but it actually makes perfect sense. SpaceX is already “deep into development” of the vehicle they plan on using for a lander therefore they don’t get as much money as a group that hasn’t started on development yet. Keep in mind that NASA is well aware that SpaceX is already using their money to develop Starship and SuperHeavy so there is no real need to ‘double-down’ on taxpayer development funding to a company that is already spending that money on that development.

One need look no further than the “race” between SpaceX and Boeing over Commercial Crew. Dragon had been in development since 2004 (and funded by NASA since 2006 or cargo and 2010 for crew) while Boeing only started development of Starliner in 2010. SpaceX took 4 years longer than planned for the Cargo version, (2006 scheduled but didn’t fly till 2010) and a full decade after that using the same basic design to fly crewed (2020) Boeing’s Starliner, even if it doesn’t fly this year is still ahead of SpaceX’s development.

It should be rather telling that SpaceX got the lowest award of all the contracts. Starship has always been the ‘outlier’ of the lander designs.

Both Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will design moon landers that NASA can use to regularly send astronauts to the moon.

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A Shortfall of Gravitas: SpaceX’s new drone ship detailed

The ship supported its first mission on August 29. This was the 23rd Commercial Resupply Services mission, the latest in a series of launches for NASA that sends cargo to the International Space Station.

A Shortfall of Gravitas is a notable upgrade over previous ships. SpaceX explained during the mission launch livestream that it improves over its predecessors with a fully autonomous operation procedure. That means it can travel to sea, find its position, receive the rocket, grab the rocket with the “octograbber” robot and return it to land — all autonomously.

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Tesla may already have a lot of projects on its plate, but the company still appears to be exploring other projects for its product lineup in the future. Among these is a “Robo Van” that’s optimized to transport people with disabilities, among others.

References to the Tesla “Robo Van” were reportedly shared by CEO Elon Musk during the company’s recent all-hands meeting, according to individuals familiar with the topics covered in the event. Apart from the “Robo Van” being capable of transporting large numbers of people, Musk reportedly highlighted that the upcoming vehicle would be designed to address the needs of passengers with disabilities.

This suggests that the Tesla “Robo Van” would be optimized for easy ingress and egress, making it perfect for passengers who may have difficulty getting into conventional vehicles. Features such as active air suspension, similar to the one used in the Cybertruck, would be particularly useful for disabled passengers as well, as they would make it easier for items such as wheelchairs to be loaded and unloaded from the Tesla “Robo Van.”

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