The Prometheus League
Breaking News and Updates
- Abolition Of Work
- Ai
- Alt-right
- Alternative Medicine
- Antifa
- Artificial General Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Super Intelligence
- Ascension
- Astronomy
- Atheism
- Atheist
- Atlas Shrugged
- Automation
- Ayn Rand
- Bahamas
- Bankruptcy
- Basic Income Guarantee
- Big Tech
- Bitcoin
- Black Lives Matter
- Blackjack
- Boca Chica Texas
- Brexit
- Caribbean
- Casino
- Casino Affiliate
- Cbd Oil
- Censorship
- Cf
- Chess Engines
- Childfree
- Cloning
- Cloud Computing
- Conscious Evolution
- Corona Virus
- Cosmic Heaven
- Covid-19
- Cryonics
- Cryptocurrency
- Cyberpunk
- Darwinism
- Democrat
- Designer Babies
- DNA
- Donald Trump
- Eczema
- Elon Musk
- Entheogens
- Ethical Egoism
- Eugenic Concepts
- Eugenics
- Euthanasia
- Evolution
- Extropian
- Extropianism
- Extropy
- Fake News
- Federalism
- Federalist
- Fifth Amendment
- Fifth Amendment
- Financial Independence
- First Amendment
- Fiscal Freedom
- Food Supplements
- Fourth Amendment
- Fourth Amendment
- Free Speech
- Freedom
- Freedom of Speech
- Futurism
- Futurist
- Gambling
- Gene Medicine
- Genetic Engineering
- Genome
- Germ Warfare
- Golden Rule
- Government Oppression
- Hedonism
- High Seas
- History
- Hubble Telescope
- Human Genetic Engineering
- Human Genetics
- Human Immortality
- Human Longevity
- Illuminati
- Immortality
- Immortality Medicine
- Intentional Communities
- Jacinda Ardern
- Jitsi
- Jordan Peterson
- Las Vegas
- Liberal
- Libertarian
- Libertarianism
- Liberty
- Life Extension
- Macau
- Marie Byrd Land
- Mars
- Mars Colonization
- Mars Colony
- Memetics
- Micronations
- Mind Uploading
- Minerva Reefs
- Modern Satanism
- Moon Colonization
- Nanotech
- National Vanguard
- NATO
- Neo-eugenics
- Neurohacking
- Neurotechnology
- New Utopia
- New Zealand
- Nihilism
- Nootropics
- NSA
- Oceania
- Offshore
- Olympics
- Online Casino
- Online Gambling
- Pantheism
- Personal Empowerment
- Poker
- Political Correctness
- Politically Incorrect
- Polygamy
- Populism
- Post Human
- Post Humanism
- Posthuman
- Posthumanism
- Private Islands
- Progress
- Proud Boys
- Psoriasis
- Psychedelics
- Putin
- Quantum Computing
- Quantum Physics
- Rationalism
- Republican
- Resource Based Economy
- Robotics
- Rockall
- Ron Paul
- Roulette
- Russia
- Sealand
- Seasteading
- Second Amendment
- Second Amendment
- Seychelles
- Singularitarianism
- Singularity
- Socio-economic Collapse
- Space Exploration
- Space Station
- Space Travel
- Spacex
- Sports Betting
- Sportsbook
- Superintelligence
- Survivalism
- Talmud
- Technology
- Teilhard De Charden
- Terraforming Mars
- The Singularity
- Tms
- Tor Browser
- Trance
- Transhuman
- Transhuman News
- Transhumanism
- Transhumanist
- Transtopian
- Transtopianism
- Ukraine
- Uncategorized
- Vaping
- Victimless Crimes
- Virtual Reality
- Wage Slavery
- War On Drugs
- Waveland
- Ww3
- Yahoo
- Zeitgeist Movement
-
Prometheism
-
Forbidden Fruit
-
The Evolutionary Perspective
Category Archives: Elon Musk
Elon Musk Has News That Will Delight Tesla Fans – TheStreet
Posted: February 24, 2022 at 2:54 am
Tesla (TSLA) - Get Tesla Inc Reporthas relocated its headquarters from Fremont, California to Austin, Texas.
Elon Musk, its charismatic and whimsical CEO is also now domiciled there. In a few weeks, Texas and Austin, in particular, should undoubtedly adorn themselves with the colors of Tesla and above all display its logo, which is in the form of a capital T.
The billionaire has just lifted the veil on the date of Tesla giant party, the "GigaFest", in its new factory in Austin. It's like a sort of official inauguration day for this gigafactory and a full-scale seduction operation.
Musk is meeting Tesla fans on April 7, he posted on Twitter, responding to a question from a car enthusiast from the automaker.
However, he got confused because he first spoke of April 1, before correcting himself almost four hours later. To wonder if he didn't remember that April 1st was April Fool's Day. Therefore, his fans and Tesla customers might have thought it was a joke.
"Wow,@elonmusk, Model Y coming out of GigaTexas looks so amazing, do y'all have a date for the GigaFest yet?" the fan asked the billionaire.
"April 1st,"Musk responded.
Then, he corrected himself. "Actually, April 7th."
According to an exchange between the CEO and another fan, guests in this high mass will receive an invitation card. Musk, however, did not indicate how the guests would be selected or when the invitations would be sent out. In Germany, guests have to register online before receiving their invitation.
"Will invites be sent out," the user asked.
"Yes," responded Musk.
These cryptic announcements were enough to create excitement on the social network. Many users saying they hope to be among the lucky ones. This is one of Elon Musk's skills that he was able to deploy in Tesla: creating and arousing desire and desire.
Giving the impression that when you drive in a Tesla car you are living a unique experience. You only have to look at Tesla's market capitalization to measure its enormous success. The manufacturer of electric vehicles created in 2003 has a valuation of nearly $900 billion. No other automotive company comes close to these numbers.
In this case, Musk, whose Twitter account is followed by more than 74 million people at the time of writing, succeeded in three posts to make this upcoming GigaFest, an event not to be missed this year for all Tesla admirers. He succeeded in creating this fear of missing out.
"Ready to go!!Does this earn me an invite? I'll drive my Plaid X and give launch rides!" a claimed owner of a Tesla vehicle.
Another user was wondering if there is a seating limit: 'What is the cap on the number in attendance?" the user asked.
GigaFest is expected to draw a wave of Tesla fans to Austin in what promises to be a celebration of the T-logo brand. The manufacturer had given a foretaste by organizing a similar event on October 9, in its Berlin factory, still under construction, and Tesla is still waiting for the permit to start producing vehicles there.
We can imagine that the company sees things even bigger for Austin where production has just started. And there weren't similar tensions in Austin as Tesla encountered in Berlin.
The U.S is also, along with China, one of the most important markets for the brand. In addition, Tesla will undoubtedly not fail to take advantage of this event to send a message to its rivals (GM (GM) - Get General Motors Company Report, Ford (F) - Get Ford Motor Company ReportRivian (RIVN) - Get Rivian Automotive, Inc. Class A Report, who all promise to steal its throne.
Tesla is likely to show visitors at the open house its 4680 cell structural batteries, which will be used in the Model Y SUV in Germany. These batteries will inaugurate a new platform, basically a new technique.
The two ends of the Model Y will be connected by the battery pack, which will also serve as a connecting element. Tesla thus hopes with the 4680 cells to revolutionize the battery, the central element of the electric vehicle. It should be noted that the Austin plant will focus on the production of the Model Y.
The new architecture of the Model Y "Made in Germany" is inspired by the aviation and aerospace industry, where fuel tanks (found in aircraft wings, for example) often also fulfill a structural function.
The new structural batteries will be built in such a way that Model Y seats will attach directly to them, saving even more parts, space and money.
Want more from TheStreet? Sign up for one of our new newsletters to follow the electric vehicle world, the stock market, tech stocks or so much more,
Read the rest here:
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Elon Musk Has News That Will Delight Tesla Fans – TheStreet
Ann Arbor CEO awarded aviation honor shared by Buzz Aldrin, Elon Musk – MLive.com
Posted: at 2:54 am
ANN ARBOR, MI -- When Craig Sincock first encountered Avfuel, the company was one of his consulting clients.
Four decades later, his leadership of that same company, a global supplier of aviation fuels, systems and services, has earned him a spot among aviation leaders like Buzz Aldrin and Elon Musk.
After graduating from the University of Michigan, Sincock spent 10 years working as a consultant, taking on Avfuel, a then-local aviation fuel company, as a client. In mid-January, Sincock, now the CEO of Avfuel, was conducted into the Living Legends of Aviation group, which is comprised of industry leaders, entrepreneurs, astronauts and pilots who have influenced the field. Other members include Harrison Ford, Buzz Aldrin, Jeff Bezos and Bonnie Dunbar.
Sincock acquired Avfuel in 1985, roughly a decade after the company was originally launched. At the time, the Michigan company had just three employees and was mostly supplying fuel stations at airports.
It was very exciting. A lot of late-night pizza, Sincock said. Sometimes people say, Craig, was it a great business plan? And Ill tell them, Well, no. We were young and didnt understand that we shouldnt compete with major oil companies.
Sincock grew Ann Arbor-based Avfuel to a global scale and now conducts business in 149 countries with 1,000 employees around the world. The company also supplies all sectors of the aviation industry, from government planes to agricultural crop sprayers.
Avfuel touches approximately a third of all U.S. business flights daily and supports nearly 30% of the markets fixed-base operators, which is a space at airports that provide hangar space, fuel and other aviation support. By surrounding the companys fuel arm with other supports in the rest of the aviation industry, Avfuel became the industrys first comprehensive independent fuel supplier, according to the Living Legends of Aviation website.
Sincock said he knew the company was successful when it began purchasing other aviation companies, teaching them Avfuels connection-first method.
Instead of product first, it was people first. And instead of thinking about a transaction or signing up a dealer or selling fuel, we thought about a relationship that would go on for years, Sincock said. When you think about (business) in those terms, it changes a thousand things that you do.
Sincock, who was raised in Plymouth, lives in Ann Arbor with his wife. His son, who is in his 30s, also works with Avfuel. The CEO has been interested in aviation since he was a child, he said.
Its just an exciting industry, and I could see that even when I was a kid. It was part of the moon landing back when I was in high school, Sincock said. My college roommates were flight instructors, so it didnt take me long to start getting in the airplane and flying.
For Sincock, aviation is about connection. He will sometimes fly to multiple cities a day to meet with clients, using the companys aircraft.
I mean, the (internet) connects us, but if you think after the web, whats the largest connectivity concept out there? Its travel, Sincock said.
Although being considered among the Living Legends of Aviation is humbling for him, Sincock said, he pointed to the rest of the corporation as the reason for its success.
Whats behind the award is whats important to me and thats the people who supported me and helped get there over the years, which is the staff and the team at Avfuel Corporation, Sincock said. Many of them.. have been there since the early days, and they have stayed with it. And the customers who supported us and our suppliers. Its everyone that made this happen.
Read more from The Ann Arbor News:
Leaving a very rich legacy. Saline police chief resigns to take new job
Chief diversity officer job created at EMU filled by media professor
2 teens arrested after shooting deaths of 5-year-old boy, 2 adults
See original here:
Ann Arbor CEO awarded aviation honor shared by Buzz Aldrin, Elon Musk - MLive.com
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Ann Arbor CEO awarded aviation honor shared by Buzz Aldrin, Elon Musk – MLive.com
Elon Musk’s SpaceX Wants to Split Its Shares – TheStreet
Posted: at 2:54 am
Is SpaceX a victim of its own success?
We have to believe that the new conquest of space is attracting a large number of investors.
The rocket and space tech company started by Tesla (TSLA) - Get Tesla Inc Reportco-founderElon Musk raised $337.35 millionin December, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This round of funding has undoubtedly caused the valuation of the company to fly, which had already reached $100 billion dollars in October. The stock price was at $560 per SpaceX share at the time.
Now, the company is not yet publicly-traded, but it is preparing to split its action. According to a report from CNBC, SpaceX is proposing to its privatel-held shareholders to split their shares in a 10-for-1 ratio. If the company carries out its plan, the value of each share will be reduced to $56 per share.
The split has no impact on the overall valuation of the company or on the overall value of your SpaceX holdings, SpaceX said to a company-wide email obtained by CNBC.
This would be the first time SpaceX has split its stock. This decision would have no impact on the fundamentals of the company or that of the action. Usually, listed companies split their stock when it becomes out of reach of retail investors.
Alphabet, Google's parent company, recently announced a stock split, which has thrilled the markets. It is rumored that the e-commerce giant Amazon could be the next to do it. The action of the company founded by Jeff Bezos is currently trading around for $3,052 for market value of $1.55 trillion.
One of the main reasons for a split is to make the share price more accessible and thus attract a greater number of investors. In doing so, the company also hopes to improve the liquidity of its shares.
Tesla, in August 2020,announced a 5-for-1 split, giving every Tesla shareholder five shares of the company for each share of Tesla they owned.
SpaceX didn't respond immediately to requests for comment.
The valuation of SpaceX has soared in recent years with each fund-raising of the company, which needs large financial means to finance two crucial projects: the next generation rocket Starship and its global satellite internet network Starlink.
Starlink, SpaceX's first consumer product, is high-speed internet powered by a network of thousands of small low-orbit satellites.
The company has already launched more than 2,000 Starlink satellites, with an overall goal of launching about 12,000.
Musk's plan to turn SpaceX into a company capable of transporting people to the moon and Mars rests of the profitability of the Starlink.
SpaceX debuted Starlink Premium, an internet broadband service that costs five times its standard service, a few weeks ago. The standard service costs $499 for the hardware and $99 a month.
In December,Musk tweeted that the company has started construction on an orbital launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for missions to the Moon and Mars.
These projects gobble up a lot of money and it is not certain that they will succeed.
Rising interest rates, inflation, and market volatility are on the horizon. You dont want to miss out on this exclusive opportunity to unlock Action Alerts PLUS at our lowest price of the year.
See more here:
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Elon Musk’s SpaceX Wants to Split Its Shares – TheStreet
Watch: The Japanese Dragon Art Technique That Impressed Elon Musk – NDTV
Posted: at 2:54 am
Elon Musk praised a video showing a traditional Japanese art technique (File Photo)
Japanese art has its own set of fans all across the world. Now, its charm has caught the attention of one of the most influential people in the world. We are talking about Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The billionaire was impressed with aform of Japanese art called Ippitsuryu. For those who haven't heard of this art form, Ippitsuryu is a traditional artistic technique to paint dragons. The dragon, which holds a lot of significance in Japanese culture, is painted using a single brush in one stroke. A video showing this technique of dragon art was posted on Twitter and Mr Musk complimented it as"Beautiful."
The text attached to the video read, "Ippitsuryu is an ancient Japanese tradition of creating the flowing, river-like body of the dragon, in just a single stroke. In this video, artist Keisuke Teshima shows the mesmerising balance required by this technique."
Here, the artist paints with two basic colours and their various gradients. As he pulls the brush in a long winding stroke, a snakeskin-like pattern is created. The clip ends by showing the completed dragon.
According to the National Geographic, this traditonal Japanese art technique of creating dragons with a single brush strokebegan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1867.
Elon Musk is known for his influential tweets.Apart from swinging the crypto market with his tweets, Mr Musk often drops unexpected comments on Twitter, which leavethe world baffled.
Recently, he commented on billionaire investor Charlie Munger's take on cryptocurrency. According to reports, Mr Munger, Vice President of Berkshire Hathaway, compared cryptocurrency to a "venereal disease". Mr Musk reacted to this by recalling an incident that took place in 2009. Mr Musk wrote, "I was at a lunch with Munger in 2009 where he told the whole table all the ways Tesla would fail. Made me quite sad, but I told him I agreed with all those reasons and that we would probably die, but it was worth trying anyway."
So what do you have to say about this?
Waiting for response to load...
Continued here:
Watch: The Japanese Dragon Art Technique That Impressed Elon Musk - NDTV
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Watch: The Japanese Dragon Art Technique That Impressed Elon Musk – NDTV
Elon Musk and Peter Thiel’s start: The rise and legend of PayPal – Stuff.co.nz
Posted: at 2:54 am
It is hardly a tech giant. PayPal, a digital-payments firm, has a market capitalisation of US$135b, compared with Amazons US$1.6t and Apples US$2.8t.
Yet it holds a unique position in Silicon Valley mythology.
A startling number of PayPals co-founders and honchos have gone on to corporate greatness, earning themselves the nickname the PayPal mafia.
The top job at the firm was held by both Elon Musk, boss of Tesla and one of the worlds richest men, and Peter Thiel, a veteran venture capitalist and co-founder of Palantir Technologies, a data-analytics firm.
READ MORE:* Paypal's mafia of misfits who became kingpins of tech* SpaceX satellites falling out of orbit after solar storm* US billionaire Peter Thiel sells Queenstown mansion for $6.85 million* Why EV pioneer Tesla is a cult, not just a car
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, held various senior roles. Three PayPal alumni later created YouTube; others co-founded Yelp, a popular review website, and Yammer, a social network.
Former employees landed senior jobs at Google, Apple and Facebook, as well as at some of the valleys biggest venture-capital firms.
Together they form one of the most powerful and successful networks ever created, argues Jimmy Soni in The Founders.
His well-researched book chronicles PayPals birth and transformation from a scrappy startup to a profitable business which, in 2002, was bought by eBay for US$1.5b.
AP
Peter Thiel and Elon Musk in 2000, after their two companies had merged to form PayPal.
The origin story starts with two other companies: Confinity, co-founded by Thiel, which planned to build software to beam money between PalmPilots, then must-have devices for businessfolk; and X.com, co-founded by Musk, which was meant, as he put it, to be the Amazon of financial services, offering internet users everything from mortgages to credit cards to insurance. Both found success with features that let customers transfer money using email. Initially rivals, the firms merged. PayPal was the result.
The story of its rise is gripping. PayPal was born during the internet boom of the late 1990s, when money poured into Silicon Valley.
The fierce competition fomented by the investment in turn generated intense pressure; all-nighters were common. PayPal burned through dangerous amounts of cash to attract new customers. It was sued repeatedly and subject to fraud.
Splits among the top brass caused commotions: two chief executives were ousted in coups in a six-month spell.
Sonis text is peppered with colourful quotations from Thiel (I need people here I can scream at) and Musk (This is like gambling one hundred million smackeroos).
All this gives a taste of the chaos of startup life. Business models were improvised on the fly. Shortly before Confinitys launch, Thiel told journalists that his new product would be free. That was news to his engineers, who quickly removed fees from the website.
Experimentation led to grave mistakes. For almost a month a loophole in X.coms security allowed villains to steal from banks using only account and routing numbers, both of which were printed on cheques.
What the book lacks is a clinching answer as to why the PayPal gang have been so successful.
Lots of theories are offered, including the wildness of the PayPal rollercoaster and the outsider status of many of those involved (nine of the ten founders of the two original firms were foreign-born).
None of these explanations is convincing; most apply to other tech startups.
Even so, this is an engrossing glimpse of the PayPal mafias riotous early days. Many former employees object to that nickname now, on the grounds that it insinuates something sinister.
A quip by John Malloy, a former board member, better captures the books tone: Calling us a mafia is to insult mafias. A mafia is far better organised than we were.
2022 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist published under licence. The original article can be found on http://www.economist.com
See the original post:
Elon Musk and Peter Thiel's start: The rise and legend of PayPal - Stuff.co.nz
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Elon Musk and Peter Thiel’s start: The rise and legend of PayPal – Stuff.co.nz
Elon Musk tells Biden the Tesla Model 3 is most manufactured US car – Business Insider
Posted: February 17, 2022 at 8:20 am
Elon Musk hit back at President Joe Biden on Wednesday, saying Tesla's Model 3 is the most manufactured American car in the country.
The Tesla CEO was replying to Biden's tweet last week about making federal government vehicles electric, offering more manufacturing jobs, and building supply chains in the US.
"We're making "buy American" a reality not just a promise," Biden tweeted.
Musk responded twice to the president's tweet on Wednesday first, he linked to a US Today article reporting that Tesla's Model 3 was the first electric vehicle to reach number one in Cars.com's 2021 American-Made Index (AMI), meaning it contributes the most to the US economy.
Musk wrote in the tweet caption, "[ahem]."
Five hours later, the billionaire tweeted in reply to Biden's tweet again, saying: "Model 3 is literally the most made in America car in well of course America."
Musk has criticized Biden over the past few months for leaving out Tesla, while praising Ford and General Motors.
The Tesla CEO has calledthe president "a damp sock puppet in human form" after Biden posted a video on Twitter, saying that GM and Ford were making more electric vehicles in the US than ever before without mentioning Tesla.
"Starts with a T, Ends with an A, ESL in the middle," Musk also tweeted in response to Biden's video.
In early February, Biden said in a speech that Tesla was America's "largest electric-vehicle manufacturer" after facing callsto include the automaker in the national electric vehicle discussion.
Here is the original post:
Elon Musk tells Biden the Tesla Model 3 is most manufactured US car - Business Insider
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Elon Musk tells Biden the Tesla Model 3 is most manufactured US car – Business Insider
Compliance Into The Weeds – Elon Musk and Tesla Redux – JD Supra
Posted: at 8:20 am
Compliance into the Weeds is the only weekly podcast that takes a deep dive into a compliance-related topic, literally going into the weeds to explore a subject more fully.
This week, Matt and I return to one of Matt's favorite topics, Elon Musk/Tesla. We consider some of the issues: What happens when a runaway CEO leads a business? Implications of new SEC investigation? State of California investigation into racial discrimination. Where has the Board been all this time? Will the attitude of the SEC Seemore+
This week, Matt and I return to one of Matt's favorite topics, Elon Musk/Tesla. We consider some of the issues: What happens when a runaway CEO leads a business? Implications of new SEC investigation? State of California investigation into racial discrimination. Where has the Board been all this time? Will the attitude of the SEC regarding enforcement change?
Listen to the Compliance into the Weeds podcast in Compliance Podcast Network to learn more like Matt and I discuss these issues for Elon Musk and Tesla on corporate governance. #CITW #Podcast #Compliance #ElonMusk #Tesla #CPN Seeless-
View post:
Compliance Into The Weeds - Elon Musk and Tesla Redux - JD Supra
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Compliance Into The Weeds – Elon Musk and Tesla Redux – JD Supra
Elon Musk And Dogecoin Co-Creator Say Twitter Needs To Take Urgent Action Against Crypto Scams – Benzinga – Benzinga
Posted: at 8:20 am
Tesla Inc. (NASADQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk has agreed to a comment by Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) co-creator Billy Markus that Twitter Inc. (NASDAQ:TWTR) needs to curb cryptocurrency scam activity on its social media platform.
What Happened: Markus asked Twitter to take action on the super irritating cryptocurrency scams, to which Musk commented by saying, Agreed. This has been broken for a long time.
See Also: How To Buy Bitcoin (BTC)
Why It Matters: In January, Musk criticized Twitters decision to let users have verified non fungible tokens (NFT) as profile pictures and suggested that the company was wasting resources on this effort instead of trying to curb spam activity.
Cryptocurrency scams particularly by impersonators of Musk, Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin and other notable figures have been widespread in recent years on Twitter.
The scammers typically ask Twitter users to send cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), Ethereum or Dogecoin to specific wallet addresses, promising to multiply the cryptocurrency that investors send.
Cryptocurrency scammers made nearly $8 billion from investors across the world in 2021, it was reported in December.
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that Musk impersonators stole over $2 million in cryptocurrency giveaway scams.
Price Action: Bitcoin is up 1.3% during the past 24 hours, trading at $44,043.05 at press time. Dogecoin is up 1.2% during the period to $0.1496.
Read Next: This Dogecoin And Shiba Inu Knockoff Named After Jeff Bezos' Pet 'Luna' Is Up Over 70% Today
See the original post:
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Elon Musk And Dogecoin Co-Creator Say Twitter Needs To Take Urgent Action Against Crypto Scams – Benzinga – Benzinga
Its not Elon Musks SpaceX rocket thats going to hit the moon, but space junk is a real th – iNews
Posted: at 8:20 am
We cant, as it turns out, pin this one on Elon Musk. Part of an old spacecraft is going to crash into the moon early next month, and initial reports suggested that it was the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, built by Musks company SpaceX to launch a climate-monitoring satellite in 2015.
This made a lot of people very angry. (One well-known UK Twitter account suggested that Nasa should crash the International Space Station into Musk, rather than the Pacific Ocean as planned, when it reaches the end of its life.)
Unfortunately for Musks many detractors, it turns out that the rocket was not built by SpaceX but by the Chinese government. The confusion arose because tracking small objects (and a four-ton, 15ft-long rocket counts as small in space) is really difficult.
The story does matter, though. The fundamental point is that putting things in space is important. There are probably 5,000 working satellites in orbit right now, says Jacob Geer, head of space surveillance and tracking at the UK Space Agency. They provide navigation for phones and cars, communications, banking. An awful lot of modern life involves satellite data.
Unfortunately, as well as those 5,000 or so working satellites, there are also millions of pieces of debris. As well as huge chunks like the old Chinese rocket booster, Nasa estimates that there are 23,000 the size of a softball or larger, but half a million the size of a marble, and hundreds of millions of tiny ones a bit larger than a grain of sand.
And because each of them is travelling at around 25,000mph, even the smallest can be devastating. Even a piece of debris 1cm across could destroy a satellite, says Don Pollacco, director of Warwick Universitys Centre for Space Domain Awareness. A head-on collision at a closing speed of 50,000mph would be like a grenade.
Its a growing problem, for two reasons. One is that the number of satellites goes up monthly. The British space company OneWeb is launching 30 or more microsatellites every month; Musks Starlink satellites are going up at a rate of 50 or so a month. And the other is that the number of pieces of debris in orbit is going up too, as bigger bits fragment.
We think space is infinite, so historically we havent cared about it that much, says Pollacco. Nowadays rocket boosters are given less energy so they fall back to Earth, but in the past, those boosters went into orbit. There are thousands of tonnes of old boosters sitting in orbit, just dumped, full of fuel, and sometimes they have a collision or explode and create more debris.
Even worse, every so often a country blows up a satellite with a missile to show off its military prowess. Russia famously did it last year, creating a cloud of satellite-bits. But, says Pollacco, the Americans have done it, the Chinese have done it, the Indians.
As a result, there are near misses every day. Geer says that in the UK, a team of military and civilian analysts are tracking debris using radar and telescopes, and have to warn British satellite operators about 1,500 times a month that theyre at risk of collision, so they can get out of the way. And there have been collisions, most famously in 2009 when an active communications satellite was hit by a derelict Russian military one, and many smaller-scale ones.
There are reasons to be optimistic. One is that there is growing international awareness of the problem. There are internationally agreed guidelines, and although some countries notably Russia and China are less than fastidious about them, others are putting them into law: the UKs Space Industry Act makes sustainable use of space a legal requirement.
Another is that there are efforts notably by UK organisations, backed by the Government to capture defunct British satellites and decelerate them so they burn up in the atmosphere.
But thats only feasible with large objects: you cant send a satellite up to capture hundreds of thousands of marble-sized fragments. For that, you need tracking, and while we do have some facilities, Pollacco says we are underinvesting. What annoys me is satellite missions cost hundreds of millions, he says. We rely on the military, using radars designed to look for missiles not optimal, because theyre meant for looking at lower altitudes.
That means that the warnings of impending collisions are very imprecise a piece of debris could miss by several miles and because its expensive to move a satellite, often operators dont bother and take the gamble.
But for, he says, a few tens of millions of pounds, we could build a system of optical telescopes that could monitor everything in an orbit above about 400 miles high. You dont even need big telescopes, he says. You just need to use them in clever ways, to detect moving objects, track their orbits and predict them. His team at Warwick is working on projects that could do that even with small objects. With more precise warnings, operators could move their satellites only when necessary, and not take the risk of sudden destruction.
The moon-crashing rocket may not have been Musks and, in fact, says Pollacco, old Apollo spacecraft and other things crash into the moon all the time: its not that unusual. And Musks Starlink enterprise showed an admirable commitment to avoiding space junk, by launching them so low that they will automatically de-orbit if they go wrong. (Last time, 40 of them got taken out by the Earths atmosphere expanding during a solar storm.)
But Starlink, and the many other groups putting large numbers of small satellites out there, are filling the sky with metal. Thats a good thing the metal is up there to do useful things for us but keeping it up there is starting to get difficult.
See original here:
Its not Elon Musks SpaceX rocket thats going to hit the moon, but space junk is a real th - iNews
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on Its not Elon Musks SpaceX rocket thats going to hit the moon, but space junk is a real th – iNews
A Teenager Tracked Elon Musks Jet on Twitter. Then Came the Direct Message. – The New York Times
Posted: February 3, 2022 at 3:50 pm
Mr. Sweeney made a counteroffer to Mr. Musk, according to the screenshots of the exchange, saying that he would abandon the account if Mr. Musk upped the ante to $50,000. He said that he would also accept a Tesla Model 3, an electric car that costs more than $38,000, adding that he was joking.
In the exchange, Mr. Sweeney was asked how he had been able to track Mr. Musk. He explained that he had obtained the planes transponder data. When told that paying to have the Twitter account shut down didnt seem right, Mr. Sweeney made another proposal: How about an internship?
The exchange, which carried on for more than a month, went silent after Jan. 23.
Mr. Sweeney downplayed the privacy and security concerns associated with his tracking account for Mr. Musk, which has more than 305,000 followers.
Its a private jet so he goes right from the jet to the car, he said, adding that he has long been fascinated by tracking planes. I dont think its that big of a concern. Some people are just interested in seeing where he goes.
Mr. Sweeney said that he obtained the data for his aircraft-tracking accounts from the ADS-B Exchange, which describes itself on its website as the worlds largest source of unfiltered flight data.
Dan Streufert, the founder of ADSBexchange.com L.L.C., said in an email on Wednesday that anyone with basic electronics could obtain the signals from aircraft that broadcast their locations. The information is also available by listening to air traffic controllers, he added.
However, it is important to note our website tracks aircraft, not individuals, Mr. Streufert said. We cannot say who is or is not on the plane. Mr. Musks companies own and operate many aircraft this is only one of them. Mr. Musk may find Mr. Sweeneys activities annoying, similar to paparazzi, however, this information is already public from a myriad of sources.
Read the original post:
A Teenager Tracked Elon Musks Jet on Twitter. Then Came the Direct Message. - The New York Times
Posted in Elon Musk
Comments Off on A Teenager Tracked Elon Musks Jet on Twitter. Then Came the Direct Message. – The New York Times