Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX Starship 25 and Super Heavy booster 9 launched to orbit on Nov. 18, 2023 from the Starbase facility in South Texas. Following the launch, the booster had a Rapid Unplanned Disassembly (RUD) shortly after separation.

Starship consists of a first-stage booster called Super Heavy and an upper-stage spacecraft known (a bit confusingly) as Starship. Both of these elements are designed to be fully and rapidly reusable. SpaceX thinks the vehicle will make the settlement of Mars — a long-held dream of company founder and CEO Elon Musk — economically feasible in the not-too-distant future.

Continue reading “SpaceX Starship launches on 2nd integrated test flight, booster explodes after separation” »

Here’s one we weren’t expecting: the creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI, has unexpectedly announced that it’s ditching its charismatic CEO Sam Altman, effective immediately.

“Mr. Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” the company wrote in the surprise announcement. “The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

The statement is strikingly vague about exactly what went off the rails with Altman, who cofounded the company alongside the also since-departed Elon Musk back in 2015.

During the company’s second quarter earnings call in July, Musk had said that combining the two could provide a cyber body that is incredibly capable.

Months after signing a letter calling for the pause of AI development, Elon Musk started a new company designed to create it.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is known for its frequent launches, which now dominate the space industry. But the satellites that the rockets send to space are just as important for the company as the launches. Starlink is SpaceX’s answer to providing global, high-speed internet coverage using a network of thousands of satellites buzzing around the planet in a region known as low Earth orbit (LEO), about 342 miles above the Earth’s surface.

SpaceX launched its first batch of Starlink satellites in 2019. Adoption of the service has ballooned since then. The company has said Starlink has more than 2 million active customers and is available on all seven continents and in over 60 countries.

“This growth is uncharacteristic in the sense of its magnitude. Whereas prior satellite service providers have ramped up to anywhere at most between 500,000 to a little bit over a million subscribers. And this has taken, you know, a ten-year period, Starlink’s race to 2 million subscribers has taken only the better part of two years,” says Brent Prokosh, a Senior Affiliate Consultant at Euroconsult.

Ron Baron previously predicted that Tesla will be valued at $4 trillion within a decade, calling the EV maker’s CEO Elon Musk a “brilliant guy.”

Plans are underway to bring the life story of Elon Musk to the big screen.

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A24, a renowned New York-based film production company, has secured the rights to produce a movie about the billionaire tech entrepreneur.

Continue reading “A24 secures rights to Elon Musk biopic with Darren Aronofsky as director” »

SpaceX has achieved a world record by delivering over 1,000 metric tons of mass to orbit this year, as its founder Elon Musk claimed.

SpaceX/Twitter.

The mission was launched by a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California at 10:49 am local time (1:49 pm EST; 1,849 GMT). The rocket’s first stage returned to the launch site and landed vertically about 7.5 minutes later. This was the 12th flight and recovery for this booster, per SpaceX’s mission details.

Continue reading “Elon Musk boasts of SpaceX’s world record after Transporter-9 launch” »

Kynikos Associates founder and legendary short seller Jim Chanos has highlighted the disparity between the public perception and actual performance of Tesla Inc. TSLA.

What Happened: In an interview with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Chanos pointed out a common misbelief held by many Tesla admirers. He said the electric vehicle giant is seen as a multi-faceted entity — an AI firm, an alternative energy business, and a robotics organization.

This image, Chanos argues, is a result of Elon Musk’s compelling portrayal of Tesla as a future-focused company.