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SpaceX is embarking on a bold new adventure: making rocket fuel out of thin air.

“SpaceX is starting a program to take CO2 out of atmosphere & turn it into rocket fuel,” CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Monday. “Please join if interested.”


The news comes after Musk announced a $100 million prize to come up with carbon removal technologies earlier this year. The goal is to pull 1,000 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere annually — and eventually scaling up the operation dramatically.

“I think this is one of those things that is going to take a while to figure out what the right solution is,” Musk explained back in April. “And especially to figure out what the best economics are for CO2 removal.”

“Right now we’ve only got one planet,” Musk said at the time. “Even a 0.1 percent chance of disaster — why run that risk? That’s crazy!”

Billionaire Elon Musk is pushing ahead with an attempt to utilize emissions contributing to climate change, tweeting that his rocket company will launch a program to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it to power spacecraft.

The chairman and chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Musk announced the project on Dec. 13, shortly after being named Person of the Year by Time magazine.

The Tesla billionaire discussed his split from the singer and producer in a recent interview with Time’s Molly Ball, Jeffrey Kluger, and Alejandro de la Garza for its annual “Person of the Year” issue.

“Grimes and I are, I’d say, probably semi-separated,” Musk told Time. “We weren’t seeing each other that much, and I think this is to some degree a long-term thing, because what she needs to do is mostly in LA or touring, and my work is mostly in remote locations like this.”

Musk explained the situation similarly to Page Six in September, telling the publication that he and Grimes had decided to go their separate ways after three years of dating. He said at the time that they still loved each other and “are on great terms” as they coparented their 18-month-old son, X Æ A-Xii.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk isn’t one to follow rules, particularly when he thinks they’re bogus.

The billionaire likes to envision a world, or perhaps a much smaller society on Mars, in which everybody can do as they please without a greater hierarchy of power.

“If there’s a utopia where people have access to any goods or services that they want, there’s plenty for everyone,” Musk told Time magazine after being named the Person of the Year today. “If we have a highly automated future with the robots that can do anything, then any work you do will be because you want to do it, not because you have to do it.”

Some of the world’s richest men are squaring off in what’s become a rivalry for the ages — the space race. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the two richest men on the planet and the CEOs of SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively, have grand designs on the cosmos. They predict a universe where the internet is accessible from anywhere, humans are an interplanetary species, and rotating space stations host permanent residents.

But Bill Gates isn’t putting his wealth into these off-planet endeavors.

Gates, the fourth richest person alive, according to Forbes, has what he considers higher aspirations right here on Earth. While internet constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s proposed Project Kuiper aim to bring for-profit fixes to the world’s pressing connectivity issues, Gates told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Wednesday that more basic problems consume his time now.

When Jeff Bezos announced he was blasting off to space in the summer, there was a petition that he shouldn’t return to Earth. Actually, there were quite a few. Questions like this often pop up online: “Why do people like Elon Musk and dislike Jeff Bezos?” And Musk has just been named the 2021 Time person of the year.

We’re going to examine the reasons Musk has an army of fangirls and fanboys whereas Bezos not so much, and why Musk is starting to alienate some people as well.

A Quora user gave his two cents on why he thinks Musk is more likable: Maybe because…He engages people more via his social media. Musk loves to respond to the general public on Twitter, allowing him to build a powerful connection with his 65 million and counting followers.

Time magazine on Monday named Tesla chief and space entrepreneur Elon Musk as its person of the year, citing his embodiment of the technological shifts but also troubling trends reshaping people’s lives.

Musk — who overtook Amazon founder Jeff Bezos this year to become the world’s wealthiest person — wields impact on Earth with his Tesla electric car company and beyond our planet with his SpaceX rockets.

“Musk’s rise coincides with broader trends of which he and his fellow technology magnates are part cause and part effect,” Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote.