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While hosting the US TV show Saturday Night Live, Elon Musk publicly spoke for the first time about having Asperger’s. He also addressed his controversial tweets and plugged Dogecoin.
Starship has an explosive flight record, but SpaceX may finally be mastering the spaceship’s landing. That’s crucial to making it reusable.
SpaceX has once again scrubbed the latest major flight test of its Starship rocket. The next-generation spacecraft was set to launch from SpaceX’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, on Tuesday, but cancelled it for reasons unknown.
Starship SN15’s high-altitude flight test follows four previous attempts that all ended in massive explosions. SpaceX boss Elon Musk said previous issues with the rocket’s Raptor engines have been fixed “six ways to Sunday”, though if it fails to land cleanly there are more Starship prototypes currently under development.
Airspace clearance had been approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), road closures were in place with Cameron County, and marine hazard notices had been issued. The test was expected to take place between 12pm and 8pm local time (6pm — 2am BST) on Tuesday, however a backup launch window is also in place for Wednesday.
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Four astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) came back to Earth on Sunday in what was the first nighttime splashdown by a U.S. crew since the Apollo moonshot in 1968.
Six months ago, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched four astronauts—Americans Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker along with Soichi Noguchi, from Japan’s space agency—into space aboard a Crew Dragon capsule, named Resilience, on a Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida.
After a journey lasting over six hours, they returned this weekend in the same capsule, which parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida at 2.56 a.m. ET. It marked the end of what SpaceX said was its “first six-month operational mission” to the ISS.
Thoughts?
Getting past the cult of Genius and the bleakness of capitalist futurism.
Neuralink President Max Hodak tweeted Saturday that he has left the company he co-founded with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. Hodak didn’t elaborate on why he left the company or elaborate on the circumstance for his departure. “I am no longer at Neuralink (as of a few weeks ago),” he tweeted. “I learned a ton there and remain a huge cheerleader for the company! Onward to new things.”
✨Some personal news:✨ I am no longer at Neuralink (as of a few weeks ago). I learned a ton there and remain a huge cheerleader for the company! Onward to new things.— Max Hodak (@max_hodak) May 1, 2021
Neuralink is focused on developing brain-machine interfaces. Last month, the company posted a video to YouTube that appeared to show a monkey with a Neuralink implant in its brain moving a cursor on a computer screen using only its mind.
“For those of you enrolled in our frequent flyer program, you’ve earned 68 million miles on this voyage,” SpaceX’s Mission Control radioed.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX safely returned four astronauts from the International Space Station on Sunday, making the first U.S. crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.
The Dragon capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, just before 3 a.m., ending the second astronaut flight for Elon Musk’s company.
It was an express trip home, lasting just 6 1/2 hours.
Well done the SpaceX crew!
Tech boss ‘proud’ to be working with space agencies as astronauts begin six-month mission.
Glauber Contessoto of Los Angeles posted a screenshot of his Robinhood balance of Dogecoin on Reddit.
By betting on Starship, which entails a host of development risks, NASA is taking a chance on what would be a much brighter future. One in which not a handful of astronauts go to the Moon or Mars, but dozens and then hundreds. In this sense, Starship represents a radical departure for NASA and human exploration.
“If Starship meets the goals Elon Musk has set for it, Starship getting this contract is like the US government supporting the railroads in the old west here on Earth,” said Rick Tumlinson, a proponent of human settlement of the Solar System. “It is transformational to degrees no one today can understand.”
We will nonetheless try to understand some of the ways in which Starship could prove transformational.