Lifeboat Foundation

A full-scale prototype of the huge Starship rocket SpaceX says will fly people to the moon and Mars left the ground for the first time Tuesday in South Texas, flying to an altitude of roughly 500 feet before settling on a nearby landing pad.

“Mars is looking real … Progress is accelerating,” says Elon Musk.

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Musk has scored bragging rights in the battle of billionaires in space after his SpaceX rockets beat competition from Bezos’s Blue Origin to launch National Security payloads for the U.S. Air Force.

SpaceX is manufacturing its Starlink satellites at an unprecedented rate for the space industry, analysts say, as the company dives headlong into building a space-based global internet service.

Elon Musk’s company told the Federal Communications Commission in a presentation last month that its Starlink unit is “now building 120 satellites per month” and has “invested over $70 million developing and producing thousands of consumer user terminals per month.”

“Invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Starlink to date,” the SpaceX presentation added.

Tesla is going to work with spaceships too. Enhanced partnership with SpaceX.

This is revealed by a new job position, for future designers who will range from electric cars to spaceships for Mars.

A couple of days ago SpaceX tested a prototype of the future Starship, the spacecraft that will be flying to the Moon and Mars. It was a rather raw reproduction, just slightly reminiscent of the style used in the digital rendering presentation. Today we discover that, as demonstrated by a new job place, Tesla’s may be called into the final design.

Continue reading “Tesla is going to work with space ships too. Enhanced partnership with SpaceX” »

It would be fun to die in Mars.

Imagine living in Texas a few decades from now and suddenly being possessed with the desire to visit the moon. Traditionally, the only way such a dream could become reality would be for you to go through the arduous process of becoming a NASA astronaut and then hoping that Congress would fund a back-to-the-moon program.

If SpaceX’s Elon Musk has his way, a new road will be devised to go to the moon — and Mars and beyond. The scrappy, entrepreneurial space launch company is planning to build an offshore spaceport to launch its Starship spacecraft. The rocket ship would not only fly to far distant destinations in space, but to similar offshore spaceports around the world. Travel to Europe and Asia would be cut from many hours to tens of minutes.

Continue reading “SpaceX is building the road to the moon and Mars in Texas” »

As a child, Elon Musk would read comic books and sci-fi novels and dream of fantastical worlds. Now the tech entrepreneur is on the verge of visiting one.

Musk’s focus narrowed some 20 years ago while poking around NASA’s website. He noticed that there was no timetable for a manned mission to Mars. He later called the lack of vision “shocking.”

Musk, then already a millionaire from the sale of a software company, ditched Silicon Valley for Los Angeles, in order to be closer to the aerospace industry, and set his sights on the stars.

The U.S. Air Force on Friday awarded rocket builders United Launch Alliance and SpaceX contracts worth billions to launch national security missions for five years starting in 2022.

The awards represent the second phase of the military’s National Security Space Launch program, which is organized by the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, California. Four companies — Elon Musk’s SpaceX, ULA, Northrop Grumman and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin — bid for the contracts, with the military set to spend about $1 billion per year on launches.

The NSSL awards represent nearly three dozen launches, scheduled between 2022 and 2026. ULA won 60% of the launches, and SpaceX won the remaining 40%.

A new map shows what the red planet would look like if 71 percent of its surface area was covered with water — around the same proportion as Earth.