05 ottobre 2016

Elon Musk News - Issue 48 🚀🚗🌇

"Almost anyone, if they saved up and that was their goal, they could ultimately save up enough money and buy a ticket and move to Mars"

Elon Musk News

ISSUE 48 🚀🚗🌇  September 30th 2016


Here are the top 3 stories in this issue of Elon Musk News:
  1. Making Humans A Multiplanetary Species - Presentation By Elon Musk
  2. SpaceX's Big Fucking Rocket – The Full Story
  3. Elon Musk says 'likely best quarter in Tesla history', puts a stop to discounts on new cars
On Tuesday Elon Musk delivered his highly anticipated plan on making humans a multiplanetary species. For me, the most interesting part came at the end of the presentation when Elon said that the whole reason for him personally acquiring assets is to be able to make Mars travel possible.
If you haven't already, I highly recommend watching the hour long presentation. And if you still want more depth, there is an excellent piece written by Wait But Why that you can find below.
Thank-you for being part of this newsletter, and enjoy Issue 48!
Sincerely,
Zachary K.D.

Featured Quote

"Almost anyone, if they saved up and that was their goal, they could ultimately save up enough money and buy a ticket and move to Mars"

— Elon Musk
Quote & photo from SpaceX

SpaceX

Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species - Presentation By Elon Musk

SpaceX Founder, CEO, and Lead Designer Elon Musk will discuss the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars. The technical presentation will focus on potential architectures for sustaining humans on the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead.

SpaceX's Big Fucking Rocket – The Full Story

A couple months ago, when SpaceX first announced that this would be happening in late September, it hit me that I might still have special privileges with them, kind of grandfathered in from my time working with Elon and his companies in 2015 (which resulted in an in-depth four-part blog series). So I reached out and asked if I could learn about the big fucking rocket ahead of time and write a post about it.

SpaceX Shares Video of What the Journey to Mars Might Look Like

The video begins with a line of humans walking across a sky bridge from a silo into a spacecraft attached to a SpaceX rocket booster at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. We see the rocket break through the Earth's atmosphere, and shortly afterward, the stage separation from the spacecraft, which "parks" in orbit. Meanwhile, the booster heads back to Earth to land on a "launch mount" where it is fitted with a new tank of propellant. It returns to the parked spaceship and refuels it in orbit. From there, it's off to Mars.

Elon Musk: Sell Your House and Start a New Life on Mars

"If we can get the cost of moving to Mars to the cost of a median house price in the U.S., which is around $200,000, then I think the probability of establishing a self-sustaining civilization is very high," Musk proposed, noting that each ship would carry about 100 people to Mars. Eventually 200 people might make the trip.

Elon Musk Pays Tribute to 'Hitchhiker's Guide' With 'Heart of Gold'

The name of the first Mars-bound SpaceX craft will be named The Heart of Gold, in honor of the spaceship commandeered by Zaphod Beeblebrox in Douglas Adams's mega-famous science fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Elon Musk Suggests SpaceX Could Become Rocket Shipping Company

"Maybe there is some market for really fast transport of stuff around the world, provided we can land somewhere where noise is not a super big deal. Rockets are very noisy," Musk said, spitballing. "We can transport cargo to anywhere on earth in 45 minutes at the longest. Most places on earth we can get to in maybe 20-25 minutes."

Tesla

Elon Musk says 'likely best quarter in Tesla history', puts a stop to discounts on new cars

Last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent a company-wide email to employees in which he urged them to "build and deliver every car they possibly can" since the company was on the "razor edge" of profitability.
Today, a month later almost to the day, he sent another company-wide email, but this time to congratulate employees on what he describes as "likely the best ever [quarter] in the Tesla history". But he also added a reminder not to give discounts on new cars. In an email he shared on his Twitter feed, Musk reminded employees of the importance of Tesla's fair price policy that everyone should pay the same price for the same car.

Tesloop crosses 200,000 miles in a Tesla Model S

Tesloop, a Tesla-only intercity shuttle service for Southern California and Las Vegas residents, has just surpassed the magical 200,000 mile marker driven in a Model S. The achievement goes down as one of the highest mileage Teslas we've ever heard of which is notable in itself. Even more noteworthy is the fact that Tesloop's Model S has had little to no maintenance costs. Aside from replacing tires and the 12V battery, the car has never gone through a set of brake pads, nor experience any major issues

Tesla Cars Just Got Way, Way Harder To Hack

Last week, a team of Chinese hackers named KeenLab posted a video to YouTube demonstrating their ability to remotely hack into Tesla cars and take control. Tesla detailed its response to the security vulnerability to Wired on Tuesday, and the electric car company says everything is pretty much fine. Essentially, Tesla made its software as secure as Apple products, by requiring any new firmware to be code-signed. Now, as is true with Apple, no one but Tesla holds the key.

Hyperloop

Hyperloop One Says Dubai Program "Will Change Everything"

Hyperloop One is beginning a 12-week residency in Dubai as part of the Future Accelerators Program. The eventual goal of the project is to connect the entire region via hyperloop. The United Arab Emirates is officially signing off on Elon Musk's brainchild, and on the hyperloop as the future of transportation.

SolarCity

'Tesla Solar' could invest $1 billion in Mexico in massive expansion, says SolarCity exec

After the merger, which is expected to go to a vote in the coming weeks, Tesla's new solar division could expand significantly in Mexico under the current net-metering model, according to SolarCity Mexico President David Arelle. In an interview with Reuters today, Arelle said: "We estimate that if things work out the way they should, over the next five years our investment could reach about $1 billion,"

This Is The End

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04 ottobre 2016

Elon Musk News - Issue 47 🚀🚗🌇

"Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster."

Elon Musk News

ISSUE 47 🚀🚗🌇  September 27th 2016


Here are the top 3 stories in this issue of Elon Musk News:
  1. Watch Elon Musk's Live Talk on 'Making Humans A Multiplanetary Species'
  2. Why Investors Should Support The Tesla-SolarCity Merger
  3. SpaceX Says Breach In Helium Tank May Have Caused September Explosion
Today at 11:30 am Pacific Time, SpaceX will live stream Elon Musk's talk at the International Astronautical Congress where he will outline his and SpaceX's plan to make humans a multiplanetary species. You can watch it at spacex.com. If you're not able to watch it, we will have full coverage of the key points in Friday's issue.
Thank-you for being part of this newsletter, and enjoy Issue 47!
Sincerely,
Zachary K.D.

Featured Quote

"Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster."

— Elon Musk
Photo from JD Lasica

  Sponsored Link  

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SpaceX

SpaceX Says Breach In Helium Tank May Have Caused September Explosion

In the first update in nearly three weeks, SpaceX announced Friday that evidence suggests "a large breach in the cryogenic helium system of the second stage liquid oxygen tank took place." Still, the helium tank anomaly only explains part of the story — SpaceX isn't sure what the exact cause of the incident was.
Musk, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Air Force Public Affairs Agency, and NASA have still not ruled out that something external to the rocket's system could have caused the explosion. While the investigation is ongoing, SpaceX also announced on Friday that it very well could be launching rockets again as soon as November.

Elon Musk: Mars-Bound Raptor Rocket Completes First Firing

SpaceX has completed the first live test of a rocket intended to transport humans to Mars, founder Elon Musk revealed on Twitter Monday. The successful firing of the Raptor interplanetary transport engine is good news for the Mars Colonial Transport Architecture, an ambitious plan to create a self-sustaining colony on the red planet.
While Musk said in a Reddit AMA session last year that the Raptor would have a thrust of around 230 metric tons, on Monday he tweeted that the production rocket would have around 310 metric tons of thrust, aiming for "specific impulse of 382 seconds." The chamber pressure is triple that of the Merlin family of rockets, the ones used on its Falcon 9 vehicles.

Elon Musk to Outline His Plans for Mars

Musk's keynote address, entitled "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species," will tackle the technical challenges and "potential architectures for colonizing the Red Planet," according to organizers. "I think it's going to sound pretty crazy," Musk said, referring to his Mars speech, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center last April.
Read the full article | Photo from SpaceX

Tesla

Tesla Gigafactory: new aerial shots show plant more than doubling in size

Back in July, Tesla officially inaugurated the first phase of its Gigafactory in Nevada – the first 4 sections of the building seen above. Now new aerial pictures show that the automaker is already well on its way to bring up the structures for 4 more sections to more than double the size of the already massive plant.
Tesla says that the structures going up at the South end of the factory add up to 2.5 million square feet and the new structure that is just starting to go up at the North end will add an additional 930,000 square feet. Of course, that's also only a fraction of the overall building once completed. Tesla aims for the Gigafactory to become the biggest building in the world by footprint at 5.8 million square feet and second largest building in the world by total square footage of over 13 million.

Watch a Tesla Model S Ludicrous P100D Smoke a Lamborghini Huracán in a Drag Race

Elon Musk's Tesla Model S, when equipped with a P100D Ludicrous battery, will destroy a Lamborghini Huracán in a drag race. A new video shows the race, and, though it's close, and though the Huracán reaches a higher top speed, the Model S ekes out the win.

Another Tesla Model S spotted with LIDAR amidst rollout of radar-based v8.0 [Video]

Amidst all of the excitement around Tesla's newest Version 8.0 Autopilot, which uses radar as a primary sensor, comes a new sighting of Model S testing a LIDAR system near the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California. The video posted to YouTube clearly shows a Model S with manufacturer plates with a roof-mounted Velodyne LIDAR sensor scanning the vehicle's surrounding.
The sighting is particularly interesting because just weeks earlier, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated his position against LIDAR during a press conference to discuss Version 8.0, stating that the company decided to use radar technology for its ability to see through rain, snow, fog, and dust – something LIDAR is unable to do.

Tesla and AMS win another major energy storage contract, 34 MWh of battery capacity for water treatment facilities

Only a few weeks after announcing one of the biggest energy storage projects ever, Tesla Energy won again a massive energy storage contract. The automaker's energy division will supply 'Powerpacks' to its energy storage deployment partner, Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS), for a major new project: a 7 MW / 34 MWh network of battery systems to support water treatment facilities of Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD).

SolarCity

Why Investors Should Support The Tesla SolarCity Merger

Yes, the evolution of electric cars will involve a lot of ongoing innovation. So judging its likely success on the basis of recent history would be foolhardy. Today Tesla sells 100% of its cars, with no discounts. The market has said it really, really wants its vehicles. And everybody who is offered electric panels with (a) the opportunity to sell excess power back to the grid and (b) financing, takes the offer. People enjoy the low cost, sustainable electricity, and want it to grow. But lacking a good storage device, or the inability to sell excess power, their personal economics are more difficult.
Electricity production, electricity storage (batteries) and electricity consumption are tightly linked technologies. Nobody will build charging stations if there are no electric cars. Nobody will build electric cars if there are not good batteries. Nobody will make better batteries if there are no electric cars. Nobody will install solar panels if they can't use all the electricity, or store what they don't immediately need (or sell it.)

OpenAI

Elon Musk's OpenAI has a new tool that could keep hackers from wrecking a self-driving car

Elon Musk's OpenAI and Pennsylvania State University released a new tool this week called "cleverhans," that lets artificial intelligence researchers test how vulnerable their AI is to adversarial examples, or purposefully malicious data meant to confuse the algorithms. Once the vulnerability has been found, a defense to the attack can automatically be applied.
The tool is meant to be a "collection of attacks and defenses, along with tutorials on how to use them," according to Nicolas Papernot, co-creator and security researcher at Pennsylvania State University, in an email to Quartz. He hopes it will serve as a tool for the industry to understand the vulnerabilities, while academics can use it to test and benchmark other new attacks and defenses.

This Is The End

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