Lifeboat Foundation

SpaceX is gearing up for its biggest launch yet.

The company filed paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission, requesting permission to communicate with the upcoming first generation of its Starship spacecraft up to an altitude of 22.5 km (74,000 feet) at its South Texas launch site.

According to SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the first test flight of the next-gen craft could take place as soon as October.

“The creation of AGI will be the most important technological development in human history, with the potential to shape the trajectory of humanity,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

The long-awaited reveal of Tesla’s pickup truck will most likely take place November, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in response to a Twitter follower’s question.

Tesla’s first crack at one of America’s most popular body styles, which will begin production after the Model Y, has been the topic of much speculation from Tesla and electric vehicle fans collectively. Information regarding the truck is vague, but Elon Musk has released a number of details, most notably a possible 300,000-lb towing capacity.

November most likely.

When talking about the economics of Tesla’s future fleet of robotaxis at the Tesla Autonomy Event, Tesla CEO Elon Musk emphasized that the vehicles need to be durable in order for the economics to work:

“The cars currently built are all designed for a million miles of operation. The drive unit is design, tested, and validated for 1 million miles of operation.”

But the CEO admitted that the battery packs are not built to last 1 million miles.

When Elon Musk and the team at Tesla unveiled the Tesla Roadster 2.0, a new stake was pounded into the tarmac, cementing the new Roadster and electric cars as the performance kings in nearly every meaningful category. It puts supercars to shame and at a fraction of the price.

With such a high bar being set at such a low price point, a no holds barred electric supercar seemed to be the only thing that could possibly top the high marks set by the new Tesla Roadster. Travel with me over to unlikely Sveta Nedelja, Croatia, where Mate Rimac and his motley crew of twisted engineering geniuses at Rimac Automobili assemble battery powered beasts that shake the boots off even the most seasoned track driver.

Continue reading “Rimac Bumps Tesla’s New Roadster To Second Place With New Concept_Two” »

A group of DARPA-funded scientists associated with Elon Musk say they’ve invented a new way to “rapidly implant” brain electrodes into rats — and their “sewing machine” implantation system could facilitate the creation of a mind-reading brain-computer interface, as first reported by Bloomberg.

“Although more research is needed to refine the overall interface system and better integrate its components, these developments may ultimately open the possibility of bundling next-generation robotics, AI software, and electronics to create alternatives to present-day neurosurgical techniques,” DARPA biotech director Justin Sanchez told Bloomberg.

On Wednesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma took the stage at the World AI Conference in Shanghai to debate artificial intelligence and its implications for humanity. As expected, Ma took a far more optimistic stance than Musk. Ma encouraged people to have faith in humanity, our creativity, and the future. “I don’t think artificial intelligence is a threat,” he said, to which Musk replied, “I don’t know, man, that’s like, famous last words.” An edited transcript of the discussion follows.

Elon Musk: What are we supposed to say? Just things about AI perhaps? Yeah. Okay. Let’s see.

Jack Ma: The AI, right? Okay, great.

CEO Elon Musk said the electric pickup truck will rival both the Porsche 911 sports car and the standard bearer Ford F-150 pickup.

Hinted at in a brief tweet on August 28th, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that SpaceX’s massive Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle – set to be the most powerful rocket ever built upon completion – could eventually be followed by a rocket multiple times larger.

SpaceX is currently in the process of assembling the first full-fidelity prototypes of Starship, a 9m (30 ft) diameter, 55m (180 ft) tall reusable spacecraft and upper stage. Two prototypes – Mk1 and Mk2 – are simultaneously being built in Texas and Florida, respectively, while the beginnings of the first Super Heavy prototype has visibly begun to take shape at SpaceX’s Florida campus.

Once complete, Starship’s Super Heavy booster will be the single most powerful rocket booster ever built, standing at least 70m (230 ft) tall on its own and capable of producing as much as ~90,000 kN (19,600,000 lbf) of thrust with 30 250-ton-thrust and 7 200-ton-thrust Raptor engines installed. Assuming 31 throttleable 200-ton Raptors, Super Heavy’s minimum max thrust is a still record-breaking ~62,000 kN (13.7 million lbf).