SpaceX

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Re: SpaceX

#761 Post by PHXPhlyer » Sun Feb 13, 2022 6:20 pm

Elon Musk gives hotly anticipated Starship update, but it's light on new details

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/11/tech/elo ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)SpaceX CEO Elon Musk spoke for over an hour Thursday night in a hotly anticipated discussion about Starship, which the company hopes will one day take humans to Mars and that will play a key role in NASA's plans to return humans to the moon for the first time in a half century. Still, not many new details were shared.

Musk once again said that he wants to pursue a city on Mars, but did not provide any updates in regard to who would live there or how it would be governed. And he reiterated how some design changes, like an updated rocket engine design, will help reduce costs.
Many more unanswered questions remain. NASA has awarded SpaceX a contract to take astronauts to the moon, but Musk did not delineate what testing SpaceX will have to do before it can carry out its promised crewed missions, nor what the roadmap will look like to getting Starship ready for a moon or Mars mission.
But Musk used the media event to engage with his core fanbase and employees, touting the company's progress during a speech that was back-grounded by the full Starship vehicle — spacecraft and rocket — on a launch pad just behind Musk at the company's South Texas facilities.
SpaceX has been working at a rapid clip to get Starship ready for launch, but so far the company has only sent early prototypes on a few so-called "hop tests," and it's still waiting for regulatory approval to put the vehicle atop its gargantuan rocket booster and attempt to send it to orbit. Musk said that the company had managed to lower the cost and weight of its individual Raptor rocket engines, in large part by consolidating parts and changing flanges to welds in the design. Musk also said that the second generation of the Raptor engine would produce more thrust than the first generation.
The update comes more than two years after Musk announced Starship's first space tourism customer, Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa. Maezawa paid SpaceX an undisclosed amount of money to secure a seat for himself and a group of artists on a Starship trip around the moon, hoping it could take off as soon as 2023. Maezawa is still in the process of deciding who he'll take with him.
Musk did hint that there will be more Starship sales announced in the future, but declined to share Thursday, noting he didn't want to steal the spotlight from customers who may be planning their own announcements.
All about Starship
Starship is at the core of SpaceX's plans to develop the technology necessary to establish a human settlement on Mars.
SpaceX has achieved regular crewed flights to the International Space Station, sent the first all-tourist crew to orbit, and made its mark as the exciting-newcomer-turned-reliable-mainstay of the US aerospace industry.
But as NASA demonstrated in the mid-20th century, going from brief jaunts to space to getting a spacecraft all the way to the moon isn't easy. And to this day, no human has ever traveled as far as Mars. For all of Musk and SpaceX's achievements, there is still a long way to go. And for all that Musk has achieved, he has also accrued a reputation for missed deadlines on ambitious projects.

Since 2019, however, SpaceX has mostly been in show-don't-tell mode, executing about a dozen test flights of various early prototypes that went from hopping a few feet off the ground to soaring more than 30,000 feet. A few high-altitude tests ended in explosions as the test rockets smashed back into the ground. But its latest test launch, in May 2021, managed to land upright without bursting into flames.
Lately, SpaceX has largely been waiting for federal regulators to clear the full-scale Starship for the first orbital launch attempt. It'll be no small feat — getting to orbit requires speeds that exceed 22 times the speed of sound, and to get the Starship spacecraft moving that fast, it'll ride atop a towering rocket booster, called Super Heavy, affixed with roughly 30 high-powered engines.
And even then, going to Mars entails more challenges than just building a rocket to get there.
On Thursday, SpaceX showed off the vehicle fully stacked, with the Starship spacecraft sitting atop its Super Heavy booster on the company's newly constructed orbital launch pad that lies next to a remote stretch of beach on the Gulf of Mexico. Large "grabber arms" held the rocket in place, as Musk's dream of rapidly reusable rockets would entail a need for the rocket to return to its launchpad after hurling its payload into orbit.
If successful, Starship will become the most powerful rocket humanity has ever launched, boasting up to twice the power of the Saturn V rocket NASA used to take astronauts to the moon in the 1960s.
FAA approval
Before Starship can even get to space, however, SpaceX needs to get a thumbs up from the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial space launches in the United States.
Musk had indicated the company was prepared to launch Starship's orbital test flight as soon as July of last year.
But the back half of 2021 was full of hangups. The FAA was carrying out an environmental assessment to review what the impact would be of launching such a massive rocket from a stretch of rural Texas coastline. A public comment period in October aired the voices of many local residents strongly opposed to the idea, as well as some fervent supporters who weren't necessarily from the area.

Though SpaceX initially expected to get the all-clear by the end of 2021, according to the FAA, the environmental assessment will continue until at least February 28, 2022.
The agency cited "the high volume of comments submitted" and "discussions and consultation efforts with consulting parties" as reasons for the delay.
Musk did not provide a firm update on the anticipated approval, but said that if the FAA required a more thorough review, the company would likely shift some operations to Cape Kennedy in Florida.

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Re: SpaceX

#762 Post by PHXPhlyer » Mon Feb 14, 2022 5:59 pm

SpaceX sells three more flights to billionaire Jared Isaacman

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/tech/spa ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)Jared Isaacman — the billionaire CEO of payments processing company Shift 4 — is buying three more flights with SpaceX, the first of which is scheduled for this year and could put Isaacman and SpaceX on track to travel deeper into space than any human has traveled in a half century.

The first flight in the series of missions, which are being called "Polaris" after the North Star, is planned for late this year and will last up to five days and include a crew of Isaacman and three other people. The crew will conduct a space walk, a first for anyone traveling aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Isaacman made the announcement on NBC's Today Show on Monday morning and in an interview with the Washington Post.

Isaacman, who gained international attention when he purchased the first SpaceX all-tourism flight dubbed "Inspiration 4," said that the first Dragon mission will be followed by a second Dragon mission shortly thereafter. Those two missions will pave the way for the first-ever crewed mission on SpaceX's forthcoming Starship rocket, the one Elon Musk hopes will one day ferry people to Mars. Isaacman didn't share many details about those plans, except that during this series of missions, he plans to travel to "deep space" — which is typically defined as areas of outer space that lie at or beyond the moon.
"We're gonna go farther into space than humans have gone since we last walked on the moon," he told the Today show.
It's not clear if all this will go according to plan, nor has SpaceX said whether it will need to complete additional testing before Isaacman can make his trek to deep space. SpaceX also has not addressed what if any updates Crew Dragon will need to complete the mission safely. So far, the spacecraft has carried astronauts only on trips to low-Earth orbit, or the area of space directly surrounding Earth. The Inspiration 4 mission marked the highest Crew Dragon has flown thus far, at at a roughly 360-mile altitude, and Monday's announcement indicated the Polaris missions will travel further than that.
It's not clear how much these missions will cost Isaacman. He also did not reveal how much he paid for the Inspiration 4 mission last year, though he said he paid less than $200 million.
The entire Inspiration 4 mission was billed as a St. Jude Children's Hospital fundraiser, and it fetched a total of $243 million for the organization. Isaacman donated about $100 million, Musk put in another $50 million and the remainder was raised through public donations. The Polaris missions are also expected to support the same cause.
On the first Polaris mission, Isaacman will be joined by veteran Air Force fighter pilot Scott Poteet and two SpaceX operations engineers — Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon, who will serve as the onboard medical officer. Isaacman will be the only crewmember with prior spaceflight experience.
Apart from his spaceflight ambitions, Isaacman also flies jets recreationally. Most recently, he was seen piloting an Alpha Jet, often used for training pilots, over SpaceX's Starship facilities in South Texas.
Poteet is a former vice president at Shift 4. The pair are also frequent flying partners.
Gillis and Menon could be the first SpaceX employees to travel to space.
Details about the space walk that the Polaris crew is planning to conduct on the first flight are light, but a press release states they will use "SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity (EVA) spacesuits, upgraded from the current intravehicular (IVA) suit." The IVA suit refers to the pressurized black-and-white spacesuits that NASA astronauts and the Inspiration 4 crew have worn aboard Dragon during launch and reentry.
But exiting the spacecraft while it's in orbit will require a much heavier duty system of protection. NASA has described its EVA suit as "a miniature spaceship shaped like a human body that protects the astronaut from the dangers of being outside a vehicle while in space or on the Moon," offering protection from "radiation, dust, debris, and extreme temperatures."
Also on the first Polaris mission, the crew will test out the use of Starlink — SpaceX's satellite-based internet business — for in-space communications. Thus far, Starlink has only been used to beam internet connectivity to customers on the ground, but the Polaris press release suggests the system could be used to support communications during orbital flights.
Starship
The schedule for Isaacman's Starship flight isn't exactly clear. During a presentation about Starship in Texas last week, Musk said that while he's hopeful the vehicle — which has so far conducted only brief, suborbital "hop tests" — will make its first orbital flight test this year, without a crew. That, however, could depend on whether federal regulators give SpaceX approval to launch Starship out of South Texas, where the company has already set up an orbital launch pad and the vast majority of Starship resources are located.

That could mean that Isaacman is leap-frogging the first billionaire who purchased a Starship mission — Japanese fashion mogul Yusaku Maezawa. Maezawa paid SpaceX an undisclosed amount of money to secure a seat for himself and a group of artists on a Starship trip around the moon, hoping it could take off as soon as 2023. Maezawa is still in the process of deciding who he'll take with him.
Musk also said during the presentation that he hopes Starship will cost less than $10 million per flight within a few years, which, if obtainable, would be far cheaper than any other rocket on the market.
Starship is expected to be far more powerful than any rocket humanity has ever built. Musk has said it would boast twice the thrust of the Saturn V rockets that powered the moon landings last century.

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Re: SpaceX

#763 Post by Boac » Tue Feb 15, 2022 5:09 pm

SS20 was de-stacked from B4 yesterday using the arms again.

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Re: SpaceX

#764 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Mar 03, 2022 3:27 pm

Axiom-1 crew to conduct 'meaningful research' in space as first all-private mission to ISS

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/axiom ... ion-to-iss#

A former NASA astronaut and an international crew of paying customers will become the first to dock at the International Space Station as an all-private mission flying in SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft later this month.

Houston-based Axiom Space has purchased several rides from SpaceX in the Crew Dragon to the ISS. The first all-private mission to the ISS is called Axiom-1.

Michael López-Alegría, Axiom vice president and former NASA astronaut, will act as Ax-1 mission commander; American entrepreneur Larry Connor is the Dragon pilot, and Canadian investor and philanthropist Mark Pathy and Israeli investor and philanthropist Eytan Stibbe are both mission specialists.

The Falcon 9 rocket launch is targeted for March 30 at 2:46 p.m. EDT from Launchpad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Ahead of liftoff, the Ax-1 crew, along with Axiom Space, SpaceX and NASA officials spoke to reporters about the spaceflight training and how this first-of-its-kind mission will happen to the orbiting laboratory.
López-Alegría said he has been itching to get back to space since his days as a NASA astronaut. The Ax-1 crew have been following NASA's private astronaut syllabus for training and "have checked all the mandatory boxes," the mission commander said.

All four have been learning the ISS systems at Johnson Space Center, close to where Axiom Space headquarters are located, and Crew Dragon training at SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne, California.

López-Alegría said the crew has spent a lot of time preparing to conduct research and work on the ISS. He doubled down, saying Ax-1 is not a vacation for Axiom's customers despite the recent space tourism boom through companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic.

"This mission is very different from what you may have heard of some of the recent, especially suborbital missions. We are not space tourists," he said. "I think there's an important role for space tourism, but it is not what Axiom is about. My crewmates have worked very hard. I've been super impressed with their diligence and their commitment, and they, you know, they're busy people, and they've taken a lot of time out of their lives to focus on this … it's definitely not a vacation for them."

The private spaceflights also fit into Axiom's business model to build a private space station, beginning with models added to the current ISS before separating becoming an Independent station in low Earth orbit.



Axiom Space CEO Michael Suffredini previously served as the NASA manager of the ISS.

"This is our very first mission of probably hundreds of missions to come over the next several decades as we build the Axiom Space Station and provide sort of services in low-Earth orbit for many decades to come," Suffredini said. "So this is very exciting for us, for both of those reasons."

NASA Associate Administrator of Space Operations Kathy Lueders said the crew currently on orbit is excited to welcome Ax-1.

"Our crew members are focused on us getting ready for exploration and meeting the goals that NASA has and working on obviously maintain the facility and keeping us ready so that our private astronaut friends can come up and be able to do the science and research that we need to be able to do," Lueders said. "So very, very, very exciting time."

Suffredini stressed that the Ax-1 crew won't simply be tourists on the ISS and will contribute to necessary research conducted in low gravity.

"They're not up there to paste their nose on the window," he said. "They really are going up there to do meaningful research and make a difference each in their own way."

Christian Menger, Axiom Space director of in-space research and manufacturing, said the crew would bring more than 25 experiments with them.

"We're looking at things including stem cells, cardiac health, we're looking at spacecraft self-assembly and a lot of different experiments," Menger said. "Each of these projects have come to bear because of the interest in this crew. Early in the mission design process, they brought to us a portfolio of work. They said, ‘we really want to do some of these things in orbit,’ and it's been a pleasure to work with them and with NASA and the national lab to really bring these things to fruition for the crew."

Connor's tasks in space will focus on stem cell, cancer and aging research that will collaborate with the Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic.

Pathy has been working with Canadian universities and the Montreal Children's Hospital.

Stibbe's work is a partnership with the Ramon Foundation and will be conducting several experiments with the Israeli Space Agency.

The crew will also bring home some NASA research and samples back to Earth.

Over the next few weeks, the soon-to-be astronauts will enter quarantine and finish some final training at JSC and in Hawthorne.

NASA previously gave Axiom approval to begin launching paying customers to the ISS starting this year. A second launch, Axiom-2, could launch late in 2022 or early 2023.

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Re: SpaceX

#765 Post by Boac » Wed Mar 09, 2022 4:12 pm

110th successful landing of the Falcon first stage booster today.

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Re: SpaceX

#766 Post by Boac » Thu Mar 17, 2022 5:40 pm

SS20 and B4 now 're-stacked' and a cryo test conducted. Moving towards a launch?

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Re: SpaceX

#767 Post by Boac » Sun Apr 03, 2022 7:45 am

Things moving quickly at Boca Chica. The 'assumed' plan to launch B4 and SS20 into low earth orbit has now become an 'assumed' plan to launch B7 and SS24! B7 has left the assembly building and has been rolled out to the launch area. It is expected to be fitted with the new Raptor2 engines which are arriving on site. I'm unclear exactly where SS24 is in the melee!

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Re: SpaceX

#768 Post by llondel » Tue Apr 05, 2022 2:21 am

Boac wrote:
Wed Mar 09, 2022 4:12 pm
110th successful landing of the Falcon first stage booster today.
The thing that staggers me most about that statement is just how many rocket launches they've been doing. I guess if you don't have to build from scratch each time, just a quick paint job and tighten all the bolts, then they can turn round the first stage quite quickly.

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Re: SpaceX

#769 Post by Boac » Tue Apr 05, 2022 6:55 am

I think I read somewhere that if/whew the whole shebang is working properly ie 'catching' the thing with the tower arms SpaceX aim for a 1 hour turn-round on the beast. Very difficult to believe!

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Re: SpaceX

#770 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Apr 27, 2022 8:03 pm

SpaceX launches another historic astronaut mission
Ho Hum. (-|
Another successful launch and recovery of first stage.


https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/27/tech/spa ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)A SpaceX rocket and spacecraft took off Wednesday morning carrying four astronauts destined for the International Space Station, including the first Black woman to join the ISS crew.

Takeoff occurred at 3:52 am ET. The astronauts, riding aboard their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, will spend the day free flying through orbit before docking with the ISS around 8 pm ET.
This mission, called Crew-4, marks a return to the crewed launches that SpaceX conducts in partnership with NASA after the company concluded the first all-private mission to the space station for wealthy paying customers on Monday.
On board are NASA astronauts Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins, and Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who is flying on behalf of the European Space Agency.
Here's everything you need to know about Crew-4.
What makes this flight historic?
Jessica Watkins will become the first Black woman to complete such a mission.
Though more than a dozen Black Americans — including four Black women — have traveled to space since Guion Bluford became the first to do so in 1983, no Black woman has had the opportunity to live and work in space for an extended period, as the ISS has enabled more than 200 astronauts to do since 2000.

NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins will make a historic trip as the first Black woman on the space station crew
"This is certainly an important milestone I think both for our [space] agency and for the country," Watkins said during a press conference last month. "I think it really is just a tribute to the legacy of the black women astronauts that have come before me as well as to the exciting future ahead."
She has a long history with NASA, having begun her career there as an intern, and she previously held roles at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where she worked with the Curiosity Mars rover. A trained geologist, she's studied the surface of the red planet.
Watkins' crew mates refer to her by the nickname "Watty."
Who else is on this mission?
This mission's crew is one of the first to include just as many women as men.
Cristoforetti, who was on one previous mission to the ISS in 2014-2015, is the sole woman in ESA's astronaut corps. But Cristoforetti told reporters last month that the situation was "bound to end very soon."
"We definitely expect to to have some some great female [ESA] colleagues by the end of the year," she added.
Cristoforetti, a veteran of the Italian Air Force who's earned her fighter pilot wings, joined ESA in 2009.

Hines is a 22-year veteran of the US Air Force, and this will mark his first time to travel to space since he was selected for the NASA astronaut corps in 2017.
Lindgren, the commander for this mission, is certified in emergency medicine, and prior to being selected to take to the skies himself, he used to work as a flight surgeon on the ground at NASA's Johnson Space Center, supporting other astronaut missions. Lindgren was born in Taiwan and spent much of his childhood in England before moving to the United States and attending the US Air Force Academy.
This group of four astronauts has spent months training together, and they even took some time to do some extracurricular bonding. Watkins noted they went on a kayaking trip in Eastern Washington "just to get to spend some time getting to know each other and understanding how we all function...and what makes each of us tick, and I think that's going to be really crucial."
"We get along great. It is just such a joy to have these folks on this team," Lindgren added.
How are they getting to space?
The crew will travel to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which, since entering service in 2020, has launched seven crewed missions.
Though SpaceX designed the Crew Dragon to be reusable and three capsules are already in service, Crew-4 will fly aboard a brand new spacecraft.
The astronauts get to select the name for their capsule, and they chose Crew Dragon "Freedom" for their vessel.
The Crew Dragon was developed by SpaceX under a $2.6 billion contract with NASA as part of the "Commercial Crew Program." The idea behind the program was to move NASA into a customer role — allowing private companies to design, build and test a new spacecraft to serve NASA astronauts while still giving the company ownership over the vehicle.
Since SpaceX controls the vehicle, it has the ability to sell seats to whomever it wishes, hence the all-private mission that the company just concluded and one previous space tourism mission that took off in September last year.
At NASA, the program has been deemed a massive success, and the space agency is adopting the same contracting method for several vehicles involved in its efforts to explore the moon.
What will they do in space?
After arriving Wednesday evening, the crew will be greeted by the cohort of astronauts already aboard the ISS — including three NASA astronauts and an ESA astronaut that were part of SpaceX's Crew-3 mission — and three Russian cosmonauts.
There'll be a five-day handover period, during which the Crew-3 astronauts will help the Crew-4 astronauts settle in, before Crew-3 returns home aboard their own SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
Then the Crew-4 astronauts will set to work on all the science experiments and space station maintenance duties they have on their to-do list.
"Experiments will include studies on the aging of immune systems, organic material concrete alternatives, and cardiorespiratory effects during and after long-duration exposure to microgravity," according to NASA. "These are just some of the more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations that will take place during their mission."
Crew-3 is slated to return from space in September, shortly after SpaceX launches its Crew-5 mission.

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Re: SpaceX

#771 Post by Boac » Fri May 06, 2022 7:26 am

With this morning's recovery of 'Crew3' from the ISS, SpaceX have completed two crew launches and recoveries in about a month. Incredible.

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Re: SpaceX

#772 Post by Boac » Sun Jun 26, 2022 4:34 pm

During the impressive 3 Falcon9 launches in 37 hours, SpaceX achieved the first CatIIIB recovery of a first stage at Vandenburg.

Apologies to all for no METAR or RVRs. but the video of the SARah1 satellite launch and landing of the booster in the fog was impressive. Launch at 14:40 and recovery at 22:30 if you don't want the whole story. https://www.spacex.com/launches/sarah-1/

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Re: SpaceX

#773 Post by PHXPhlyer » Sun Jun 26, 2022 5:03 pm

(-|
Too bad they can't drive the Teslas as well as they drive the Falcon 9s.

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Re: SpaceX

#774 Post by Boac » Thu Jul 07, 2022 9:09 am

Booster24 has been moved to the launch area so I guess we can expect a 'mating' soon (no, not Elon again..... =)) )

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Re: SpaceX

#775 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Jul 07, 2022 2:59 pm

Boac wrote:
Thu Jul 07, 2022 9:09 am
Booster24 has been moved to the launch area so I guess we can expect a 'mating' soon (no, not Elon again..... =)) )
Sorry, but Elon has reportedly launched two new "satellites". :-o :ymdevil:

Elon Musk reportedly had twins with a Neuralink executive


https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/07/tech/elo ... index.html

Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and world’s richest man, welcomed twins last year with an executive at one of his other companies, Neuralink, Insider reported on Wednesday.

Musk, who posted a tweet on May 24 saying “USA birth rate has been below min sustainable levels for ~50 years” and pinned it to the top of his more than 100 million-follower Twitter account, quietly fathered the children with Shivon Zilis, who works for Musk at the company which hopes to develop an implantable computer chip for the human brain, according to documents obtained by Insider.

The outlet obtained court filings pertaining to changing the children’s legal names to incorporate the Musk last name, and Zilis’ as part of the middle names. CNN Business could not independently confirm the contents of the documents, but a Travis County, Texas court docket obtained by CNN Business indicated that the name change petition was initially filed in April 2022 and granted in early May — matching the dates on the documents published by Insider. Those documents contain the court’s stamp as well as Musk’s signature, listing him as the father and Zilis as the mother.

Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to representatives at Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink.

On Thursday morning, Musk appeared to acknowledge the story on Twitter by reiterating his stance about birth rates. “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis,” he tweeted. “A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”

Minutes later, Musk tweeted: “I hope you have big families and congrats to those who already do!”

Zilis’ professional ties to Musk date back to at least April 2016, according to her LinkedIn profile, when she became an advisor to OpenAI. Musk is one of the cofounders of OpenAI, a nonprofit research laboratory with a stated mission to “ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”

In August 2020, Musk held a live-streamed event intended to showcase the progress of Neuralink’s technology, which it had implanted in a pig. Nearly a year later, Neuralink claimed monkeys could play Pong after the company’s chips were inserted into their brains. But, more recently, Neuralink has had to address concerns about its testing practices, denying allegations of animal cruelty while confirming earlier this year that monkeys have died as part of the testing.

According to Zilis’ LinkedIn, she worked for both Tesla and Neuralink beginning in May 2017; and currently works as a director of operations and special projects at Neuralink. In 2020, Zilis became a board member at OpenAI. Prior to working at Musk-helmed companies, Zilis worked for a Bloomberg venture capital fund (which landed her on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for venture capital in 2015), as well as IBM. She’s also served on the boards of at least two other artificial intelligence-related organizations. Zilis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is the second set of twins Musk is currently believed to have fathered. Musk and his first wife, Justine, had twins in 2004 before welcoming triplets two years later. (The two, who were married from 2000 to 2008, lost their first child; Justine, an author, famously wrote about what it was like to be married to, and divorce, Musk for Marie Claire magazine in 2010.) Musk subsequently had two children with musician Claire Boucher, who is better known as Grimes. Their second child was born in December 2021 through a surrogate.

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Re: SpaceX

#776 Post by Boac » Thu Jul 07, 2022 3:35 pm

I take it the insertion went smoothly?

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Re: SpaceX

#777 Post by Boac » Tue Jul 12, 2022 7:07 am

Some sort of failure during an engine start-up sequence test on Booster7 yesterday caused an explosion. Damage as yet unassessed. No METAR yet. https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/rocket- ... ng-3149232

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Re: SpaceX

#778 Post by PHXPhlyer » Thu Jul 14, 2022 7:29 pm

SpaceX hopes storms stay away for space station cargo launch

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/space ... rgo-launch#

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Almost 6,000 pounds of cargo and experiments are ready to fly to the space station if Mother Nature cooperates Thursday evening.

SpaceX’s 25th cargo mission is scheduled to launch atop a Falcon 9 rocket at 8:44 p.m. Forecasters, calling for a 70-percent chance of good weather, expect the east coast sea breeze to keep Florida’s summertime storms inland, but "an isolated shower or storm cannot be ruled out."

If all goes well, the Dragon capsule – this one making its third cargo flight – is due to dock Saturday morning. In addition to food and other supplies for the astronauts, the capsule will be carrying experiments like NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation, which will investigate the effect desert dust has on climate change.

NASA says other CRS-25 investigations will study the aging of immune cells and the potential to reverse those effects during postflight recovery, a small satellite that will monitor cloud-top and ocean surface temperatures, and a student experiment testing a concrete alternative for potential use in building habitats on the moon and Mars.

The capsule’s arrival on Saturday morning will coincide with the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo XI launch, which blasted off from the very same launch pad before landing on the moon. But Launch Pad 39A is looking very different than it did during the Apollo days.

After being used for nearly all of the Apollo missions and the majority of the space shuttle missions, 39A is now being leased to SpaceX. They gave the red-then-gray launch tower a sleek black makeover a few years ago, but more noticeable is the new support tower being constructed nearby.

That structure will serve to support launches and landings of SpaceX’s giant new Starship rocket, potentially helping ‘catch’ the returning boosters after launch.

The massive 390-foot, two-stage rocket, designed to be fully reusable, is still undergoing tests at the company’s site in south Texas. Eventually, SpaceX hopes Starships launched from Kennedy Space Center will take part in NASA’s Artemis program moon landings and eventually carry humans to Mars.

More immediately, SpaceX will remain busy with Falcon 9 missions. Several Starlink satellite launches are scheduled or expected over the next few weeks, while the company’s next crew taxi flight to the space station is targeted for September.

PP

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Re: SpaceX

#779 Post by PHXPhlyer » Fri Jul 15, 2022 5:40 pm

SpaceX rockets to fly Russian cosmonauts with new NASA deal

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/15/tech/spa ... index.html

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American and Russian astronauts will once share space aboard the same spacecraft after NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, reached a ride-sharing agreement Friday following months of back-and-forth discussions.

Two seats on two separate launches of Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft have been reserved for NASA astronauts, with the first slated to take off from Russia’s Cosmodrome launch site in Kazakhstan this September. And Russian cosmonauts will join at least two future SpaceX mission to the International Space Station, marking the first time a Russian has boarded one of SpaceX’s relatively new Crew Dragon spacecraft.

NASA assigned astronaut Frank Rubio to the Soyuz mission in September, and astronaut Loral O’Hara will join a later Soyuz flight. Roscosmos is putting cosmonaut Anna Kikina on SpaceX’s September flight, and Andrei Fedyaev will fly on another SpaceX mission in the spring of 2023, according to NASA.

NASA and Roscosmos both confirmed the agreement Friday.

The seat-swap agreement, which does not involve any exchange of payment between the countries, has been looming over NASA and Roscosmos for months amid rising tensions between the United States and Russia over the war in Ukraine.

NASA has repeatedly said that tensions on the ground have had no affect on the countries’ ongoing cooperation in space, though the ISS — which is jointly operated by NASA, Roscosmos and several other space agencies — has become the subject of bellicose rhetoric levied by Russian politicians. Dmitry Rogozin, who was replaced as the head of Roscosmos on Friday, had threatened to pull Russian cooperation from the ISS entirely.

NASA said in a statement Friday that inking a ride share agreement with Russia was crucial to ensure “continued safe operations” of the ISS. If either the Russian Soyuz spacecraft or the SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle were to run into issues and be taken out of service, a seat-swap agreement would ensure that both US astronauts and Russian cosmonauts would still have access to the space station.

“The station was designed to be interdependent and relies on contributions from each space agency to function. No one agency has the capability to function independent of the others,” NASA’s statement reads.

Such ride sharing agreements have been common throughout the two-decade history of the ISS. After NASA retired the Space Shuttle program in 2011, for example, American astronauts had to rely entirely on seats aboard Soyuz spacecraft for access to the ISS. That reliance ended only after SpaceX’s Crew Dragon entered service in 2020.

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Re: SpaceX

#780 Post by PHXPhlyer » Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:17 pm

SpaceX denied nearly $900 million in broadband subsidies

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/10/tech/spa ... index.html

In a high-stakes decision, federal regulators announced Wednesday that SpaceX will not receive nearly $900 million in subsidies that the company was awarded in December, citing the fact that its satellite-based service is “still developing technology” and the company “failed to demonstrate that [it] could deliver the promised service.”

The Federal Communications Commission had earmarked the funds for SpaceX’s Starlink internet service as part of the agency’s largest-ever subsidy program designed to quickly get internet access to people across rural America, where three out of five people say access to high-speed internet is still a pressing issue.

SpaceX was slated to receive a total of $856 million, one of the largest chunks of the $9 billion that was auctioned off.

But that will no longer happen.

“After careful legal, technical, and policy review, we are rejecting these applications,” FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement. “Consumers deserve reliable and affordable high-speed broadband. We must put scarce [subsidy] dollars to their best possible use as we move into a digital future that demands ever more powerful and faster networks. We cannot afford to subsidize ventures that are not delivering the promised speeds or are not likely to meet program requirements.”

The FCC also observed data that “indicate that Starlink’s speeds have been declining from the last quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of 2022.”

SpaceX has said that it already has more than 400,000 customers across the globe, and the company has poured resources into building up the service. It’s already launched nearly 3,000 satellites, which work in tandem to beam internet access to the ground. That’s a far different approach than traditional high-speed internet, which relies on underground fiber optic cables.

As part of the same announcement, the FCC also said it’s denying a $1.3 billion award earmarked for LTD Broadband, citing the fact that the internet service provider failed to obtain proper status and approvals for service in seven states.

Furthermore, the Wireline Competition Bureau, which develops telecommunications policy, “has determined that, based on the totality of the long-form applications, the expansive service areas reflected in their winning bids, and their inadequate responses to the Bureau’s follow-up questions, LTD and Starlink are not reasonably capable of complying with the Commission’s requirements,” the FCC said in a public notice.

Allowing SpaceX to participate in the subsidy program in the first place was controversial. Traditional telecommunications companies and some broadband advocates argued that SpaceX’s Starlink network was too new and unproven. Essentially, granting the company subsidies was a bet that SpaceX’s Starlink service will work just as the company promises and be affordable for rural Americans.

Rosenworcel cited the cost of Starlink as part of the reason for the denial.

“Starlink’s technology has real promise,” she said. “But the question before us was whether to publicly subsidize its still developing technology for consumer broadband—which requires that users purchase a $600 dish—with nearly $900 million in universal service funds until 2032.”

The FCC’s $9 billion subsidy package, called the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, was funded by fees that are routinely taken from internet customers in the United States. The idea is to siphon funds from urban areas where connectivity is plentiful and use that to subsidize the hefty costs of expanding internet infrastructure into more remote locations.

The Federal Communications Commission estimates that 21 million Americans — about 1 in 15 people — still lack access to high-speed internet. The actual number could be far higher, perhaps even double the FCC’s estimate, according to a BroadbandNow study.

For its part, SpaceX has been able to raise more than twice that $900 million figure through routine fundraising so far in 2022. Though SpaceX has other expensive projects to fund, including a rocket called Starship that’s expected to play a key role in NASA’s next moon landing, the company is valued at more than $125 billion, according to analytics firm Pitchbook.

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment, nor does it typically respond to press inquiries. LTD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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