SpaceX plans Starship program for in-orbit drug research
Under the plan, internally called Starfall, SpaceX's Starship rocket would bring products like pharmaceutical components to space in small, uncrewed capsules, said one of the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is confidential.
Starship would then deploy the capsules, which would spend time in orbit before reentering the atmosphere, where they could be recovered back on Earth, the person added.
The Starfall program would allow companies to take advantage of the unique conditions of space, specifically micro-gravity and higher levels of radiation, which can provide a new environment for manufacturing pharmaceutical drugs, semiconductors, food, and even beauty products.
A representative for SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The initiative could make SpaceX, which has dramatically lowered the cost of launching to orbit, a key leader in the sector of space-based research and development for commercial goods.
The SpaceX program is still in the early stages of development and the plans could change. The effort is highly reliant on the operational ability of Starship, which has been plagued by a string of explosive failures over its last several test flights.
SpaceX plans to make the program operational roughly by the end of the decade, one of the people said. The company is in talks with potential customers for the service, the people said.
A team to work on the initiative was created recently under the leadership of Chris Trautner, senior director of vehicle engineering for the Falcon family of rockets, one of the people said.
According to an analysis conducted by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm, certain industries could generate billions of dollars in additional revenue by expanding into space.
California-based startup Varda Space Industries, which is backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, has a similar business model of processing materials in space and has so far launched three capsules on board a SpaceX rocket and subsequently recovered them.
Starfall, the people said, also has defense applications, and SpaceX is working in conjunction with the military on the program, the outlines of which were reported by the Wall Street Journal in May.
It wasn't immediately clear how Starfall fits into an existing SpaceX contract with the US Department of Defense to develop Starship for sending huge quantities of military cargo and humanitarian aid between points on Earth.
Pashankar, Ludlow and Porter write for Bloomberg.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fast Company
7 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Craft is a great all-in-one productivity tool
This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. If I could use only one app, I'd pick Craft. Craft is my favorite multipurpose document/notes tool. It looks and feels nicer than Google Docs or Apple Notes. It's easier to use than Obsidian, Coda or Notion. And it's flexible enough for everything from shopping lists to client proposals. Read on for why it's so useful, new features, limitations, and more. Craft's eight best features Visual: Elegant sub-page cards help Craft docs look neater & nicer than Google or Word Docs, which tend to bog down with lots of text. Easy: Add text, images, links, tables, or sub-pages intuitively. Shareable: Collaborate on a doc and publish & share it with a link. You can create custom links and track metrics to measure visits. Export: Print, export as PDF or text, or transfer material to Day One, Bear, Drafts, Ulysses, Things, iA Writer, or other apps. Calendar: Easily sync your calendar to use Craft for daily notes. Affordable: The free version is great and the unlimited option is fairly priced. Pricing Free for basic usage, with up to 1500 content blocks and 1gb of storage. Free upgrade for students and educators with your school email address. Free upgrade w/ a subsription to Setapp, $10/month for access to 200+ apps. Plus plan: $8/month billed annually for a Plus account to create unlimited notes and documents. ($4/month with a special 50% current discount). Examples of Craft Docs Useful AI prompts: Excerpts from my resource for paid subscribers Planning great class sessions: Excerpts from my guide for paid subscribers Syllabus outline: Draft from teacher Jeremy England Home life notes:By the Craft team Examples of Craft Templates Simple company handbook with sections for people, policies & resources Sales plan has sections for mission statement, team roles, action plan, etc. Home design planner with customizable pages Travel packing list with customizable visual sections for your next trip. New features I like Styles For designing distinctive docs, Craft added 100 new premade styles Collections It's easy now to keep track of lists for projects, books, movies, etc Whiteboards Create a freeform brainstorming page with Post-Its, images, etc Sync with Readwise Import Kindle highlights and other clips you've saved Privacy and Security Craft has strong policies on data security and privacy. TL;DR: 'Craft does not own your data, nor do we sell it to others or use it for advertising.' Limitations Android: doesn't have a full app yet, though a mobile Web app is on the way. Craft works on Mac, iOS, VisionOS, Windows, & Web. Tagging: It's not yet easy to organize pages with tags as easily as you can with other notes tools, though the team is working on it. No synced blocks:
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Earnings To Watch: Preferred Bank (PFBC) Reports Q2 Results Tomorrow
Commercial banking company Preferred Bank (NASDAQ:PFBC) will be announcing earnings results this Monday before market open. Here's what investors should know. Preferred Bank missed analysts' revenue expectations by 5.5% last quarter, reporting revenues of $66.66 million, down 6.9% year on year. It was a disappointing quarter for the company, with a significant miss of analysts' net interest income estimates and a miss of analysts' EPS estimates. Is Preferred Bank a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it's free. This quarter, analysts are expecting Preferred Bank's revenue to grow 1.9% year on year to $70.82 million, a reversal from the 9% decrease it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $2.43 per share. Analysts covering the company have generally reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. Preferred Bank has missed Wall Street's revenue estimates three times over the last two years. Looking at Preferred Bank's peers in the regional banks segment, some have already reported their Q2 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Texas Capital Bank delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 15.2%, beating analysts' expectations by 2.7%, and Nicolet Bankshares reported revenues up 12.7%, topping estimates by 4.4%. Texas Capital Bank traded up 4.8% following the results while Nicolet Bankshares was also up 7.8%. Read our full analysis of Texas Capital Bank's results here and Nicolet Bankshares's results here. There has been positive sentiment among investors in the regional banks segment, with share prices up 10.3% on average over the last month. Preferred Bank is up 13.8% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $93.75 (compared to the current share price of $92.61). Here at StockStory, we certainly understand the potential of thematic investing. Diverse winners from Microsoft (MSFT) to Alphabet (GOOG), Coca-Cola (KO) to Monster Beverage (MNST) could all have been identified as promising growth stories with a megatrend driving the growth. So, in that spirit, we've identified a relatively under-the-radar profitable growth stock benefiting from the rise of AI, available to you FREE via this link. StockStory is growing and hiring equity analyst and marketing roles. Are you a 0 to 1 builder passionate about the markets and AI? See the open roles here.
Digital Trends
an hour ago
- Digital Trends
AI browsers are coming for phones, but not from the big players
Over the past few days, I've tested a new AI-first browser called Comet, developed by Perplexity. The browser is still in an invite-only stage, and preference is given to users with a Perplexity subscription. The company, however, already has grand plans for the mobile platform. Perplexity is already working on a mobile version of the Comet browser and talking with smartphone brands to pre-install it on their devices. In a conversation with The Verge, CEO Aravind Srinivas mentioned that a mobile version of the browser was in development and will co-exist alongside the Perplexity mobile app. What's coming? 'Some people are going to use the standalone Comet app, just like how they use Chrome or Safari, and it's okay,' Srinivas said on the Decoder podcast. He mentioned that users will be able to interact with any webpage using AI, and that voice-based interactions will be a part of the package. The Perplexity co-founder also revealed that the app will be available for both Android and iOS, mentioning Google's Chromium and Apple's WebKit foundations for web browsers. On the desktop version, Perplexity's Comet browser is built atop the Chromium engine, which powers Chrome and Edge among other web browsers. Recommended Videos But developing a web browser is only one part of the equation. Wrangling a share out of Chrome's massive user base is an entirely different ballgame. And that's where Perplexity is hoping some brand partnerships will yield positive results. A big chess move The company is planning to join hands with smartphone brands so that the Comet app will come pre-installed on their hardware. 'It's not easy to convince mobile OEMs to change the default browser to Comet from Chrome,' Srinivas told Reuters. Perplexity already has a similar deal in place with Motorola, which entails pre-installation of the Perplexity mobile app on smartphones. The AI company also created custom system-level optimizations that allow users to directly summon Perplexity using the Moto AI bundle, handle emails, control music playback, and make restaurant bookings. Srinivas admitted that the road ahead won't be easy. Google already has deals in place with Android smartphone brands that involve pre-installation and the setting up of Chrome as the default browser out of the box. Some of these stipulations are under antitrust scrutiny. The browser landscape, however, is shifting rapidly. Google has already integrated AI mode within Search to do essentially what Perplexity's answering engine does. Additionally, my experiments with Dia and Opera browser tell me that browsers with AI agents, or AI-powered action skills, are the next big frontier. In the meantime, OpenAI — the maker of ChatGPT and one of the biggest AI players in the world — is reportedly working on its web browser, as well. The company already has agentic products such as Operator and ChatGPT agent out there. Moreover, it also has a deal in place with Apple that deeply integrates ChatGPT capabilities with Siri and across the Apple Intelligence stack.
