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Mint
a day ago
- Business
- Mint
Elon Musk laid out plans for Mars. SpaceX production will outstrip Boeing and Airbus
Next Story Business News/ Companies / Elon Musk laid out plans for Mars. SpaceX production will outstrip Boeing and Airbus Al Root , Barrons Over the weekend, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gave a talk about making life multi-planetary. He wants to go to Mars—soon. SpaceX's huge Starship rocket launch system is a key enabling technology needed to get humanity to Mars, says Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. (Sergio Flores / AFP / Getty Images) Gift this article Who wants to be a Martian? It's a question that might need answering in your lifetime. Who wants to be a Martian? It's a question that might need answering in your lifetime. SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk outlined his plans to make life multi-planetary by sending Earthlings to Mars. The scale of his ambitions is mind-blowing. Over the weekend, Musk presented to SpaceX employees at Starbase, Texas. (Starbase is a literal city run by SpaceX.) The goal of the talk was to describe the steps required to bring SpaceX technology and, ultimately, humans to Mars. The talk also provided investors with a fascinating glimpse into Musk's space company. A civilization on Mars is 'going to be incredibly important for the long-term survival of civilization," said Musk. 'Then we go beyond Mars, ultimately, to the move, maybe asteroid belt…and ultimately, to other star systems…making science fiction no longer fiction." To achieve that, humanity needs rapidly reusable rockets, Musk added—a lot of them. Starship is SpaceX's fully reusable launch system in testing today. It's the most powerful rocket ship ever built by humans, standing some 400 feet tall on a launchpad. SpaceX can make a Starship every two to three weeks. That's an amazing tidbit in and of itself. Musk, however, wants to produce 1,000 a year. Boeing and Airbus delivered 1,114 planes combined in 2024 and are expected to deliver roughly 1,400 in 2025, according to FactSet. Most of those, however, are 737-sized jets. One Starship is bigger than a Boeing 747. SpaceX 'will be making, at some point, probably, as many Starships for Mars as Boeing and Airbus make [jets]," added Musk. Humans can launch missions to Mars every two years when planetary orbits align. The next window comes in late 2026. Musk wants to hit that window—sending something to Mars in a matter of months. To reach that goal, SpaceX has to perfect catching the top and lower half of the Starship rockets, improve the rocket engines and heat shield, and pioneer in-orbit refueling of a rocket ship. (Musk said in-orbit refueling testing can start in 2026.) The list of tasks to complete looks daunting. SpaceX has tested its Starship nine times. Each test has had some level of problems. No one at SpaceX, however, seems to be bothered by testing hiccups. For them, it's all part of the process of perfecting the tech. Musk even has a plan to pay for all the testing and building required. Starlink is SpaceX's profitable space-based Wi-Fi service that can essentially fund Mars development. Starlink represents roughly 80% of the current $350 billion value of SpaceX, says Rainmaker Securities CEO Glen Anderson. Through Friday trading, Boeing and Airbus, including debt, were worth a combined $340 billion. Rainmaker facilitates trades in privately held companies such as SpaceX. It estimates Starlink has more than five million subscribers globally. Eventually, Musk wants to ship one million tons of cargo to Mars every launch window. That's roughly 4,500 Statues of Liberty every two years. Thousands of rockets, sending millions of tons of cargo to build a city on another planet that's capable of supporting human life sounds like science fiction indeed. It might not be that way for much longer. Write to Al Root at Topics You May Be Interested In Catch all the Business News , Corporate news , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Can we actually build a thriving economy on and around the moon?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — Cashing in on a cislunar economy is ballyhooed by space exploration advocates. Cislunar space — the region extending from our planet to the moon — is getting a lot of attention these days, as more and more spacecraft make their way to Earth's nearest neighbor. But what needs to happen to help spark a true cislunar economy? And, given actions of late here on Earth, are we headed for a tariff-free cislunar zone? There's a lot of hard work ahead to put in place the needed hardware to sustain and define such a dollar-generating idea, experts say, but we at least have some ideas about how to get started. It turns out that power allowing day-and-night operations on the moon — that is, "plug-in and play" lunar equipment — stands out as a must-have if humanity is to develop a real, rather than aspirational, cislunar economy. The thought of cislunar space becoming a cash cow of the cosmos was heavily discussed during the Space Foundation's 40th Space Symposium, which was held here from April 7 to April 10 by the Space Foundation. "I don't see an inner solar system in which we don't significantly develop the moon if you're going to go anywhere," said Rob Chambers, director of strategy for exploration at Lockheed Martin. "The basis of an economy has to be something that Earthlings will pay for." Lockheed Martin is taking a visionary look at the building blocks of lunar infrastructure. For example, the company thinks that, by 2044, the moon could be abuzz with international research and commercial infrastructure, transforming its barren surface into a livable ecosystem. You can take Lockheed's take on the infrastructure needed to maintain a permanent presence on the moon — near its south pole, which is thought to be rich in water ice — in this futuristic tour. "We're focused on water and therefore hydrogen and oxygen propellants as the key product that is the base of the economy," Timothy Cichan, space exploration architect at Lockheed Martin, told "The big thing is power…lots of power," he said, as well as the mobility needed to source the water ice lying on the chilly, permanently shadowed floors of polar craters. "Even in lunar nighttime, it's as close to cold as the permanently shadowed regions," Chambers explained. "You have to learn how to handle getting in and out of those thermal gradients. You have to be comfortable [with] operating in the nighttime in order to do productive things in the daytime." So, do you design for cold or hot on the moon? "You've got to design for both," Chambers said. "If you've got all the power you want, say hundreds of kilowatts, now you can optimize for something other than just survival." If there's less than 85% continuous sunlight, he added, "our numbers say switch over to nuclear fission at that point. There are not that many places on the moon that have 85% sun. That, to us, says buckle up and get comfortable with nuclear fission. Once you've done that, now the world's your oyster." Cichan pointed to the evolving nature of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon in the coming years. Additionally, there's the space agency's footing of the bill for lander-carried experiments via its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. "NASA is making sure that we can evolve to an actual economy," said Cichan. "Nobody has closed a business case around that as yet, but we want to set up the infrastructure such that it is commercially operated, so that we can evolve to a place where there is a lunar economy. It's in a nascent form right now, very dependent on government dollars." Cichan said that his message is, try to do things today to get prepared for the cislunar economy: "You have got to be there; otherwise, you're not part of the conversation." Chambers labeled our current ability to make money in a cislunar economy as a "chasm of capitalism." "I think there will be either a demand signal that the government says they will keep pouring in billions of dollars and they will buy power — for instance, writing a contract that has a guaranteed procurement with exit clauses if they don't. That's one way of getting through that chasm … assured government spending," Chambers said. Another scenario, he said, is that the mining of helium-3 — a fuel for nuclear fusion reactors — on the moon turns out to be a viable business, and then people will pour in money. "History has shown that humans figure out how to make money anywhere." Michael Nayak is a program manager with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He's leading DARPA's 10-Year Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study. At the symposium, Nayak spotlighted what's needed within the next decade to establish an era of interoperable lunar infrastructure, which could spur a fully functioning lunar economy. "Today, the lunar economy has mining as its center. But in order for that to scale, we need megawatts of power," he said. In fact, Nayak would bet on a power company to be in the top five of a "lunar Fortune 50" business listing. In second place is heat rejection and generation as a commercial service, Nayak predicted, "especially in the wildly fluctuating temperatures of the moon." Related stories: — Moon mining gains momentum as private companies plan for a lunar economy — Water mining on the moon may be easier than expected, India's Chandrayaan-3 lander finds — NASA's Artemis program: Everything you need to know Of like mind is Jamie Porter, director of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium managed by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. "If you don't have power, you just can't do anything. You need it to be able to move forward," Porter told the Space Symposium gathering. "At DARPA, we are simply interested in big risks," Nayak said. The hard question that quickly emerged early in the LunA-10 study, he added, was, "How does it scale?" That is, how can we move beyond prototype lunar hardware to industry infrastructure and an actual lunar economy? "Power and thermal are absolutely critical," said Nayak. "The third thing is, where should we go [on the moon] if commercial industry is the point? Where are the specific locations with 'reserves' that are sufficiently deep that I can build an end-to-end economic model around?"
Economic Times
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Economic Times
Oh, the terrible awkwardness of creditworthiness
Live Events Beware the awkwardness of someone's credit denied. Imagine Superman , all righteous and kiss-curl-dangling, saving Earth from being sucked inside-out by an artificial black hole created by his arch-nemesis Lex Luthor. Before he can give the Daily Planet an exclusive sound bite, 'Earthlings, last week, I decided to take action against...'...Batman prances by, coolly saying that he saved the world from total destruction, and 'Gee, it was really nothing'. What makes it worse is the smooth hijacking from a fellow superhero. It would have been easier if it was some supervillain - The Joker, Thanos, Asim Munir, or even Lex Luthor himself - taking credit for saving the world. But because Batman and Superman are 'very good friends', what's Superman gonna do? Shout from the rooftops and denounce his superpal for lying through his bleached teeth?Trumpman's multiple claims since last Sunday - that the US mediated the ceasefire (NO, it's 'stoppage of fire'!) between India and Pakistan - have been rejected multiple times by Narendra Modi 's government. But it hasn't helped that each time the Indians have said, 'No, boss. Trumpman is wrong.'India's MEA has gone to moderate pains to tell everyone, 'Please chronology samajhiye: request for a call from the Pakistani director general of military operations (DGMO) to the Indian DGMO was received by India's MEA from the Pakistan High Commission at 1237 hours last Saturday. The Pakistani side had initial difficulties connecting the hotline for technical reasons. The timing was then decided based on the availability of the Indian DGMO at 1535 hours.'This was the spirited, inside-of-the-cheek-chewing, controlled denial that anyone had mediated between the two fighting sides. As if getting the bad guys to stop wasn't a challenge enough, now there's this additional irritant of being denied credit for stopping the bad guys. Just to be sure that stenos got the message, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal stated, 'Let me be clear. It was the force of Indian arms that compelled Pakistan to stop its firing.' That was last very next day, addressing US military personnel in Qatar, Trumpman said, 'I don't wanna say I did, but I sure as hell helped settle the problem between Pakistan and India last week...' Jaiswal had to be cringing when he heard that on loop. 'Did the man not get the memo?!'To add pent-up vexation to awkward injury, Trumpman had continued, 'And we talked to them about trade. Let's do trade instead of war. And Pakistan was very happy with that, and India was very happy with that, and I think they are on the way... Boy, everybody was very happy, I'll tell you.' This, a day after India had clarified that conversations 'between Indian and US leaders' had been on since Op Sindoor commenced and the understanding ('NOT agreement!) on 'cessation of military action' had been reached, and that the 'issue of trade did not come up in any of these discussions'. I'm not big on binaries, but someone has to be Modi and Trump are bound to meet again somewhere, some sunny day. India can't afford to keep looking flabbergasted -- let alone cheesed off - by Trumpman's 'Make Trade, Not War' free-jazz, hippie spiel. That's probably why everyone but Modi has taken their time out of their busy schedules to contradict Trumpman's boyoboyo-boy, will that Modi-Trump meeting somewhere, some sunny day, be awkward. Think of the guy who hears his own most effective, wonderfully-rehearsed dinner party anecdote being told by his buddy from across the thing is, showing that Trumpman's claims rankle would be doubly-embarrassing. I mean, who loudly accuses someone of stealing one's punchline without seeming petty? The awkward situation falls under a new level of 'plausible deniability'.The American president could well tell the Indian PM when they do meet - after avoiding eye contact for the first half-hour across the dance floor - 'What? Mediation? I said that?! I musta meant meditation! Yes, beautiful, beautiful meditation. Meditation is beautiful.'And that's the trouble when some people call everyone a 'very good friend'. Not every good friend of theirs is friendly with each other, you see.
Time of India
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Oh, the terrible awkwardness of creditworthiness
Beware the awkwardness of someone's credit denied. Imagine Superman , all righteous and kiss-curl-dangling, saving Earth from being sucked inside-out by an artificial black hole created by his arch-nemesis Lex Luthor. Before he can give the Daily Planet an exclusive sound bite, 'Earthlings, last week, I decided to take action against...' ...Batman prances by, coolly saying that he saved the world from total destruction, and 'Gee, it was really nothing'. What makes it worse is the smooth hijacking from a fellow superhero. It would have been easier if it was some supervillain - The Joker, Thanos, Asim Munir, or even Lex Luthor himself - taking credit for saving the world. But because Batman and Superman are 'very good friends', what's Superman gonna do? Shout from the rooftops and denounce his superpal for lying through his bleached teeth? Trumpman's multiple claims since last Sunday - that the US mediated the ceasefire (NO, it's 'stoppage of fire'!) between India and Pakistan - have been rejected multiple times by Narendra Modi 's government. But it hasn't helped that each time the Indians have said, 'No, boss. Trumpman is wrong.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like If You Eat Ginger Everyday for 1 Month This is What Happens Tips and Tricks India's MEA has gone to moderate pains to tell everyone, 'Please chronology samajhiye: request for a call from the Pakistani director general of military operations (DGMO) to the Indian DGMO was received by India's MEA from the Pakistan High Commission at 1237 hours last Saturday. The Pakistani side had initial difficulties connecting the hotline for technical reasons. The timing was then decided based on the availability of the Indian DGMO at 1535 hours.' This was the spirited, inside-of-the-cheek-chewing, controlled denial that anyone had mediated between the two fighting sides. As if getting the bad guys to stop wasn't a challenge enough, now there's this additional irritant of being denied credit for stopping the bad guys. Just to be sure that stenos got the message, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal stated, 'Let me be clear. It was the force of Indian arms that compelled Pakistan to stop its firing.' That was last Tuesday. Live Events The very next day, addressing US military personnel in Qatar, Trumpman said, 'I don't wanna say I did, but I sure as hell helped settle the problem between Pakistan and India last week...' Jaiswal had to be cringing when he heard that on loop. 'Did the man not get the memo?!' To add pent-up vexation to awkward injury, Trumpman had continued, 'And we talked to them about trade. Let's do trade instead of war. And Pakistan was very happy with that, and India was very happy with that, and I think they are on the way... Boy, everybody was very happy, I'll tell you.' This, a day after India had clarified that conversations 'between Indian and US leaders' had been on since Op Sindoor commenced and the understanding ('NOT agreement!) on 'cessation of military action' had been reached, and that the 'issue of trade did not come up in any of these discussions'. I'm not big on binaries, but someone has to be lying. Now, Modi and Trump are bound to meet again somewhere, some sunny day. India can't afford to keep looking flabbergasted -- let alone cheesed off - by Trumpman's 'Make Trade, Not War' free-jazz, hippie spiel. That's probably why everyone but Modi has taken their time out of their busy schedules to contradict Trumpman's claim. But boyoboyo-boy, will that Modi-Trump meeting somewhere, some sunny day, be awkward. Think of the guy who hears his own most effective, wonderfully-rehearsed dinner party anecdote being told by his buddy from across the table. The thing is, showing that Trumpman's claims rankle would be doubly-embarrassing. I mean, who loudly accuses someone of stealing one's punchline without seeming petty? The awkward situation falls under a new level of 'plausible deniability'. The American president could well tell the Indian PM when they do meet - after avoiding eye contact for the first half-hour across the dance floor - 'What? Mediation? I said that?! I musta meant meditation! Yes, beautiful, beautiful meditation. Meditation is beautiful.' And that's the trouble when some people call everyone a 'very good friend'. Not every good friend of theirs is friendly with each other, you see.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Astronomers Have Found a Prime Candidate for the Elusive Planet 9
Scientists examined infrared space surveys to narrow down candidates for Planet 9. Planet 9 would be so far from the Sun that it is just not illuminated by much sunlight. The two space surveys, conducted 23 years apart, could show how a secret planet orbits. Since the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet, there's been a ninth-planet-shaped hole in the hearts of many Earthlings. How will we remember what My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us now?Well, if we're lucky, we may soon be able to fill that gap. For some time now, scientists have wondered if a regular planet—not a dwarf planet—could explain some of the clustering of objects in the Kuiper Belt that starts at Neptune and extends outward from our Solar System. (Pluto is considered a Kuiper Belt object.) This hypothetical Planet 9 has never been directly observed and remains theoretical, but in new research uploaded to the preprint site arXiV, scientists share a very educated guess about the location of the long-theorized celestial body. (This study is not yet peer reviewed, but it follows a presentation from a 2024 conference and is listed as 'Accepted for publication in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (PASA).') To search for Planet 9, the scientists 'search[ed] for objects that moved slowly between IRAS and AKARI detections.' IRAS and AKARI are far-infrared, all-sky surveys completed 23 years apart. Though Planet 9 has never been confirmed, we know a lot about what a planet in its suspected area could be like. The team used qualities like this—such as a very long orbit around the Sun, feasible temperatures, and probable masses—to narrow down the IRAS dataset and the AKARI dataset separately. They then highlighted 13 total bodies that fit the criteria and showed up in both datasets, accounting for changes in epochs and positions in orbit. From there, they inspected the surveys' images and found one eligible bachelor... er, planet. The scientists are careful to explain that the criteria they chose would not necessarily identify the only possible candidates for Planet 9. For instance, if Planet 9 is over the size constraints they placed on their study, it's still likely to be picked up at some point by infrared surveys like this. It could also be a gas giant-type planet on par with or larger than Neptune. But if it's smaller, it's likely below the threshold of observability at such a long range. And long range is, honestly, underselling it—top theories for the positioning of Planet 9 place it around 400 astronomical units (AU). The furthest known planet, Neptune, is only about 31 AU. That's already 31 times further than Earth is from the Sun, creating an orbit that lasts about 165 years. Planet 9 would also have an irregular orbit, scientists believe, so it would spent part of its cycle even further away. This is why two surveys conducted 23 years apart may just be the perfect way to observe Planet 9. In that amount of time, the planet itself will have completed just a tiny fraction of its overall orbit—enough to travel from one spot into the adjacent spot on the subsequent survey. But a lot of other factors would need to line up exactly in order for this candidate to be the real Planet 9, and the scientists are transparent about that. 'The finalist of our Planet Nine candidate pair strongly depends on how the characteristics of Planet Nine are defined. [I]f the actual mass of Planet Nine is not sufficient to make its flux above the detection limits of two surveys, there is no chance of finding Planet Nine in this work.' This group took a stab at observing Planet 9 using the IRAS and AKARI infrared surveys, which can 'see' further than telescopes using the visible spectrum. And indeed, while the odds of actually finding the elusive planet here may be more like the odds of buying a winning lottery ticket, the work opens several next steps for other teams investigating Planet 9. The data may also help narrow down parameters for those using other tools. 'If the existence of Planet Nine can be confirmed by observations in the near future, it will improve our understanding of the history and structure of the entire Solar System in early stages,' the team concludes. And it would get Pluto yet another big sibling. You Might Also Like The Do's and Don'ts of Using Painter's Tape The Best Portable BBQ Grills for Cooking Anywhere Can a Smart Watch Prolong Your Life?
