Tag: Elon Musk
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Season’s readings: 12 gift books for geeks
NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins reads a book titled “Max Goes to the Space Station” in 2014 during a space station outreach activity called Story Time From Space. (Credit: NASA / STFS) In this age of e-readers, there are still occasions when it’s nice to have a book printed on actual paper – like holiday giving, for instance. But which book…
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Bezos-backed Blue Origin achieves rocket landing
A suborbital rocket booster built by Blue Origin, an entrepreneurial space firm founded by Internet tycoon Jeff Bezos, streaked into space in the skies over West Texas and descended to a pinpoint propulsive touchdown on a landing pad, the company announced Tuesday. The landing makes the New Shepard rocket, named in honor of Mercury astronaut…
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SpaceX’s Elon Musk gets in the Thanksgiving spirit on ‘The Big Bang Theory’
Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, surprises Howard Wolowitz (played by Simon Helberg) on the CBS TV series “The Big Bang Theory.” (Credit: CBS) You wouldn’t think Elon Musk was a warm and fuzzy guy, based on this year’s biography of the hard-driving CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, but on this week’s…
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First flight of Falcon Heavy delayed again
Artist’s concept of the Falcon Heavy rocket, which will lift off powered by 27 Merlin main engines, generating nearly 4 million pounds of thrust. Credit: SpaceX SpaceX has slowed development of the Falcon Heavy rocket, a mega-booster made of three Falcon 9 booster cores strapped together, as the company recovers from a launch failure last…
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Support strut probable cause of Falcon 9 failure
Updated at 9 p.m. EDT with SpaceX statement A faulty support strut inside the Falcon 9 rocket’s second stage liquid oxygen tank likely broke free during a June 28 space station resupply launch, destroying the booster minutes after liftoff in a cloud of debris over the Atlantic Ocean, SpaceX chief Elon Musk said Monday. While…
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SpaceX’s Elon Musk traces Falcon 9 rocket failure to busted strut
The unexpected breakdown of a tank strut apparently caused last month’s failure of a Falcon 9 rocket launch to the International Space Station, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk reported Monday. Elon Musk in Seattle last year. The June 28 loss of the Falcon, plus SpaceX’s robotic Dragon capsule and more than two and a half tons of…
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Stephen Hawking searches for aliens, and Elon Musk explains the SpaceX explosion
Alan Boyle We’ve been thrilled to have longtime space and science reporter Alan Boyle covering two big stories for GeekWire today: Stephen Hawking’s announcement of a $100 million initiative to find alien life, and Elon Musk’s news conference about a preliminary finding in the recent SpaceX Falcon 9 explosion. Before leaving the GeekWire offices this afternoon, Alan sat down and talked with us…
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Musk: Falcon 9 rocket failure a “huge blow” to SpaceX
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket broke apart approximately 139 seconds after launch June 28. Credit: Walter Scriptunas II/Scriptunas Images Speaking publicly for the first time since a Falcon 9 rocket failure that destroyed a Dragon cargo capsule for the International Space Station, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Tuesday that engineers are still piecing together what happened…
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SpaceX rocket breaks up on latest resupply mission to Space Station
Updated with video below. An unmanned SpaceX rocket carrying supplies and scientific experiments for the International Space Station broke up this morning shortly after launching from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The live webcast of the launch showed the Falcon 9 rocket splitting apart around 2 minutes, 19 seconds into the mission. https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/615166043762376705/photo/1 Falcon 9 experienced a problem…
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Throttle valve blamed for Falcon 9’s unsuccessful landing
SpaceX engineers have narrowed the cause of last week’s unsuccessful landing of a Falcon 9 rocket booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean on a commanding issue with an engine throttle valve, according to Elon Musk, the company’s founder and chief executive. Musk posted the update on Twitter late Saturday, and he confirmed the…