Elon

Google is serious about putting data centers in space. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos rub hands

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While there are municipalities debating whether to let big technology companies install data centers in their domainsGoogle wants a strike further: taking the data centers to space. Google. The company revealed its intentions a few weeks ago and your Suncatcher project wants to install two prototype satellites before 2027. Curiously, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are more than delighted with the idea of ​​their rival. Suncatcher Project. Push the capabilities of the artificial intelligence requires that we train it and, for this, they are necessary huge data centers with spectacular computing power. The problem is that the energy needs of these facilities They are astronomical, becoming resource sinksmaking oil companies set aside their renewable energy plans and even raising the opening of “private” nuclear power plants. Suncatcher couldn’t have a more appropriate name. In space, without the influence of the atmosphere, solar panels They capture the light spectrum in a different way, enough to feed those data centers that seem insatiable, and what Google proposes is to build constellations of dozens or hundreds of satellites that orbit in formation at about 650 kilometers high. Each of them would be armed with Trillium TPU (processors specifically designed for AI calculations) and would be connected to each other via laser optical links. Pichai puts the topic anywhere. Although 2027 is the key date, it is evident that Google is very interested in airing its plans because it is a sign of both technological power and an invitation for interested entities to invest in the process – and a way to continue inflating everything around AI-. And the person who is practicing this speech the most is the company’s CEO himself: Sundar Pichai. Since we learned of Google’s plans, Pichai has spoken of the topic in every interview he has given. It does not tell anything new beyond that hope of having TPUs in space in 2027 and the ambition that in a decade extraterrestrial data centers will be the norm. Musk and Bezos: competition, but allies. And if Google is interested in selling its narrative, those who are also interested are two of its most direct competitors: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Both Musk with several of his companies and Bezos with Amazon Web Services are in the race for data centers and artificial intelligence. They have some of the largest on the planet, but they also have something that the rest of the competitors don’t: ability to launch things into space. Musk with SpaceX and Bezos with Blue Origin have the tools to put satellites into orbit, charging for each kilo they launch into space. And it is there, the more credible it seems that the future of computing is in low Earth orbit, the more economic and political sense they will make. SpaceX as Blue Origin. Both are Google’s competition, but also the option for Google to achieve its objective. And, ultimately, we keep seeing rival companies renting their services from each other. Data center fever in space. The truth is that, at first, it sounds like a crazy plan to build these extraterrestrial data centers, but from the most pragmatic point of view (removing logistics and the money that both development and each launch will cost from the equation), it is a plan that makes sense. In space, a panel can perform up to eight times more than on the Earth’s surface, in addition to generating electricity continuously by not depending on day/night cycles. It is something that would eliminate the need for huge batteries, but also for complex water-based cooling systems. And, as we said, Google is not alone in this. Currently, there is a fever for space data centers with big technology companies in the spotlight: Considerable challenges. Now, Google itself comment It will not be easy to carry out this strategy. On the one hand, the costs. The company claims that prices may fall several thousand dollars per kilo to just $200/kg by mid-2030 if the industry consolidates. They note that, in that case, the price of launching and operating a space data center could be comparable to the energy costs for an equivalent terrestrial data center. Another difficulty will be maintaining a close orbit between the satellites. They would have to be within 100-200 meters of each other for optical links to be viable. And most importantly: radiation tolerance by the TPUs. Google has been experimenting with this for years, but they must test the effects of radiation on sensitive components such as the HBM memory. Surely astronomers They will be delighted with this strategysame as with starlink. Image | THAT In Xataka | We are launching more things into space than ever before. And the next problem is already on the table: how to pollute less

Elon Musk has been refusing to take SpaceX public for 20 years. His new obsession has changed his mind

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If there is something that Elon Musk has been repeating since before Starship was called Starship, it is that SpaceX would not go public until the gigantic Martian rocket was flying regularly. The excuse was that Wall Street likes short-term profitability plans more than multi-generational plans to colonize Mars. But the script has changed: SpaceX is preparing its jump onto the stock market, and not to pay for the trip to the red planet. He does this because he needs a lot of capital for “something more” than Starship and Starlink. The largest IPO in the United States. As revealed BloombergSpaceX plans to launch a Public Offering in late 2026 or early 2027. The company is seeking a valuation of $1.5 trillion (trillion, on an American scale) and more than $30 billion in cash, dizzying figures that would be the largest IPO in the history of the United States, close to the global record set by Saudi Aramco in 2019. Musk has been leaving breadcrumbs in X for days about this change in strategy. When the first rumors leaked about a financing round that valued the company at 800,000 million, the tycoon denied itclarifying that “the valuation increases are based on the progress of Starship, Starlink… and one more thing, which is possibly the most significant by far.” What is that thing that makes another round of investment insufficient? Orbital computing. What is clear from Musk’s latest tweets is that SpaceX wants to raise a lot of cash with its IPO for more than just Starship and Starlink: to develop space data centers. The logic, that Musk himself considers validis the same one that other companies like Google are following, but with the advantage of being the largest rocket launcher in the world. On Earth, AI data centers have two major bottlenecks: power and cooling. In space, satellites can receive sunlight 24 hours a day without atmospheric interference and with the possibility of dissipating heat on the dark side of the satellite, eliminating complex water systems and air conditioning of the Earth. Beyond Starlink. SpaceX already has a constellation of 9,000 satellites in orbit, many of them interconnected by laser links. The plan would be to take advantage of all the knowledge and technology that the company has to create a new constellation of localized AI: in Musk’s words, the cheapest way to generate AI bitstreams in less than three years. Their roadmap is hard science fiction: scale up to adding 100 GW of capacity per year using high-bandwidth lasers connected to the Starlink constellation itselfwhich is already highly profitable. And from there we move on to factories on the Moon and the use of electromagnetic rails to launch these AI satellites without the need for rockets. The umpteenth gold rush. Figures like Sam Altman, Eric Schmidt either Jeff Bezos They are already moving to have their piece of the pie in the orbital data center business. Google created the Suncatcher project and Nvidia collaborates with Starcloudwhile smaller startups like Aetherflux have announced projects like “Galactic Brain” planned for 2027. The difference is that SpaceX has the launch experience and is building the largest rocket in the world, with the peculiarity that it aspires to be completely reusable. It’s just the beginning. If 1.5 trillion is already a historic valuation, a recent report by ARK Invest projects that by 2030, SpaceX’s enterprise value could be around $2.5 trillion in a base case scenario, driven almost entirely by recurring revenue from Starlink and declining launch costs thanks to Starship reusability. Going public in 2026 would not just be a financial operation: it would give SpaceX the capital it needs to become the backbone of AI computing infrastructure, turning an internet service like Starlink into something that Musk himself considers “much more significant.” Images | SpaceX In Xataka | Building data centers in space was the new hot business. Elon Musk just broke it with a tweet

Elon Musk boasted of having created an “apocalypse-proof” car. Now the Tesla Cybertruck’s headlights are falling out

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Who doesn’t know a C15, prays to any Tesla Cybertruck with this title we headed this article in July 2024. We did it because on social networks it was already common to find comparisons between a Tesla Cybertruck which began selling just half a year before for a price close to $100,000 (sometimes much higher) with the car of “a Spanish farmer flying with three bags of fertilizer and a pregnant sheep in the trunk”, as this X user described. It was no wonder. Since it was first announcedElon Musk did not stop boasting that Tesla’s future electric car was nothing short of indestructible. A story that began crack when, live, the car glass itself could not resist the launch of a steel ball that, in theory, should not have caused any scratches. Now, less than two years after the car went on sale we know that the crack has been getting bigger and bigger. Because Tesla has recalled its Cybertruck for review. This time there have been 6,200 units. It is the tenth time in less than 24 months. Now, the headlights are going out. Indestructible, when it does not self-destruct Elon Musk boasted during the Tesla Cybertruck launch event about having a car “apocalypse proof”. He was talking, we assume, about real apocalypses, not metaphorical ones like the one they are experiencing Tesla sales in Europe. Beyond the jokes, what the owner of the company wanted to show is that he had something like a “armored street car”. In Xataka We already explained why a car that does not deform is a bad idea. If the car does not absorb the impact, it is the passenger who suffers the impact against himself. We are talking, of course, about cars that are on the street, working with all the guarantees. The problem for Tesla is that it keeps call cars for inspection. In the first year he had to do five calls for review. Today it has already been 10 and there are two full months of 2025 ahead, they collect in Electrek. While it is true that some of the problems have been solved with simple software updates, on other occasions they have had to go to the workshop because they were losing pieces in progress. The problem, everything indicates, is the same as on this occasion. The Tesla Cybertruck has some unusual headlights falling out, according to the American media. That is why the NHTSA has had to activate a recall so that 6,197 Tesla cars return to facilities. And Tesla sells headlights that can be installed on the roof of the vehicle as an accessory in its after-sales network, expanding the car’s off-road characteristics. The problem is that those headlights fall out. The glue simply cannot withstand their weight and in some circumstances it ends up expiring. This It hasn’t been the first time that Tesla has problems with the glue used, which has led to calls for review because, among other elements, the decorative molding of the A pillar, the one located on the side of the windshield, fell off. Beyond the possible fun of having an indestructible car that pieces are falling off while movingTesla is experiencing an ordeal with the electric off-roader. The company had the opportunity to make it a flagship, aspirational model and always sell it at a very high price but without aspirations of turning it into a mass product. like Mercedes does with its G-Class. However, it opted for the opposite and now finds itself unable to put the promised versions on the market at affordable prices. But, above all, it does not seem to be selling the expected numbers. And the company says it has a production line ready capable of produce 125,000 units each year. Musk even boasted that they expected sell more than 250,000 units annually. Electrek They point out that less than 65,000 units have been sold since November 2023. Photo | Josip Ivankovic In Xataka | In an attempt to improve sales of the Cybertruck, Elon Musk has found an unexpected buyer: himself

Building data centers in space was the new hot business. Elon Musk just broke it with a tweet

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The debate over the feasibility of building gigantic data centers in orbit had been heating up for months. It is Silicon Valley’s new big idea to solve the insatiable energy appetite of artificial intelligence. Until, as usual, Elon Musk has entered the conversation with the subtlety of a hammer. Elon Musk has joined the chat. After weeks of debate about the feasibility of building servers in space, Eric Berger, editor of Ars Technica, argued that will end up being a more plausible option when the technology exists to assemble satellites in orbit autonomously. It was the moment chosen by Elon Musk to enter the conversation. “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites, which have high-speed laser links,” wrote the CEO of SpaceX. “SpaceX is going to do it,” he said. A phrase that has probably fallen like a blow on startups that are taking advantage of the momentum of AI to go out in search of financing. Why the hell do we want servers in space? The idea of ​​moving computing to Earth orbit responds to a very real crisis: AI is an energy monster, and Demand for data centers continues to grow. Given this panorama, space offers two advantages that are impossible on Earth: Almost unlimited energy: In a sun-synchronous orbit, solar panels receive sunlight almost continuously (more than 95% of the time). Free Cooling: Land-based data centers consume millions of liters of fresh water to cool. With a large enough radiator, the gap can be “an infinite heatsink at -270°C.” The heat would be radiated into the vacuum without wasting a single drop of water. The new titans of space AI. Musk is not the first to see the business. In fact, he arrives at a party where the first contracts are already being distributed. Jeff Bezos predicted during the Italian Tech Week that we will see “giant training clusters” of AI in orbit in the next 10 or 20 years. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, bought rocket company Relativity Space precisely for this purpose. And Nvidia, the undisputed king of AI hardware, has actively backed startup Starcloud, which plans to launch the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into space this November, with the goal of eventually building a monster 5-gigawatt orbital data center. Why Musk would win. The vision of Bezos, Schmidt and Starcloud faces two colossal obstacles: the cost of launch and the construction of the servers themselves. Calculations for a 1 GW data center would require more than 150 launches with current technology. And Starcloud’s plan for a 4 kilometer wide array is a logistical nightmare. Elon Musk has Starship, the giant rocket on which all of his competitors’ business models depend to be profitable. And you don’t need build a new orbital data center. Just adapt and scale the one you already have. 10,000 satellites and counting. SpaceX’s Starlink constellation no longer competes against satellite internet, goes for terrestrial fiber. Musk’s company has already launched 10,000 satellites and is preparing the deployment of the new V3 satellites, designed for Starship with high-speed laser links. According to SpaceX itself, each Starship launch will add 60 terabits per second of capacity to a network that is already, in practice, a global computing and data mesh. While Starcloud needs to hire a rocket and assemble 4km-wide solar and cooling panels, Musk simply needs Starship to finish development to continue launching satellites. In Xataka | Starlink stopped competing with satellite Internet companies a long time ago: now it is going for something much bigger

After many years trying to copy the Falcon 9, Elon Musk believes there is a company about to achieve it

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It seems unlikely today that a startup can be 10 years ahead of the competition, but that is the case with SpaceX. Elon Musk’s aerospace company dominates the industry thanks to the Falcon 9, a rocket that has turned 15 years old and has been almost a decade landing vertically without any other orbital rocket having managed to repeat the feat. Until now. The Falcon 9 has company. A few days ago, Elon Musk broke his usual disdain about the rest of the industry to point out a specific contender. The Chinese company Landspace is not only close to matching the Falcon 9, Musk admitted.but it could end up surpassing it. The reason? Its new Zhuque-3 rocket, which combines the general architecture of the Falcon 9 with key elements of Starship, SpaceX’s most modern and experimental rocket. The gigantic Starship “is in another league,” Musk said. However, recognized that the Zhuque-3 could reach “Falcon 9 levels of reliability and launch rate” in about five years. This is the Zhuque-3 rocket. The big bet of LandSpace, one of the private companies most powerful in the Chinese aerospace industryis a two-stage launcher with a first stage capable of landing vertically for reuse. Although it has a very similar power to that of the Falcon 9 (with a payload capacity in its reusable configuration of 18.3 tons), it is built in stainless steel instead of aluminum, and burns methane and liquid oxygen instead of kerosene, the same material and the same fuel as Starship. Landspace is just the first. If Zhuque-3 manages to successfully take off and land in the coming weeks, Landspace will be the first company to close the enormous distance that separates the industry from SpaceX (with permission from Blue Origin’s New Glenn, a larger and heavier rocket, which also hopes to take off and land successfully in November). These two will be followed by other models such as the CZ-12A from the Chinese state company CASC and the Tianlong-3 from the Chinese startup Space Pioneer. Next will come the Hyperbola 3 from iSpace, the Pallas 1 from Galactic Energy and the Gravity 2 from OrienSpace. All Chinese companies, driven by the liberalization of the space industry promoted by Beijing in 2014. Copy what works, then improve. Public incentives, such as very low-interest loans, only tell part of the story. If Chinese companies are on the verge of having their Falcon 9, it is because of their philosophy of first copying what works and then iterating until they improve on their Western rivals. Elon Musk’s recognition is, perhaps, the clearest sign that the race has changed. It’s no longer a question of whether someone will copy the Falcon 9, but rather who will be the first to surpass it using, ironically, SpaceX’s own ideas for its next generation of rockets. In Xataka | The race to become “China’s SpaceX”: who’s who in its private space launch sector

The absurd legal battle between Elon Musk and the game “Cards Against Humanity” has ended in a bittersweet ending

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The creators of the irreverent card game Cards Against Humanity have reached an out-of-court settlement with SpaceX, ending a legal dispute financed by his own fans. Although they promised to distribute the 15 million dollars they would receive from the company if they won the trial, there will be no trial to hold No money to distribute. The origin of the dispute. The story begins in 2017. Cards Against Humanity raised $2.25 million from its fans to buy land in cameron countyTexas. The goal? Legally block the construction of the wall promoted by Donald Trump on the border with Mexico. The purchase of the plot was possible, in addition to the ingenious marketing campaign, thanks to 150,000 donations of $15 each. The problem arose when SpaceX, which has the Starbase launch complex right next door, began using the empty Cards Against Humanity plot to store material. Elon Musk against the card game. In 2024, Cards Against Humanity accused SpaceX of invade your property for at least six months. In addition to starting a new marketing campaign, this time against Elon Musk, the owners of the game sued the company for depositing construction materials, gravel and debris on their plot without permission. Amid insults against Musk, whom they called “a billionaire even richer and more racist than Trump,” Cards Against Humanity promised $100 for each of the 150,000 crowdfunding participants. As? Demanding $15 million from SpaceX as compensation for the crime. Bittersweet ending. Finally, Cards Against Humanity has informed its fans that there will be no trial. SpaceX and the card game have reached an out-of-court agreement whose figure has not been revealed, but which the creators of the game describe like “Musk did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls.” So why have they accepted it? Cards Against Humanity explained that a trial “would have cost more than we probably would have earned from SpaceX.” “According to Texas law,” they add“we probably wouldn’t have been able to recover our legal costs. We had the truth on our side, but Musk and SpaceX could have easily outspent us.” How will they compensate the fans? This is where the story takes a Cards Against Humanity turn. The 150,000 donors who helped buy the land will not receive cash, but only “comedy.” The company will send all entrants “a new, exclusive mini-pack of cards about Elon Musk,” which they hope to ship in early 2026. In an email to fans, the company summed it up: “Since we can’t give you what you really wanted—cash from Elon Musk—we’re going to make it up to you…with comedy!” The land is empty again. Images | Ministry of Communications of Brazil, Mercado Libre In Xataka | A genius named Tom Mueller designed the engines for the Falcon 9. And now that genius wants to beat SpaceX on its own turf

Elon Musk is trying to win the AI ​​race by creating the Wikipedia of AI. We have many questions

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Grokipediathe new online encyclopedia created by xAI, is now available. The project that Elon Musk has been talking about for some time is just what we expected: a version of Wikipedia in which the content has been generated by Grok, the AI ​​model developed by Musk’s company. And that is precisely the problem. What is Grokipedia. Basically, a copy of Wikipedia in which, as we say, the writing of the texts is done by Grok. The design is simple, with a home page that is a search engine. The articles follow the design of Wikipedia and its structure of different headings and photos. At the moment there do not seem to be any photos in those articles, and Grokipedia does not currently allow users to edit those pages either. If AI makes mistakes, how can we trust AI? The essential question that determines the validity of the idea of ​​Grokipedia is precisely that. Considering that AI makes things up and makes mistakes, what can you expect from an online encyclopedia created by an AI model? Grokipedia on the left, Wikipedia on the right. The PS5 article is an absolute copy of the Wikipedia original. Content “adapted” or directly copied from Wikipedia. Some Grokipedia pages display the message that the content has been adapted from Wikipedia taking advantage of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. This happens, for example, with the article dedicated to MacBook Air. In other articles such as that of the PlayStation 5 That message falls short because the article is basically the same as Wikipedia’s. An encyclopedia with biases. In Grokipedia there are signs that the theoretical neutrality and objectivity that should be fundamental pillars of such a project are faltering. As indicated in Wiredthere are worrying examples such as the one that talks about the slavery of African Americans in the US in which they talk about “ideological justifications.” In an entry about “gay porn“false information is shown indicating that the proliferation of these contents fueled the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. In the entry on the genre, Grokipedia indicates that “gender refers to the binary classification of humans as males or females based on biological sex.” Wikipedia start entry stating that “Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy) or woman (or girl), or a third gender.” In the image and likeness of Elon Musk. and the article about Elon Musk It contains 11,000 words and 300 citations/references compared to the 8,000 and 523 of its Wikipedia version. In both encyclopedias there are curiosities about that article, and for example in Wikipedia there is a section dedicated to Musk’s controversial greeting which is not on Grokipedia. And on the opposite side, Grokipedia does have mention of the “fart guy” controversy which is not available on Wikipedia. This is just the beginning. This version “0.1” of Grokipedia contains 885,000 articles, while Wikipedia has more than 8 million entries. In 2017 Elon Musk posted a tweet in which he praised the work of Wikipedia, but over time that perception changed, probably due to the comments included in the entry about him on Wikipedia. This year tweeted the message “Stop financially supporting Wikipedia until balance is restored!” The danger. Although Elon Musk assures that Grokipedia is open source and anyone can use it for free, it remains to be seen the ability that its users will have to edit articles created by AI. The risk is that this project poses a new attempt to control the conversation, and as he says entrepreneur Gary Marcus, “whoever writes the encyclopedia controls the narrative.” Jimmy Wales warns. The creator of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, indicated in an interview in The Washington Post a few days ago that he was curious to know what Grokipedia would end up being, but that he did not have too many expectations about the result. For him, AI language models “are simply not good enough to write encyclopedia articles. There will be a lot of errors.” Lauren Dickinson, spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, explained in The Verge how “Wikipedia knowledge is and always will be human.” Problems for the free and human-created encyclopedia. Even so, Wikipedia is threatened by AI. Not only because this legendary online encyclopedia has been the great manual for training AI, but because it is suffering a traffic crisis. The xAI project is the latest attack on that source of knowledge and information, which, from being under control and editing completely carried out by human beings, now cedes those editing and writing tasks to xAI’s AI model, Grok. Image | dvids In Xataka | There is a reason why Wikipedia resists as the last human bastion against AI: because its editors rebelled

NASA has had enough of SpaceX and will offer the return to the Moon to other companies. Elon Musk has not taken it well at all

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NASA’s strategy to return to the Moon has just been blown up. In a series of television appearances and public statements, the acting administrator of the US space agency, Sean Duffy, has announced a change of course: NASA is going to reopen the public tender to build the manned lunar landing module (HLS), a contract that until now was held by SpaceX alone for the Artemis III and IV missions. Because. The official reason is transparent: “We are in a race against China,” confirmed Duffy in an interview with CNBC. And in this race, “SpaceX is falling behind.” “Competition and innovation are the keys to our dominance in space, so NASA will open HLS production to Blue Origin and other large American companies.” “The president and I want to reach the moon during this president’s term.” The decision ends NASA’s “all-to-SpaceX” bet and reopens a multibillion-dollar battle for the most crucial contract in modern space exploration. As expected, Elon Musk has not remained silent. The hell of space refueling. To understand NASA’s frustration, you have to look beyond the delays in Starship test flights. The real bottleneck is the mission architecture itself. As analyzes Daniel Marín in Eurekathe lunar version of Starship is a giant 52-meter rocket that cannot reach the Moon without first refueling in low Earth orbit. This operation is of unprecedented complexity due to Starship’s cryogenic liquid fuel, which tends to evaporate. This is not a simple fuel transfer; It requires multiple launches of tankers (up to 15 or 20) to fill one or several orbital tanks that will then transfer hundreds of tons of liquid methane and oxygen to the lunar Starship. It is a technology that has never been tested on this scale. While SpaceX continues to deal with problems with its prototypes (Musk assures that version 3 of Starship will be able put 100 tons of cargo into orbit in 2026, but that was precisely the promise with version 2), NASA has gotten nervous. Every SpaceX delay is an unforeseen victory for China, whose lunar program is advancing at a methodical pace to put astronauts on the Moon before 2030. The Chinese Lanyue lunar module is much simpler than Starship. Plan B is Blue Origin. Duffy’s statement is not a bluff. There are already at least two clear alternatives on the table that NASA is seriously considering. Plan B is Blue Origin. But when Duffy mentions Blue Origin, he is not referring to the Blue Moon Mk 2 HLS module that Jeff Bezos’ company is already developing for the future Artemis V mission (and which, ironically, also requires complex orbital refueling). As revealed Eric Berger in Ars TechnicaBlue Origin has been quietly developing a plan B: a modified version of its Blue Moon Mark 1 lander. This vehicle, originally designed for cargo only, would be adapted to carry crew. Its great advantage: it would not require refueling in space. It would be a much simpler and faster solution, that we had already mentioned in Xataka. Plan C is Lockheed Martin. Duffy also said “maybe others.” Those “others” are the giants of the traditional aerospace industry, with Lockheed Martin at the helm. Traditional NASA contractors have assured Duffy that they can build an Apollo-style lunar module in 30 months. The proposal, backed by analysis like this one from SpaceNewswould be based on proven technologies: storable propellants (that do not evaporate like cryogenic methane and hydrogen) and already operational subsystems, such as those of the Orion spacecraft. Bob Behnken, vice president of Lockheed Martin, told Ars Technica who are up for the challenge: “We have been working with a cross-industry team… to address Secretary Duffy’s request to meet our country’s lunar goals.” Does it stick? The price. A contract of this type, cost-pluscould skyrocket to $20 or $30 billion, compared to $2.9 billion in the original SpaceX contract. But for Duffy, price appears to be a secondary factor if it guarantees arriving before China. Elon takes out the flamethrower. Elon Musk’s reaction to the threat of losing his lunar monopoly has been visceral and has come in several waves of tweets. First, Musk defended his company’s work. “SpaceX is moving like lightning compared to the rest of the space industry. Plus, Starship will end up doing the entire lunar mission. Mark my words.” He then moved on to direct attack against your rival with an incendiary claim: “Blue Origin has never delivered a payload to orbit, let alone to the Moon.” The tweet was quickly corrected by Community Notes of X, who reminded Musk that Blue Origin did reach orbit with its NG-1 mission on January 16, 2025. From contempt to insult. Seeing what was coming at him, Musk began to despise the very objective of the Artemis III mission. “A permanently manned lunar science base would be much more impressive than a repeat of what Apollo already did incredibly well in 1969.” A clear message: the race that NASA wants to win is irrelevant. Finally, the SpaceX CEO responded directly to a post by Sean Duffy about the “race against China” with a meme of a Ugandan anti-LGBT activist repeatedly asking “Why are you gay?” A derogatory reaction that makes it clear how bad the announcement felt. Beat China or beat Trump? While the “race against China” is the public justification, Ars Technica suggests a much more mundane domestic political plot. Sean Duffy is not the permanent administrator of NASA, but rather the acting Secretary of Transportation. According to the outlet’s sources, Duffy is immersed in a “fierce internal battle” to keep the job permanently, a position that the billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacmanwho apparently has regained his good rapport with President Trump. Duffy’s television appearances would, in reality, be a political maneuver aimed at a single viewer: the president. By showing himself as a leader of action and results, willing to do anything to “beat the Chinese” and achieve a moon landing during Trump’s presidential term (which ends in January 2029), Duffy … Read more

the end of an era for Elon Musk’s megarocket

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After a few eternal months of lights and shadowsSpaceX is ready to close a stage and move on to the next chapter. It’s launch Monday and the last Starship V2 is on the pad, stacked for takeoff. If all goes well, it will be a final test before the long-awaited debut of the Starship V3, the most powerful rocket in the world. Release date and time. The window for Starship’s eleventh test flight opens on Monday, October 13, at 18:15 CDT from Starbase, Texas. If there is a problem, SpaceX could delay the countdown by up to 75 minutes before delaying the launch by 24 hours. This time, the first takeoff attempt has favorable weather, with clear skies and light winds. Madrid, Spain (CEST, UTC+2): Tuesday, October 14 at 01:15 Mexico City, Mexico (CST, UTC−6): Monday, October 13 at 5:15 p.m. Buenos Aires, Argentina (ART, UTC-3): Monday, October 13 at 8:15 p.m. Bogotá, Colombia (COT, UTC-5): Monday, October 13 at 18:15 Lima, Peru (PET, UTC-5): Monday, October 13 at 18:15 Santiago, Chile (CLT, UTC-4): Monday the 13th at 20:15 Caracas, Venezuela (VET, UTC-4): Monday, October 13 at 7:15 p.m. How to see the flight live. As usual, SpaceX will broadcast the launch through their website and of your official X account. The broadcast will begin 30 minutes before takeoff. For those who want a multi-camera experience, channels like NASASpaceflight and Everyday Astronaut They will offer live coverage with their own cameras from near Starbase. And in Spanish, coverage of Space Frontier, Mission Control, Manuel Mazzanti either SpaceXStormamong others. Goodbye to a historic platform. In addition to the last flight of Starship V2this will be the last liftoff for launch pad 1a in its current configuration. The structure survived a first explosive takeoff that left a crater in the concrete, was reinforced with a water-cooled steel plate in the following ones, and went down in history by catching a Super Heavy booster for the first time on the fifth flight. It will now undergo a profound remodeling for the new generation of rockets. Farewell without landing. The protagonist of the mission will be the Super Heavy booster “Booster 15”, which has already flown and landed successfully on the eighth mission. Its objective is to test for the first time the landing sequence that future V3 thrusters will use, turning on 13 engines for initial braking, five to adjust its trajectory with greater redundancy and three to simulate a hovering flight over the Gulf of Mexico before saying goodbye with a splash. A Starship on the limit, again. Ship 38 has an even tighter schedule. On the one hand, it will repeat the feats of the previous flight, including the deployment of eight mock-ups of Starlink satellites and the restart of a Raptor engine in space. On the other hand, it will undergo stress tests even more aggressive than those of the previous flight. After the iconic image of Starship covered in rust upon her return on flight 10this time SpaceX has removed even more thermal tiles to see how many can be missing before the ship’s fuselage fails during reentry. The ship will also execute a banking maneuver in the final phase of the flight to test subsonic guidance algorithms, a step that will allow the ship to be aligned with the launch tower in future landing attempts (SpaceX plans to recover both the booster and the ship starting next year). The generational leap to V3. But as we said, the highlight of the flight is that it marks the end of a stage. The current version of the rocket has had a spotty track record. While the Super Heavy boosters have worked almost always, the ships suffered four consecutive explosions before Ship 37 was redeemed on Flight 10. Ship 38’s mission is to close this chapter with another success, courtesy of the small design changes that SpaceX has been introducing, as well as provide new data before SpaceX focuses entirely on the Starship V3, a beast that promises to increase the rocket’s low-orbit payload capacity from 35 to 100 tons. Starship’s reliability is key not only to Musk’s Martian dream, but also to NASA, which depends on the rocket to return to the Moon. While Doubts grow and alternatives like Jeff Bezos’s are being consideredan eleventh successful flight would be a blow to the table and a definitive push towards the new rocket era. As Elon Musk often says, no matter what happens, a spectacle is guaranteed. Image | SpaceX In Xataka | SpaceX has spoken out about the rusty Starship: now you know how to fix the ship’s biggest problem

Elon Musk needs to launch Starship from Florida to accelerate his plans. The problem: up to 13,200 delayed flights

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The airplanes will have to get used to sharing airspace with the largest rocket in the world. Especially when Elon Musk’s starship disembark in Florida in a few months. Starship’s double landing. The arrival of Starship to Cabo Cañaveral promises to revolutionize a region that, although it is accustomed to rocket launches, has not lived anything the same. The key is the planned launch frequency and the double landing of the system: first that of the Super Heavy propeller, more than 70 meters high, and then that of the ship itself, more than 50 meters. Although the public debate has focused so far In the sonic boom That produces each of these rockets when returning from space, the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States has put on the table the possibility that Spacex’s plans to launch 120 starship a year delay between 8,800 and 13,200 commercial flights a year. Where those figures come from. According to him FAA reportthe launches and landings of the two stages of the rocket would force to divert the airplanes from the south of Florida to avoid the rocket trajectory. This could suppose delays for airports as important as those of Orlando, Miami, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. Each launch would require the closure of airspace in periods ranging from 40 minutes to two hours, which in times of traffic could affect between 133 and 400 flights. The landing of the Starship ship, which would happen hours later, would cause a new closure of the airspace between 40 minutes and one hour, affecting another 400 or 600 commercial airplanes. Spacex’s posture. Spacex insists that these estimates are too conservative. The company has published A statement in which he affirms that the areas of danger for the planes defined in FAA studies “are extremely conservative by nature and are destined to capture a compound of the entire range of the worst possible scenarios, not an operation in the real world.” Spacex argues that, as happened with their Falcon 9 rockets, the areas of aerial and sea exclusion will be reduced as data of the launches accumulate and the reliability of Starship is demonstrated. In fact, the airspace that Falcon 9 forces to close for Starlink missions have been reduced by 66% since 2022. A future of shared skies. Although Starship is a special case, it is only the last new generation rocket that reaches the Florida space coast. Other companies like Blue Origin and ULA have already launched His new New Glenn rockets and Vulcan From Cabo Cañaveral. According to a Ornaldo Sentinel analysisFlorida could approach the 400 rocket releases a year by the end of the decade. But that democratized access to space may require patience at the airport terminal. Image | Spacex In Xataka | There is already a date for the last flight of the Megacohete Starship as we know it: v3, heat what you go out

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