Solar Impulse 2 follows the sun around the world from Abu Dhabi March 9, 2015 SWISS adventurers Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg yesterday took off from Abu Dhabi on a round-the-world flight – with no jet feul. The plane, the “Solar Impulse 2”, is powered by 12,000 solar cells on the wings and weighs about the same as a family car. It can run both day and night off solar [...]
ESA races ahead in space travel with Europe’s first space taxi launch February 9, 2015 Until its Space Shuttle programme was closed down in 2007, the US was the dominant force in the development of space taxis. Operated by Nasa, the 40-metre-long vehicles delivered satellites into space, conducted science experiments in orbit and helped construct the International Space Station. At the time, Europe had created nothing capable of [...]
Elon Musk: “I didn’t think SpaceX or Tesla would work” June 9, 2014 Billionaire tech titan Elon Musk – the brain behind Tesla electric cars, a project to colonise Mars and Hyperloop – has more ideas in a year than most people in a lifetime. But speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, the serial entrepreneur admitted that he hasn’t always had faith that things will come [...]
Britain needs an Elon Musk to revolutionise its creaking internet January 21, 2015 Cheap smartphones, discount clothing stores, budget airlines: capitalism may not be perfect, but it excels at making things once considered luxuries affordable. Rocketry startup SpaceX announced yesterday that it plans to do the same for broadband in the developing world. It’s raised $1bn (£660m) from Google and Fidelity, and plans to fill the sky with [...]
Here’s everything we know about Sakti3 – the US startup Dyson just invested $15m in March 16, 2015 Some 15 years into the entrepreneur game, Sir James Dyson has made his first-ever investment outside his own business, after he ploughed $15m (£10m) in US startup Sakti3. The company, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, develops solid-state batteries. The investment was part of a wider, $20m funding round. Dyson said the company will help it [...]
Tesla founder Elon Musk divorces his British wife – for the second time January 2, 2015 It can't be easy living with a multi-billionaire with so many ideas that he has to offer some of them to other people because he doesn't have time to take advantage of them all. But you'd have thought that's a lesson Tesla founder Elon Musk's soon-to-be ex-wife, British actress Talulah Riley, might have learned the [...]
Elon Musk’s space internet: How we could soon have Facebook friends on Mars January 19, 2015 Ten years from now, we could be exchanging Facebook messages and tweets with people on Mars. Billionaire investor and inventor Elon Musk has come up with an idea to take the world wide web to a galactic level by setting up a vast network of satellites far out in space. Some 4,000 of [...]
Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund becomes first institutional investor in marijuana January 8, 2015 The Founders Fund, headed by PayPal founder Peter Thiel, has made a multi-million dollar investment in America's flowering marijuana industry. After weeks of media chatter, Founders Fund confirmed its investment in Privateer Holdings, the firm responsible for the launch of Marley Natural, one of the world's first global cannabis brands. The company has not revealed [...]
Elon Musk: “We need to be careful with artificial intelligence” October 27, 2014 Elon Musk may have made millions from technology, but that doesn't mean he doesn't worry about it bringing about a Terminator-style end to humanity. During a talk to students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the SpaceX-Tesla-PayPal tycoon warned that "we should be very careful" about how we use artificial intelligence, adding it could be humanity's [...]
Orbital Sciences Corp share price plunges: Nasa video shows Antares space station rocket explosion October 29, 2014 Shares in Orbital Sciences Corp have fallen faster than its Antares rocket in US pre-market trading overnight, dropping as much as 16 per cent after its mission to the International Space Station exploded spectacularly seconds after launch. The unmanned rocket was taking 5,000 pounds of supplies to the space station, but exploded shortly after it [...]