PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel talks quarter-life crises and how to tackle the state November 2, 2014 It's not every day that you get to speak to Silicon Valley royalty. And Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, first outside investor in Facebook, fund manager, and leader of multiple firms, is a dynasty heavyweight. Having just published his new book, Zero to One, he’s keen to talk about some of his latest ideas. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX wins Nasa commercial flight contract September 17, 2014 It’s a good day for PayPal founder Elon Musk; his SpaceX corporation has been selected by Nasa as one of the two firms to design crew capsules for transporting astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). The Commercial Crew Development programme has awarded SpaceX and Boeing a combined sum of $6.2bn to develop the capsules. [...]
Boeing and SpaceX will share a $6.8bn space taxi Nasa contract September 16, 2014 NASA yesterday revealed Boeing and SpaceX will share a $6.8bn (£4.2bn) contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Massive aerospace and defence company Boeing will get $4.2bn from Nasa to use its CST-100 capsule to ferry astronauts to the ISS. Meanwhile SpaceX, founded in 2002 by former Paypal entrepreneur and Tesla Motors [...]
Space race take two? Putin speeds up building of Russian spaceport September 2, 2014 Russia has upped its game in the race to become a space superpower. Today, President Vladimir Putin announced that he was hastening Russia's efforts to build a multi-billion dollar spaceport in the East of the country. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has relied on the Baikonur cosmodrome in [...]
Tesla lands $200m Panasonic investment in Gigafactory deal July 31, 2014 Japan's Panasonic is set to invest over $200m in American electric carmaker Tesla Motors' lithium-ion battery plant in the US, according to a person familiar with the matter. Panasonic had signed a preliminary agreement to be involved in the project back in May. In a joint statement the companies said Tesla would be responsible for [...]
Which books do the giants of business read over the summer? July 29, 2014 You might be surprised how many older volumes make the cut. Most of us look at our summer holiday as reading prime time. Indeed, research from TripAdvisor found that, for nearly one in four of us, it’s the only time we manage to read a book. And even if you read more regularly, a [...]
Tesla to share its car patents June 12, 2014 ELON Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind leading electric car company Tesla and private space travel firm SpaceX, has announced Tesla will allow others to use its intellectual property in hopes of boosting development of electric cars. Musk said on the company’s website that the industry would benefit from open-source sharing of technologies. “If we clear [...]
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 [...]