How the government can put rocket boosters beneath the UK’s nascent space industry May 19, 2016 In a day dominated by pomp and pageantry, there was a surprising amount for techies to get excited about in the Queen’s Speech yesterday, with a whole bill dedicated to space travel, drones and self-driving cars. Far from being only relevant to sci-fi fans, however, the UK’s space sector is serious business. It is worth at least [...]
Space tourism, driverless cars and drones set for Queen’s Speech lift off May 15, 2016 New plans for driverless cars on Britain's roads are to be announced in the Queen's speech this week, as are proposals for creating an ambitious UK-based space tourism industry by 2018 along with drone-friendly innovations. “Driverless cars and commercial space flight might seem like something science fiction, but the economic potential of the new technology is huge [...]
SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule returns to planet Earth containing results and cargo from International Space Station May 11, 2016 A SpaceX Dragon capsule splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday, containing experiment results and cargo from the International Space Station (ISS). The returned capsule is the first to make it safely back to Earth since a launch accident in June 2015 in which another Dragon capsule was destroyed. SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, resumed [...]
As SpaceX says it intends to send a mission to Mars by 2018, does space travel now belong to the private sector? April 29, 2016 Dan Lewis, senior infrastructure policy adviser at the Institute of Directors, says Yes. Gone are the days when space was the playground of the Cold War superpowers. As launch costs tumble, it is increasingly a market democracy. Twice as many people have bought tickets for Virgin Galactic and Xcor as have been put in space by [...]
Paypal founder Peter Thiel on why almost all the trends you’re excited about are overrated – and why being involved in the US election would make him blow his brains out April 12, 2016 “If you hear about a trend, it’s already passed. It means it’s a consensus thing,” says Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and venture capitalist. Speaking at LendIt USA, the largest online lending conference in the world, Thiel says he dislikes being asked what trends he’s excited about because he “isn’t a prophet” and “almost all [...]
Hyperloop is coming to Europe as Slovakia plans to reduce travel from Bratislava to Vienna and Budapest to less than 10 minutes March 10, 2016 The most exciting transport innovation in the world right now – Elon Musk's ambitious Hyperloop – is coming to Europe and could create the fastest ever cross-border travel. A Hyperloop company has inked a deal with the government of Slovakia to explore bringing the super-fast transport to this side of the pond, potentially connecting Bratislava with Vienna in Austria and Budapest in Hungary [...]
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos wants to blast you into space as soon as 2018 as he reveals plans for his secretive space tourism company Blue Origin March 9, 2016 Amazon's Jeff Bezos has opened up about his ambitious plans to blast people into space on commercial flights above earth within the next two years. Blue Origin, the Amazon founder's commercial space flight company which is a rival to the likes of Elon Musk's Space X and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, will conduct its first test [...]
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo is set for test relaunch after crash in 2014 February 19, 2016 Virgin Galactic is set for a relaunch after a devastating setback in 2014 where one pilot was killed and another injured after a test flight crashed. Richard Branson's project to send passengers into space has been revamped, with a new version ready for launch after months of preparation in the Mojave desert in California. The unveiling [...]
Elon Musk’s “next great idea” is to develop a vertical takeoff and landing electric plane after Tesla, SpaceX and Hyperloop February 5, 2016 Elon Musk has new big plans: After out-there projects like SpaceX’s reusable rocket and Hyperloop, the billionaire tech titan wants to turn his attention to electric aeroplanes. The technology is basically non-existent commercially today, but that could all be about to change. Speaking at a Hyperloop event in Texas, the Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur was [...]
Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk win 2015 Luddite Award for their “alarmist” warnings about artificial intelligence January 20, 2016 Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have just “won” the 2015 Luddite Award for their warnings about artificial intelligence. A world-renowned physicist and the entrepreneur behind ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, neither of the two are exactly what you might call afraid of technology. But the worries the two have expressed on the future of AI [...]