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It’s a myth almost universally believed, that sits at the core of liberal technocratic thought, and has been embedded in practically every other work of speculative fiction for the last half century. You can sum it up like this: 'When we go into space, we will all magically become nice.'...It’s early days, but if we really want to create a progressive new world then issues like these should be at the hearts of our efforts from the very start. — The Guardian
The longtime space-age Manifest Destiny of humans inhabiting Mars and the prominently white, European male perspective that narrative perpetually emphasizes has become a bubbling multi-faceted discussion among science bloggers as Elon Musk's staunch ambitions to ultimately turn humans into a... View full entry
Can a high-profile company led by a celebrity CEO come within two weeks of bankruptcy without anyone noticing? In early 2013, ...Tesla Motors came so close to running out of cash that its brash leader, Elon Musk, approached Google about buying the company, according to a new Musk biography. A surge in sales of the company’s pricey Model S sedan staved off disaster. Musk broke off the Google talks, no longer needing a white knight. And no one outside the two companies knew about it. — SF Gate
In our Snapchat attention-span world, we forget that celebrities often had different careers before they became international superstars. Did you know that Brad Pitt once worked for Frank Gehry, or that Robert Irwin very nearly became an architect instead of an artist? Herewith, a look back at the... View full entry
A Hyperloop in California could be built within a decade, for between $7 and $16 billion and there are no technical showstoppers, Ahlborn says.
In other words, while Musk’s initial estimate of $4 billion was somewhat optimistic, it wasn’t exceptionally far off, especially given that Ahlborn believes the ultimate number for the hyperloop between San Francisco and Los Angeles would come in toward the lower end of the range.
— forbes.com
Friday, August 8:Guggenheim Bullies Journalist: Molly Crabapple reports for Vice on inhumane immigrant labor conditions on Saadiyat island in the UAE, where a new arm of the Guggenheim (and Louvre, and NYU) is being built. The Guggenheim holds its cards close and skirts responsibility when... View full entry
Elon Musk’s Space Exploration and Technologies Corp. plans to build the world’s first commercial launchpad near Brownsville in South Texas [...]
The state is providing $2.3 million from the Texas Enterprise Fund to bring an estimated 300 jobs to the launch site, which will bring about $85 million of capital investment into the economy [...]
In the region near the proposed launch site, at Boca Chica Beach in the state’s southernmost tip, two of five residents live in poverty.
— businessweek.com
What we do know: the Hyperloop is a fantastic, gee-whiz! prospect that, in an idealized and seamless application, would get between A and B faster than we ever imagined. But whether the Hyperloop actually can (or should) be built is still very much unclear. Ever since Elon Musk (PayPal, Tesla... View full entry
This post is brought to you by UCLA Architecture and Urban Design: JumpStartFund-backed Hyperloop will conduct research with UCLA SUPRASTUDIO UCLA Architecture and Urban Design (A.UD) has announced it will partner with Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc., which is backed by JumpStartFund... View full entry
Hyperloop is a new mode of transport that seeks to change this [transit] paradigm by being both fast and inexpensive for people and goods. Hyperloop is also unique in that it is an open design concept, similar to Linux. Feedback is desired from the community that can help advance the Hyperloop design and bring it from concept to reality. — Tesla Motors
CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, posted on the Tesla blog his proposal for an alternative to the California High-Speed Rail plan, the Hyperloop. The solar-powered transportation system is proposed to function somewhat like a pneumatic tube, where capsules of up to 28 passengers on air-bearings are... View full entry
...how would you like something that can never crash, is immune to weather, it goes 3 or 4 times faster than the bullet train... it goes an average speed of twice what an aircraft would do. You would go from downtown LA to downtown San Francisco in under 30 minutes. It would cost you much less than an air ticket than any other mode of transport. I think we could actually make it self-powering if you put solar panels on it, you generate more power than you would consume in the system. — theatlantic.com
