"I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."
Elon Musk News
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Featured Quote
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"I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."
— Elon Musk
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SpaceX
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You know what's easier than landing a 14-story Falcon 9 rocket booster on a drone ship in the ocean? Landing a tiny remote-controlled version of the rocket on a slab of foam in your pool.
In one of the video descriptions, ajw61185 writes that the RC Falcon 9 was built using a mix of custom and model rocket parts, and the propulsion is supplied by a repurposed Blade Inductrix 200 toy drone. He also outfitted the extremely detailed model Falcon 9 with a few flourishes: there's an attachable "flame" that mimics the propulsive landing, and the landing legs can be deployed mid-flight.
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So where does SpaceX place the crash in its history? "The lessons learned from the mishap have helped us to develop an even safer and more reliable launch vehicle," Dex Torricke-Barton, Head of Communications at SpaceX, tells Inverse. "We've launched Falcon 9 seven times in a row successfully since CRS-7 and are continuing to focus on achieving the highest levels of mission assurance for all our customers."
In the 365 days since the Falcon 9 explosion, SpaceX has launched seven successful missions. Three of those missions have seen the Falcon 9 land successfully on its droneship in the middle of the Atlantic, a feat that, at this time last year, hadn't been accomplished even once. Since then, none of them have blown up in mid-air, although the Falcon 9's failure to successfully land earlier this month ended a streak that had seen three successful droneship landings in a row.
The next Falcon 9 launch — one of a dozen or so this year — is planned for July 18. Once again, the rocket will attempt to bring cargo up to the ISS.
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Tesla
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At first, the Model S Fuller was expected to be racing up the hill was thought to be heavily modified with a new smaller battery pack, but as it turns out, the vehicle is almost stock in terms of performance and the main modification was to strip the interior and replace it with a cage.
Fuller and his team beat the production electric vehicle record by a full minute with the Model S. They placed 65th in total and among the top 5 in the overall leaderboard, 3 vehicles were in the 'electric-modified' category.
The Pikes Peak track measures 12.42 miles (19.99 km) with over 156 turns, climbing 4,720 ft (1,440 m) from the start at Mile 7 on Pikes Peak Highway, to the finish at 14,110 ft (4,300 m), on grades averaging 7.2%.
To get the battery pack through the strain of dragging the 4,000 lbs (~800 lbs lighter than stock) vehicle up the hill, the team had to resign to unconventional methods to cool the battery, like giving it an ice bath."
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Deepak Mital, a Tesla Model S owner, is building an autonomous charger for his car similar to the 'metal snake' charger prototype Tesla unveiled last year. The engineer released two videos of his concept and while it looks rough, it seems to be doing the job.
Tesla has been working on a solution to electric vehicle charging for when the auto industry will be transitioning to self-driving cars. If a robot is driving the vehicle, a robot should also be charging the vehicle.
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A new research report from Lux Research looked into the projected growth of the battery sector for electric vehicles (BEVs and PHEVs) and concluded that the market will rise to $10 Billion in 2020 with six large carmakers led by Tesla accounting for 90% of the demand.
The research paper looked at both the demand from automakers and supply from battery manufacturers. Chris Robinson, Lux Research Associate and lead author of the report, sees Panasonic keeping its lead with 46% market share, thanks to its Gigafactory deal with Tesla and the demand for the Model 3, followed by BYD, LG Chem, NEC, Samsung SDI and others.
Robinson added: "Plug-in adoption is ultimately being fueled by rapidly decreasing battery costs and the success of early EVs such as Tesla's Model S and Nissan's Leaf, which has forced a number of other OEMs to make more serious commitments to developing plug-in vehicles,"
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Tesla is in talks with a major gas station and convenience store chain that could vastly expand the EV-maker's network of charging stations — and reduce the likelihood of its customers getting stranded someplace on an hours-long drive. Tesla declined to comment on the negotiations with Sheetz, but acknowledged in a statement that it is actively courting gas stations, hotels and restaurants in its bid to install high-speed electric chargers across the country.
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One of the obstacles to increasing America's use of renewable energy is that the nation's grid doesn't store energy. It produces just enough to meet consumer demand at any given moment, but solar panels and wind turbines can't spin up whenever someone flicks a light switch the way a coal- or gas-fired power can. So engineers are investigating ways to hold onto the energy they produce for use when needed, from rock-filled trains on hills to giant hydroelectric projects, to Tesla's "Powerwall" batteries.
There's a clear business case here: Musk says he can expand the market for solar panels by offering them to people who are already considering buying an electric car, and vice versa. He didn't offer figures on how many Tesla customers were interested in strapping solar panels onto their roofs, but said he'd be shocked if they weren't. In other words, Tesla wants to offer the whole fossil fuel-free frittata. Forget "well to wheels." Tesla's talking generation to acceleration.
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Hyperloop
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"There's no question it can work," Bambrogan says. "You know, we say many times we could build a Hyperloop today, it would just be very expensive. So our goal is to not just bring this technology to the table, but bring it in a way that's just drastically cost competitive with every other form of transportation, as well as all the other opportunities that it brings with it: being ultra-fast, ultra-safe ... all green, no carbon, fully-sustainable. So all these things are important, but they're not important if we can't do it cost effectively."
Bambrogan's company has been working on developing all the core technologies that would enable a hyperloop to work: an electric motor, the aero-thermodynamics of a travel pod, a levitation system, power electronics, control systems. They hope by the end of 2016 to come together with a full system test that will allow them to test the technology in the range of 1-2 kilometers. That, however, is just the beginning.
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The photo shared by Hyperloop One on Monday from inside its testing tube in the Nevada desert seems downright peaceful: an employees reclines on its curved surface, quietly looking at what looks like an iPhone. There's no hint that a pod will shoot through tubes like this at very, very high speeds in the near future.
Cassandra Mercury, a test and development engineer for Hyperloop One, is the photo's subject and is "running safety tests to enhance stability on our DevLoop tubes," says a Hyperloop spokesperson, adding that the photo was shot a few weeks ago at its testing facility in North Las Vegas.
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SolarCity
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When Tesla first announced that it submitted an acquisition offer to SolarCity's board of directors, the company made it clear that Elon Musk and Antonio Gracias will recuse themselves from voting on the $2.8 billion merger deal since they both sit on the boards of both companies. Now we learn that two more SolarCity board members will be recusing themselves from the vote after it was determined that they didn't "meet the requirements for independence".
The two SolarCity directors are JB Straubel, best known for being co-founder and CTO of Tesla, and Peter Rive, SolarCity co-founder and CTO, but also cousin to Elon Musk. SolarCity's VP of communications, Jonathan Bass, confirmed the news to Reuters:
"We're very mindful of the need to have a process that ensures independent, objective decisions that are in the best interest of all shareholders. Only board members who meet the requirements for independence will be involved in the decision-making process at SolarCity."
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Two years ago, when SolarCity acquired Silevo, a solar panel manufacturing startup, Musk had spoken about manufacturing cool-looking panels. Later that year, when he announced the setting up of a 'gigafactory' to make batteries for Tesla, he emphasized the importance of looks and aesthetics of the factory. Discussing the proposed Tesla and SolarCity merger, he again spent a lot of time on aesthetics. He said that SolarCity was working toward improving efficiency and aesthetics of rooftop panels, and that while they will get there on their own, "that journey will be accelerated as part of Tesla as well."
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