Late last year Elon gave a presenation at the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico. This paper is a summary of that presentation, and includes slides and pretty pictures. Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species (html) Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species (full text PDF) My favorite slide: What do you think? Genius? Nuts? Let me know.... Continue Reading →
Bill Nye’s Open Letter to President Barack Obama
Planetary exploration not only brings us astonishing discoveries from other worlds, it inherently leads to innovation, because we invest in solving problems which have never been solved before. That in turn creates new businesses and economic growth. But more importantly, supporting a robust space program raises everyone's expectation of what's possible. With a space program,... Continue Reading →
US no longer lists satellites as weapons
Satellites are no longer weapons, according to a change in US anti-arms trafficking law. The move gives hope to commercial spaceflight companies wanting to sell their technology on the global market rather than just within the US. However, the focus on Earth-orbiting craft means deep-space missions could still be hampered by onerous security laws. On... Continue Reading →
My final post from the Google Lunar X PRIZE sidelines
Since meeting William Pomerantz in 2009, I've been covering the Google Lunar X PRIZE. I've been to two team summits (which media aren't really invited to), done countless interviews, many podcasts, researched the hidden rooms of the Smithsonian Archives, and fought hard to get teams to tell their human story. I've grown friendships with many... Continue Reading →
Find a way or make one
"Aut inveniam viam aut faciam" is Latin for "I shall either find a way or make one." We're about a third of the way through our Firefly Kickstarter project. The idea is simple: We want everyone to be able to do some science and exploration. Students Hackers Small startups Garage Inventors HAM Radio operators "Firefly"... Continue Reading →
My favorite project of the year so far: Ardusat – Your Arduino Experiment in Space
I've talked a lot about the importance of people being able to explore space on their own. People are not content to sit back and let bureaucracies do the exploration for them any more. You've heard me pushing for more platforms in space where people could do their own experiments affordably, and by golly, someone... Continue Reading →
Firefly first transmission and open source software repository
We're making the firefly boards because it seems like a lot of projects repeat the same ten steps. If you're going to launch a high altitude balloon with a camera on it (to take pictures of the curvature of the earth), build some remote sensing equipment, teach a class, or even launch a satellite you... Continue Reading →
Well that’s cheating
I've spent the last 3 days at the Google Lunar X PRIZE team summit. There have been some moves on the scorecard this week as a result of a lot of consideration to the details. On Tuesday (the first day) I was the lunch speaker. My talk was a little controversial, but that's fine with me.... Continue Reading →
Getting to where we’re going means something new
I've spent the last few days reading the Omni Magazines from 1978 and 1979. All of them in fact. I'm struck by something: we're still talking about most of these same ideas as things for the future... In those magazines, there are spaceships in your garage. Critisisms of NASA's inability to attract a younger crowd. Ray... Continue Reading →
FIREFLY: Your DIY exploration platform
We've partnered with Kentucky Space to bring you a flexible DIY exploration platform. It's available for pre-order now! Firefly is a flexible-use fully assembled board that can serve as the basis for the brains, fuel, and voice for many different applications including: high-altitude balloons suborbital flights CubeSat class satellites small payloads for the International Space... Continue Reading →