New Book Will Fill you In on Why Space Enthusiasts Hang on to Every Word of 'The Space Barons.'

New Book Chronicles Rise Of 'The Space Barons'

Unless you've been on your own one-way trip to Mars, the NewSpace industry's efforts to democratize access to low Earth orbit and beyond will ring familiar. But even industry pros should learn something from The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos - Christian Davenport's new book chronicling the rise of four space entrepreneurs.

From article, ([The uninformed and] industry pros should learn something from The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos — Christian Davenport’s new book chronicling the rise of four space entrepreneurs.

Although The Space Barons touches on these entrepreneurs’ core businesses, mostly, the book deals with the inside stories behind each of their space efforts. Davenport, a reporter at the Bezos-owned Washington Post, provides a very readable NewSpace tale that weaves in accounts of spaceflight’s early days with more recent intrigue surrounding NASA’s un-actualized efforts to breathe new life into its crewed initiatives beyond low Earth orbit.

Bezos and Musk have good reason to crow. Both have successfully launched reusable rockets that may eventually bring down costs enough to revolutionize access to space.

But all four ‘barons’ can also be secretive. Bezos, in particular, has a reputation for being extraordinarily careful about what he reveals in public, Davenport notes. So, much so, that it wasn’t until Newsweek reporter Brad Stone found a coffee-stained copy of Bezos’ Blue Origin mission statement in the company trash, that the Amazon founder’s space aspirations became public.

In the process of writing a book about Amazon, Stone found out that Bezos’ new Seattle-based Zefram LLC. was, in fact, inspired by a fictional Star Trek inventor. In Trek lore, ‘Zefram Cochrane,’ Davenport writes, “created the first spaceship capable of traveling at warp speeds, or faster than the speed of light.”

As for Musk, he was inspired by the notion that we have to at least get a portion of humanity off this planet for good, perhaps himself included on a one-way trip to the nearest potentially habitable planet, which in his view remains Mars.

But after checking out NASA’s website and, at the time, not finding a schedule to get to Mars, Musk was spurred to make it his business to get there himself. To that end, in 2002 Musk created Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, the formal name for SpaceX.

While Davenport includes Richard Branson and Paul Allen’s efforts at suborbital flight, The Space Barons is most compelling when it sticks with Bezos and Musk. Hardly a day goes by when Musk doesn’t give us some provocative new tidbit about his plans to send humans to Mars.

 Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, however, are each separately talking about a round-trip orbital flight around the backside of the Moon. And earlier, Davenport reports, Musk even told the BBC that he would sell a round-trip ticket to Mars on one of his own launchers for a flat $500,000. That’s only a little more than twice what Branson is charging his passengers for the first flight of Virgin Galactic.)

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Australians Realize the Benefits of Renewable Power: Cheap Reliable Power, Although, their Leaders Scoff.

No longer 'alternative', mainstream renewables are pushing prices down | Simon Holmes à Court

On the first day of autumn tens of thousands of Victorians received a welcome surprise from their power company - their electricity bills were going down. Prices were cut 5% because the retailer increased their investment in renewable energy. This will likely come as a surprise to many.

From article, (On the first day of autumn tens of thousands of Victorians received a welcome surprise from their power company — their electricity bills were going down. Prices were cut 5% because the retailer increased their investment in renewable energy.

This will likely come as a surprise to many. Since the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, decided that bashing renewables would play well for them — perhaps more so in the party room than in the electorate — hardly a day goes by without claims that renewables have made our grid unreliable and have pushed prices sky high.

A decade ago, power from a large-scale solar farm was unthinkably expensive at close to $200 per megawatt hour, equivalent to 20c/kWh, almost five times the grid average at the time. Wind energy was less expensive, but, at $120 per megawatt hour still much more expensive than coal and gas.

Renewable energy prices have since plummeted. “Five years ago, when we built Mt Mercer, the equivalent cost was in the 80s” reports Ed McManus, chief executive officer of Meridian. Power companies are notoriously tight-lipped about their contract prices, but McManus said about the offers “we saw solar pretty consistently in the 60s and wind pretty consistently in the 50s, including very low 50s”.

Meanwhile the price of gas has tripled, now that we’re sending most of what we produce offshore, and prices for thermal coal are the highest they’ve been in almost a decade. 

 The old guard can’t understand why prices for wind and solar have dropped so far, so fast. It’s not sleight of hand, just the cumulative effects of three factors:

● The technology has improved in leaps and bounds. A 150m tall wind turbine built this year will generate energy for almost 3,000 average Victorian homes. A decade ago, a top-tier turbine would have generated well less than half as much.

● Unlike coal plants, solar panels and wind turbines are products not projects. Repetition leads to cheaper manufacturing and more efficient supply chains. China now produces seven solar panels every second — providing countless opportunities to trim unit costs.

Last week I spoke with a solar farm installer who quietly boasted they had multiple crews installing 15 MW of solar a week. In the year to March 2008, Australia’s entire effort totalled just 7.9 MW.

● A decade ago, few banks understood renewables, and investments were seen as “alternative” and risky. Now that renewables are mainstream, the risk premium applied by banks for renewables is much lower than for coal projects. Capital intensive projects are extremely sensitive to the cost of finance.

Australia's solar power boom could almost double capacity in a year, analysts say

 

Read more

As our experience over summer and a letter from ten energy retailers to the government attests, Australia doesn’t have a reliability problem. And even Josh Frydenberg has acknowledged that the new renewables coming on line will push energy prices down.

Economics now dictate that a transition to a cleaner energy system is inevitable. Our grid operator has demonstrated it needs no government interference to keep the grid reliable.)

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Getting Closer to the Day When Smart Watches Become Star Trek Medical Tricorders. (A Device that can tell all your Medical Data Unintrusively.)

Apple Watch wristband sensor claims to detect potassium in your blood - without needles

The AliveCor KardiaBand, a sensor compatible with the Apple Watch, can detect dangerous levels of potassium in blood with 94 percent accuracy. Though the US Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved KardiaBand for this purpose, it's an interesting step forward considering that, right now, the condition is usually caught using invasive blood tests that use needles.

 From article, (The AliveCor KardiaBand, a sensor compatible with the Apple Watch, can detect dangerous levels of potassium in blood with 94 percent accuracy. Though the US Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved KardiaBand for this purpose, it’s an interesting step forward considering that, right now, the condition is usually caught using invasive blood tests that use needles.

The KardiaBand by AliveCor is a sensor that snaps into a slot on the watchband. The user touches the sensor, which then takes a reading of the electrical activity of the heart, called an electrocardiogram (EKG). This reading can reveal abnormal heart rhythm and atrial fibrillation (AFib), and the sensor sends the information to an app. Yesterday, at the American College of Cardiology conference in Florida, AliveCor CEO Vic Gundotra presented research done with the Mayo Clinic showing that the same technology can detect too-high levels of potassium in the blood, called hyperkalemia.

Hyperkalemia can be caused by, among other things, diabetes, dehydration, and chronic kidney disease. It can lead to kidney and heart failure and in general doesn’t cause obvious symptoms — meaning you could have the condition and not know it.

Too much potassium interferes with the electrical activity of cells, including heart cells. This means that it’s dangerous for the heart — but it also means that high potassium levels change the electrical reading of the heart, which means that a certain EKG pattern can reveal the presence of too much potassium, according to Gundotra. AliveCor worked with the Mayo Clinic to develop a new algorithm for the KardiaBand that can analyze EKG data and detect whether the user has hyperkalemia. The dataset included 2 million EKGs linked to 4 million potassium values, which were collected over 23 years.

To train AI with these data points, the team took the dataset and divided it into parts. They used some of the data to train the network. Basically, they told it which EKG reading patterns showed hyperkalemia, and let the AI learn for itself how to spot the pattern. Once the training was complete, the team tested the AI on a different part of the data to see if, given just the EKG, they could tell if it revealed hyperkalemia. It was about 90 to 94 percent accurate.)

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Turkey Generates 58.4 Billion kwh from Hydropower Plants. Enough to Power One Out of Every Four Turkish Homes. Turkey Hydropower to increase to 110 Billion kwh by the end of 2019

Turkey produces 58.4B KWh of hydropower in 2017

Turkey plans to produce 110B KWh of electricity from hydropower plants by the end of 2019, says Minister Eroğlu

From article, (Turkey produced 58.4 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity from hydropower plants in 2017 despite the most severe drought of the past 44 years and has plans to expand production to 90 billion kWh, the country's Forestry and Water Minister Veysel Eroglu told Anadolu Agency in a recent interview.

"The 58.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity from hydropower plants in 2017 boosted the Turkish economy by adding 9.9 million Turkish liras," Eroglu said.

He added that Turkey constructed 511 hydropower plants since 2003 when new investment strategies were put into practice through public-private sector cooperation.

In 2003, Turkey had 276 hydropower plants with a production capacity of 26 billion kWh. Since then hydropower has supported the Turkish economy with the addition of $30 million.

According to the minister, one in four houses in Turkey are currently powered by electricity generated in hydropower plants.

Eroglu commended hydroelectric power plants for providing clean and renewable energy without causing environmental pollution or greenhouse gas emissions.

He also acknowledged that hydropower plants are able to help control water levels to prevent floods.

Turkey plans to produce 110 billion kWh of electricity from hydropower by the end of 2019, Eroglu asserted.)

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Commercializing Low Earth Orbit.

NASA Explores Ways to Commercialize the International Space Station

In the not-too-distant future, NASA astronauts might conduct their video interviews from the International Space Station (ISS) while wearing Nike-supplied T-shirts, with a giant Toyota logo visible on the module wall behind them. NASA is developing a commercial-use policy for the orbiting lab, to open up more opportunities for private companies, agency officials said.

 From article, (NASA is developing a commercial-use policy for the orbiting lab, to open up more opportunities for private companies, agency officials said.

"Today, there's a number of activities that are prohibited. They can't do advertising and marketing, and fly trinkets — things that are pure for-profit activities," NASA ISS Deputy Director Robyn Gatens said February 28 during a presentation with the agency's Future In-Space Operations working group. [Building the International Space Station (Photos)]

"We would like to broaden that, but we need to explore what policy or legal or programmatic changes we would have to make in order to do that," Gatens added. "So, we're starting to dive into that and develop that policy so that we can allow these commercial entities to use the ISS to begin experimenting with a broader set of market possibilities."

That's not to imply that there's no commercial activity associated with the ISS now. The private companies SpaceX and Orbital ATK already launch robotic cargo missions to the orbiting lab. And SpaceX and Boeing hold multibillion-dollar NASA contracts to ferry agency astronauts to and from the station; if all goes well, these taxi flights could begin in the next year or so.

In addition, an inflatable module built by Nevada company Bigelow Aerospace has been attached to the ISS since April 2016. And a great deal of commercial research is conducted aboard the US segment of the station, an officially designated national laboratory that's managed by the nonprofit Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS).

"They've been very busy developing demand for commercial research and technology development through the national lab," Gatens said of CASIS. "Over 50 percent of their new projects are commercial entities now, versus other government agencies or academia."

This push to commercialize the ISS lines up with a broader desire to privatize activities throughout LEO in general, a stated priority of President Donald Trump. For example, the White House's 2019 federal budget request, which was released last month, eliminates direct funding for the ISS in 2025 and allocates $150 million "to encourage development of new commercial low-Earth orbital platforms and capabilities for use by the private sector and NASA," according to NASA's budget overview.

The budget request still must pass both houses of Congress, and some notable folks on Capitol Hill have already voiced opposition to the ISS defunding plan. But even if the broad outlines of the proposal go into effect, we shouldn't rush to carve "2025" into the $100 billion orbiting lab's tombstone, Gatens stressed.

"That doesn't necessarily imply that the platform itself will be deorbited in 2025," she said. "It's possible that industry could continue to operate certain elements of the ISS, or the entire ISS, as part of a future commercial platform. But the key is that the way we're running [the] station today, as far as the government role — the administration would like for that to be transitioned to a more commercial model.")

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The U.S. actually had Flying Aircraft Carriers? Its True. But the Technology was Limiting. It May Still Make a Come Back Though

The US Military Once Tried To Build A 'Flying Aircraft Carrier' - And It Was A Total Disaster

Nearly a hundred years ago the U.S. Navy asked a question: if airplanes can fly through the air, why couldn't a vessel carrying them fly through the air as well? The result was the Akron-class airships, the only flying aircraft carriers put into service in any country.

From article, (Nearly a hundred years ago the U.S. Navy asked a question: if airplanes can fly through the air, why couldn’t a vessel carrying them fly through the air as well? The result was the Akron-class airships, the only flying aircraft carriers put into service in any country. Although promising, a pair of accidents—prompted by the airship’s limitations—destroyed the flying carrier fleet and ended development of the entire concept.

The Akron-class airships were designed and built in the late 1920s. The ships were designed, like conventional seagoing aircraft carriers, to reconnoiter the seas and search for the enemy main battle fleet. Once the enemy fleet was located, the U.S. Navy’s battleships would close with the enemy and defeat them. This was a primitive and limiting use of the aircraft carrier, which had not yet evolved into the centerpiece of U.S. naval striking power.

The airships of the Akron class, Akron and Macon, were ordered in 1926 before the Great Depression. The two ships were commissioned into U.S. Navy service in 1931 and 1933, respectively. The Akron class was a classic pill-shaped interwar airship design, with a rigid skin made of cloth and aluminum and filled with helium. The air vessel was powered by eight Maybach twelve-cylinder engines developing a total 6,700 horsepower. At 785 feet each was longer than a Tennessee-class battleship, had a crew of just sixty each, and could cruise at fifty-five knots. The airships were lightly armed, with just eight .30 caliber machine guns.

Unique among airships, the Akron class carried fixed-wing aircraft and could launch and recover them in flight. Each airship carried up to five Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk fighters, lightweight biplanes with a crew of one and armed with two .30 caliber Browning machine guns. The airships each concealed a hangar within their enormous airframe and launched and recovered the Sparrowhawks through a hook system that lowered them into the airstream, whereupon they would detach and fly off. The system worked in reverse to recover the tiny fighters.

The flying carrier concept had its advantages and disadvantages compared to the “traditional” seagoing carrier. Akron and Macon were twice as fast as surface ships, and could therefore cover more ground. By their very nature those onboard could see much farther over the horizon than surface ships, and their Sparrowhawks extended that range even farther. For just sixty men manning each airship, the Navy had a powerful reconnaissance capability to assist the battle fleet in fighting a decisive naval battle.

On April 3, 1933 USS Akron was on a mission to calibrate its radio equipment off the coast of New Jersey when it ran into trouble. Strong winds caused the Akron to plunge 1,000 feet in a matter of seconds, and the crew made the snap decision to dump the water ballast to regain altitude. The airship ended up rising too quickly and the crew lost control. Akron crashed into the sea, killing seventy-three out of seventy-six personnel on board, including the head of the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics and the commander of Naval Air Station Lakehurst and the station’s Rigid Airship Training & Experimental Squadron.

On February 12, 1935 USS Macon was over the Pacific Ocean when a storm caused the upper fin to fail. Macon had suffered damage to the fin months earlier, but the Navy had failed to repair the damage. The collapse of the upper fin took approximately 20 percent of the ship’s helium with it, causing the airship to rapidly rise. The crew decided to release additional helium to make it sink again, but too much helium was lost and the ship descended into the ocean. Macon’s slower crash than her sister ship Akron, as well as the presence of life jackets and life preservers aboard the airship, ensured that eighty-one out of eighty-three passengers and crew survived the accident.

 The concept has lain dormant for decades, but recent Pentagon research into turning the C-130 Hercules transport into a flying aircraft carrier for pilotless drones means the concept is still alive and well. The flying aircraft carrier could indeed stage a comeback, though with considerably fewer pilots involved.)

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What is Ford's Team Edison Up To?

Ford teases upcoming electric vehicles, says it will focus on charging experience

Ford doesn't have much to show for when it comes to all-electric vehicles aside for the Focus Electric, a compliance car converted from the gas-powered version, and a lot of press releases, but the automaker now teases a series of new electric vehicles and its strategy to convince customers to go electric.

From article, (Ford doesn’t have much to show for when it comes to all-electric vehicles aside for the Focus Electric, a compliance car converted from the gas-powered version, and a lot of press releases, but the automaker now teases a series of new electric vehicles and its strategy to convince customers to go electric.

Last year, Ford’s new CEO, Jim Hackett formed a new internal team, called ‘Team Edison’, to oversee electric car programs and he shifted one-third of internal combustion engine investments to electric cars, but the company is still investing more in the former than the latter.

The company’s electrification plan is still hybrid heavy over all-electric, but Ford announced an acceleration of its electric effort with 16 all-electric models and 24 hybrids earlier this year.

Now they are unveiling their “refresh lineup for 2020”, which is when they plan to introduce their first all-electric vehicle built to be electric from the ground up, an all-electric CUV with 300 miles of range.

Ford now says that they are “rethinking the ownership experience so it is more seamless than with today’s gas-powered vehicles” and that means “making charging an effortless experience at home and on the road 

 The company already started being more involved by being part of the Ionity charging network in Europe.

Ford also claims that its BEV manufacturing plan will be significantly more efficient than what is currently being done with what they claim will be “half the floor space for final assembly operations and reduce capital investment 50 percent”.

The automaker previously said that it projects a “30-percent improvement in labor efficiency”, which will mean that they will have to “redeploy employees to do other jobs, including assembly of battery packs.”

Again, we will see Ford’s first new all-electric vehicle in 2020 and five more will follow over the next two years after that.)

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Norwegians are Really Motivated to Buy Electric Cars.

Norway's electric car demand is outstripping supply - with lessons for the EU

Thousands of Norwegians are on waiting lists for electric cars, showing the success and limitations of policy incentives By Steffen Kallbekken, Håkon Sælen, Erlend Hermansen and Elisabeth Lannoo Norway is the country with the highest number of electric cars per capita in the world.

 From article, (Norway is the country with the highest number of electric cars per capita in the world. One out of every five new cars sold is electric, and more than 50% of new cars sold in 2017 were electric or plug-in hybrids.

Driven by generous tax breaks (carrot) and increasing road tolls (stick), demand for EVs has been rising rapidly. Because of these tax breaks, electric cars can be sold at the same price as fossil fuel vehicles. EVs, however, are considerably cheaper to run.

A calculation by our institute shows that, for example, an e-Golf reduces total running costs (excluding insurance, depreciation and parking) by around 75% compared to its diesel equivalent, for someone driving through an Oslo toll station twice daily.

This makes it attractive for Norwegian consumers to replace their diesel or petrol cars by electric ones. A recent poll showed that nearly half of the people, who are planning to buy a new car in 2018, want a chargeable one.

In fact, the demand for electric cars in Norway is currently growing so rapidly that car producers cannot keep up with it. Thousands of Norwegians have been waiting for months for their new EVs and car sellers have repeatedly extended delivery dates.

The waiting time for existing models like Volkswagen e-Golf, Hyundai Ioniq and Opel Ampera-e is between eight months and two years. Meanwhile, thousands have paid to be put on a waiting list for new models by Nissan, Tesla, Audi and Jaguar, which will be launched in the coming months and years.

A recent survey among Norwegian consumers, which we ran as part of an EU-funded research project on energy efficiency, shows that Norwegian consumers are willing to pay considerably more for cars with lower running costs.

Transport is certainly the most important sector in Norway’s climate efforts. Emissions from transport have risen since 2005. In order to fulfil the Paris pledge, emissions will need be to cut by half by 2030. The Parliament has set an indicative target that all new passenger vehicles sold by 2025 should be emissions-free.

While electric car sales in Norway are far ahead of most other European countries, they are only just keeping up with the Norwegian Environment Agency’s projections and are far behind projections from the independent Institute for Transport Economics.

The institute has estimated that Norway needs around 65,000 new electric vehicles on the road in 2018 alone to hit the 2025-target, which is close to twice the number of EVs sold in 2017. Supply will need to increase manifold over the coming years if Norway wants to meet its vehicle and climate targets.)

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German Automakers Do a Dramatic About Face on Electric Cars.

Despite Lagging, German Automakers Are The Biggest Spenders In Electric Car Technology

Continuing our focus on German carmakers (the hype and reality), this article takes off where our last one ended. We've previously looked at how German automakers are lagging behind in terms of electric vehicle (EV) technology and what they have to offer in terms of electric cars at this moment.

 From article, (German automakers are lagging behind in terms of electric vehicle (EV) technology and what they have to offer in terms of electric cars at this moment. We’ve also seen that part of this problem is that the main car manufacturers focused their efforts in the 1970s on diesel, bringing them to the top of today’s auto sales the hill. Sadly, that hill is on fire and everyone is jumping into the serendipitous electric vehicle (EV) bandwagon to escape. Although late to the game, the German carmakers today do spend a lot of money in the electric vehicle industry, more than anyone else.

For years, German automakers were often ridiculing electric vehicles (EV), promising and then removing them, downgrading them to simple hybrids — you name it, we had it. But by now, German carmakers have had time to see that consumers still demand EVs and society is heading in that direction faster than ever before and with more need than ever before. No matter how you look at it, our tired old transportation scheme needs a welcome boost to morph into the modern mobility world we deserve to see.

The German economy has been more or less the economic envy of the world for decades. It was able to weather storms of the automotive industry in the late 20th and early 21st century and has had time to plan for its automotive future. Its automotive products are very well established globally and the country and its people worked hard for that. Today, Germany is one of the last strong automotive economies around the world, but it desperately lags in one area, that of electric cars.

In two years alone, Volkswagen, Daimler, and BMW spent €4.7 billion on EV technology. Compare this to U.S. automakers, where only €335 million was invested, or Japanese automakers’ €19 million.

And from the biggest 16 manufacturers from the past two years, Germany benefited from €3.2 billion ($3.9 billion) of investments in EVs, not only surpassing the €887 million invested into EV facilities in the United States but also the €990 million spent in China.

No matter how you look at it, everything points to China. Since EVs are selling more there than anywhere else and are backed by a local energetic government promoting more “new energy vehicles” programs, China is pushing its automotive market towards EVs.

As far as VW’s latest diesel scandal rearing its ugly head, the company is spending close to €2 billion converting two factories to produce EVs in Germany in an effort to show it is sincere about EVs. The competition is not sitting idly either, Mercedes-Benz is now planning its own battery plant in the United States. In the meantime, Germany might be slow and pragmatic, but the country is showing signs of becoming aligned with the realities of tomorrow electric mobility world.)

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BFR Moving Fast at SpaceX

SpaceX will launch its Mars spaceship into orbit as early as 2020

First spaceship prototype already under construction Speaking on a launch industry round-table at the Satellite 2018 conference, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell revealed that the company intends to conduct the first orbital launches of BFR as early as 2020, with suborbital spaceship tests beginning in the first half of 2019.

From article, (Only six months after CEO Elon Musk first debuted the Interplanetary Transport System in Adelaide, Australia, a flood of recent comments from both executives have made it overwhelmingly clear that SpaceX intends to have its first spaceship ready for short suborbital test flights at the beginning of 2019. Considering Musk’s unprovoked acknowledgment at SXSW 2018 of his tendency towards overly optimistic timelines, the repeated affirmations of BFS test flights beginning in 2019 and now an orbital launch of the full BFR booster and ship in 2020 hold a fair deal more water than they did in 2017.

 In order to succeed, the company will need to solve the problems that NASA and its Shuttle contractors never could – they will need to build an orbital, crewed spaceship that can be reused with minimal refurbishment, can launch for little more than the cost of its propellant, and does so with safety and reliability comparable to the records of modern commercial airliners – perhaps the safest form of transport humans have ever created.

Rockets do not easily lend themselves to such incredible standards of safety or reliability – airliners average a single death per 16 million flights – but SpaceX will need to reach similar levels of reusability and reliability if they hope to enable even moderately affordable spaceflight or Earth-to-Earth transport by rocket. Still, there can be little doubt that SpaceX employs some of the absolute best engineering expertise to have ever existed in the US, and their extraordinary personal investment in the company’s goal of making humanity multi-planetary bode about as well as could be asked for such an ambitious endeavor. According to Musk and Shotwell, the first spaceship is already being built and suborbital tests will begin as soon as 2019, while full-up orbital launches – presumably involving both the booster and spaceship – might occur just a single year later in 2020.)

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For SpaceX Stock Fans: Try and Get In on the Action of a Private Selling of SpaceX Stock

SpaceX is making big money moves

Planning a Mars mission, a global telecommunications network for inexpensive internet service and creating an interplanetary hedge against World War Three isn't cheap, so it's no wonder that SpaceX is closing on $500 million in new cash through a financing round led by Fidelity, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the round.

 From article, (Planning a Mars mission, a global telecommunications network for inexpensive internet service and creating an interplanetary hedge against World War Threeisn’t cheap, so it’s no wonder that SpaceX is closing on $500 million in new cash through a financing round led by Fidelity, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the round.

Responding to clamoring demand from investors and their own desires to cash out (at least a little bit), existing shareholders in the company are creating several special purpose vehicles to sell shares on the secondary market — with our sources saying those secondary offerings could total an additional $500 million. 

Shares for the company are selling for somewhere between $160 and $170, according to our sources.

One big buyer of SpaceX  shares is reportedly SpaceX chief executive and founder Elon Musk,  who multiple sources have said is investing $100 million to buy up shares.

News of the initial fundraising effort was first reported by CNBC, which pegged the valuation of Musk’s space exploration venture at roughly $21.5 billion.

That’s a huge jump from 15 years ago, when the company’s shares were issued at around 5 cents and Elon Musk said it was struggling to get cash in the door, basically living week-to-week.

Secondary offerings are controlled sales of existing shares held by early employees and investors who are looking to cash out of the company. It’s the only way to realize some value of shares before an initial public offering.)

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Just When you Thought Wind Power Was the Dominating Renewable Energy Source in Texas, Solar Power Rises Up

Solar power capacity in Texas expected to double, making life tougher for power companies

Solar power capacity in Texas is expected to nearly double this year, which would be the greatest increase ever for the renewable, according to the state's grid manager. By the end of

From article, (Solar power capacity in Texas is expected to nearly double this year, which would be the greatest increase ever for the renewable, according to the state’s grid manager. By the end of the decade, solar power is expected to triple here.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which oversees 90 percent of the state’s grid, expects to solar power capacity to reach about 2,000 megawatts by the end of 2018, up from 1,100 megawatts last year and just 15 megawatts in 2010. Solar capacity is expected to reach 3,000 megawatts by 2020., . (One megawatt is enough to power 200 homes on a hot Texas day.

Texas is considered prime location for the solar industry because of its abundance of land and sunshine. More than half of the planned solar projects are in Pecos County, a West Texas hub for utility-scale solar power, or solar farms that have the capacity to generate at least 1 megawatt of electricity. Utility-scale projects are eligible for a state tax abatement — up to 80 percent for 10 years — but the real incentive for developers is the transmission that connects remote renewable energy projects to markets in the state’s populations centers. More transmission lines are expected to be added in 2019 and 2020, likely driving another burst of solar installations.)

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Solar Power is Growing Up.

Solar power: Here's where your state now ranks

California remains the undisputed champion, with 19.8 gigawatts of solar PV capacity, nearly five times as much as second-ranked North Carolina. In fact, there was no change in the top five in 2017, but outside these slots there were plenty of movers and shakers.

 From article, (The Solar Energy Industries Association on Thursday released its annual review of U.S. solar installations and with it comes a fresh ranking of capacity by state.

The chart below ranks states and Washington, D.C., by their total solar photovoltaic capacity, the most common type of solar power technology. It also shows how much solar PV each state added in 2017 and 2016.

State solar PV installations. Click column heads to toggle. Totals reflect the cumulative amount of PV solar capacity in a state. The installs columns rank states by how much new capacity they added in a year. SEIA tracks 44 markets, including Washington DC.

State	Total 2017	Total 2016	2017 Installs	2016 Installs
California	1	1	1	1
North Carolina	2	2	2	4
Arizona	3	3	7	7
Nevada	4	4	9	5
New Jersey	5	5	11	10
Massachusetts	6	7	5	8
Texas	7	9	4	6
Utah	8	6	19	2
Georgia	9	8	21	3
Florida	10	15	3	9
New York	11	10	12	12
Colorado	12	11	23	11
Maryland	13	13	13	13
Hawaii	14	12	18	19
Minnesota	15	16	6	14
New Mexico	16	14	26	15
Virginia	17	20	10	17
South Carolina	18	27	8	20
Oregon	19	19	14	18
Connecticut	20	17	20	21
Idaho	21	21	16	16
Pennsylvania	22	18	25	25
Indiana	23	22	27	23
Alabama	24	28	17	22
Tennessee	25	23	22	26
Mississippi	26	40	15	37
Vermont	27	24	32	24
Ohio	28	26	29	36
Missouri	29	25	39	29
Delaware	30	30	36	30
Washington	31	31	34	28
Michigan	32	35	24	32
Illinois	33	32	40	38
Louisiana	34	29	42	33
New Hampshire	35	33	37	27
Iowa	36	34	35	35
Montana	37	39	28	41
Wisconsin	38	36	33	39
Washington DC	39	37	38	31
Rhode Island	40	NA	31	40
Oklahoma	41	NA	30	44
Kentucky	42	NA	41	34
Arkansas	43	38	43	42
Wyoming	44	NA	44	43

California remains the undisputed champion, with 19.8 gigawatts of solar PV capacity, nearly five times as much as second-ranked North Carolina.

Growth in solar PV capacity is spreading beyond the major markets to the Southeast and Midwest. Markets outside the top 10 accounted for 21 percent of total installed capacity last year, up from 16 percent in 2016.

Along with Florida and South Carolina, this trend is playing out in states such as Minnesota, Virginia, Alabama and Mississippi — all of which ranked in the top 20 for new solar capacity installations in 2017.

These and other emerging U.S. markets will play a big part in driving future solar PV growth, as the major state markets experience headwinds in the coming years.)

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