SpaceX is Raising $500 Million in Capital. Could Go To BFR And, Or, Starlink.

SpaceX will soon be the third most valuable private tech company in the United States

Elon Musk's bet on the future of space transportation is set to be the third-biggest private tech company in the US, behind only Uber and Airbnb, and worth more than $27 billion. SpaceX filed paperwork in Delaware to raise an additional $500 million in capital, according to Equidate, a stock market for private technology companies...

From article, ( SpaceX filed paperwork in Delaware to raise an additional $500 million in capital, according to Equidate, a stock market for private technology companies that tracks such filings. Once the fundraising round is completed, the company’s value will have increased by approximately 25% in the last nine months, according to Equidate COO Hari Raghavan. It has more than doubled since 2015.

It’s not clear yet which investors will provide the cash, but the company has preferred to retain old investors than add new ones. Fidelity is rumored to be leading the round, and Musk is supposedly set to put up more equity in the company he founded out of his own pocket in 2002.

SpaceX confirmed the fundraising round, but did not share any details about how the capital will be used.

But there are two obvious candidates: One is the sprawling space communications network envisioned by the company, which launched two test satellites earlier this year. Manufacturing thousands of satellites will require investment in a dedicated production facility. SpaceX is also current developing a new factory to produce its next rocket, known as BFR for “Big Falcon Rocket,” among other things. That build-out, too, could demand a capital boost.

Currently, SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 orbital rocket is the company’s most important product, delivering a billion dollars of revenue or more each year to SpaceX and supporting its next-generation business plan. Thanks to NASA’s support of SpaceX in a public-private partnership to develop vehicles to reach the International Space Station, the company was able to develop the Falcon 9 and the Dragon spacecraft while only raising $1.7 billion in private equity.)

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Norway Proposed Projects that Deal With Its Very Deep Waters Like, An UnderSurface Water Vehicular Tunnel that is Held In Place by Weights, Floating Pontoons, and Tethered to the Sea Floor. Here Though They Propose A Floating Suspension Bridge!!

Norway is getting a floating suspension bridge tethered to the bottom of the sea - and it could change the way we make bridges

Norway could soon be home to a floating, multi-span suspension bridge in unprecedentedly deep waters. Bridge engineer Ian Firth discussed the bridge, which will cross a long and deep Norwegian fjord known as Bjørnafjord, during a talk at this week's TED Conference. Bridge foundations in deep water can be incredibly expensive.

From article, (Bridge engineer Ian Firth discussed the 3-mile-long bridge, which will cross a long and deep Norwegian fjord known as Bjørnafjord, during a talk at this week's TED Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

Bridge foundations in deep water can be incredibly expensive. But the Bjørnafjord bridge gets around that by floating.

"We've had floating bridges before, but nothing like this," Firth, a consultant at Cowi (one of the organizations working on the bridge), said during his talk.

The Bjørnafjord bridge will stand on floating pontoons that will be tethered to the seabed. In order to create stability, the tops of the bridge's towers will be tied together. A similar floating design has been used for oil platforms in the past — but never for multi-span suspension bridges until now.

"Floating bridges tend to be shorter span," Firth told Business Insider. "This [bridge] is seriously large."
The bridge project, which is being spearheaded by the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, could open up all sorts of possibilities for new crossings in waters that were previously thought to be too deep for bridges to be built. (This technology allows bridges to be placed in water that's nearly 5000 feet deep.)
 There is still a long way to go before this kind of bridge technology becomes commonplace, however. The Bjørnafjord bridge's materials are well understood, but there are construction challenges, including the building and maintenance of the top cables. The bridge will actually last longer than the cables — which support the bridge — so replacements will have to be made available.

"Nobody wants to do something that's been unproven and yet everybody wants to be the first," Firth said. "Once we've sold the technical challenges, it will reach that sweet spot where the economics become something that's doable."

No word yet on when the bridge will be completed, but it likely is still several years away.)

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