Elon Musk

Here’s Colbert’s Complete Elon Musk Interview From Last Night

Thursday night’s episode of The Colbert Report included a pretty lengthy interview with multi-industry mad scientist Elon Musk. Missed it because you were asleep (old fart) or don’t own a TV (commie)? Don’t sweat, we’ve got you covered. Here’s the full episode on Hulu, naturally with some commercial interruptions. If that’s not your speed, here’s…

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel in 2000

PayPal Chief Executive Officer Peter Thiel, left, and founder Elon Musk, right, pose with the PayPal logo at corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Oct. 20, 2000. [Associated Press] Factually is Gizmodo’s new blog of fun facts, interesting photos, and weird trivia. Join us on Twitter and Facebook.

Humans will land on Mars by 2026, says SpaceX Elon Musk

Elon Musk just said that his SpaceX spaceships will get humans to Mars by 2026, with or without NASA. It may seem cocky, but coming from a man who has built this entire company so he can die on Mars—and to “help ensure the survival of humanity”—those words are not to be taken lightly. Talking…

Elon Musk “Hopeful” First People Can Be Taken To Mars in 10-12 Years

The CEO of SpaceX says humans could visit Mars as soon as 2024. Musk is a hot topic in the media these days. He recently unveiled a manned version of his successful Dragon spacecraft. He’s talking about retrieving the first stage of his Falcon 9 rocket, a feat that has never been accomplished. Last night…

Elon Musk Wants To Make A Flying Car

“Maybe we’ll make a flying car, just for fun,” Elon Musk told The Independent yesterday. Explaining that he’d “thought about it quite a lot,” the only thing stopping him appears to be every single thing that’s kept the flying car from becoming a mainstream reality in the past 100 years. “We could definitely make a…

Tesla Might Just Open Up Its Electric Car Patents

This is kind of unprecedented, but Tesla might just open up its electric car patents to other manufacturers. On June 3, at Tesla’s annual shareholder meeting at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, said that to drive the adoption of electric cars, Tesla was “playing with doing something…

The new SpaceX Dragon V2

The new SpaceX Dragon V2 seems to be an amazing machine, capable of transporting seven astronauts to orbit and then soft-land anywhere on Earth using thrusters and retractile legs—with the accuracy of an helicopter. Elon Musk claims that they will be able to refuel it and launch it again right away. Live coverage (in reverse…

The Network Inside Tesla’s Model S Is Just Like The One in Your House

The Tesla car company isn’t shy about breaking from automotive standard practice, building fast, near-silent, sleek electric cars in a world where most vehicles still sip dinosaur juice. So it probably shouldn’t surprise you to learn that the complex electronic infrastructure supporting the car’s many sensors and touchscreens doesn’t quite resemble what’s in your neighbor’s…

London’s plan to grow up might go down, Elon Musk’s quest to make electric cars cool, and funny anti-Rob Ford ads appear in Toronto. Plus: Learning from streets in Vietnam, Paris, and Manhattan. All this and more in this week’s Urban Reads. A large and influential group of Londoners have launched a campaign against 200…

Explorer’s Awards: Apollo 11 engine recovery; SpaceX

Remember when we told you that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had recovered the Apollo 11 engines? In July 2013, conservationists found the serial number to confirm that yes, it really was Apollo 11 and not any of the other 12 Saturn V rockets. Tonight, the Explorers Club is honouring the entire Apollo F-1 Search and…

Elon Musk Is Building a Self-Driving Car Because Of Course He Is

Tesla is joining the race to build and sell the world’s first self-driving car, and it plans to win. In an interview with the Financial Times this week, Elon Musk said he’s working on building a car that can run on “auto-pilot” within three years. That would put Tesla way ahead of competition in typical…

Holy crap Elon Musk really is Tony Stark

First, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk inspired Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Iron Man. Now, the futuristic design interfaces depicted in the movie trilogy have inspired Musk to create 3D immersive reality visualizations for designing and printing rocket parts on the fly. We’ve come full circle, people. Reality and fiction are colliding and the outcome is…

Elon Musk Wants to Build the Iron Man Hologram UI For Real

The hologram interfaces Tony Stark uses in Iron Man are awesome, no doubt. But they also aren’t real. Yet. Elon Musk has been cooking up something very Stark-y, and he’s planning to show it off soon. https://gizmodo.com/the-making-of-tony-starks-incredible-interfaces-5578966 Musk isn’t sharing any of the nitty-gritty details yet, but he mentioned his grand scheme on Twitter. This…

Hyperloop Could Totally Work. But Will It Ever Happen?

As enamored as you are with the idea, your gut says that Elon Musk’s Hyperloop is never going to happen. The good news is that the tech, according to experts we’ve talked to, is actually feasible. That bad news? That might not matter. Musk’s plan is futuristic, beautiful, and sound. It just might be more…

How One Inventor Secretly Built a Pneumatic Subway Under NYC

Yesterday afternoon, Elon Musk revealed his plans for a system that could revolutionize transit. This isn’t the first time a private entrepreneur has taken on transportation in America, though. In fact, another wealthy businessman and inventor named Alfred Ely Beach attempted to do the same thing in New York, in 1869. Except instead of Hyperloops,…

We Need More Ideas as Crazy as Hyperloop

You know why I didn’t like Elon Musk a few years ago? Because of PayPal. Because he seemed like a dilettante. Yet another Valley guy who was ignoring all the hard work and ingenuity that had gone into systems like infrastructure and space travel for the last fifty years; another nerd who thought every system…

Hyperloop Alpha: This Could Change Transit Forever

Inventor-entrepreneur-mad-scientist Elon Musk just released an alpha design of his vision for the future of high-speed transit. This is our first look at Hyperloop. After teasing the concept for months, we’re finally going to be able to figure out if this is a fantasy—or the beginning of our new reality. The entire PDF of the…

Here’s what to expect from Elon Musk’s Hyperloop super train

Elon Musk is coming out about his Hyperloop. He’s revealed plans for this super train, after teasing the public for months about a revolutionary technology that could send a train hurtling from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. Here’s how it would work. First of all, to make this train cost-effective, it would…

Our Hyperloop Liveblog Starts Right Right Now

In just a few minutes, Elon Musk will finally reveal his plans for the Hyperloop, a revolutionary transit system that’s capable of getting you from downtown Los Angeles to downtown San Francisco in 30 minutes flat. At 5 pm, he’ll hold a conference call to explain Hyperloop in detail. And we’re going to liveblog the…

Are You Ready to See Elon Musk’s Fantastical Hyperloop Design?

We’ll be covering the publication and subsequent call live. In the mean time, here’s everything we think we know. https://gizmodo.com/hyperloop-everything-we-think-we-know-about-the-future-1081180288