Elon Musk just told millions of Starlink customers that they have been quietly funding humanityโs road to Mars.
Musk: โif you look on your Starlink Wi-Fi router, you will see this image.โ
The image is the transfer orbit to Mars. Earth on one side, Mars on the other, and the exact arc a ship has to fly between them.
The map to another planet is printed on the router in your living room, because the two things are the same project.
Musk: โyou canโt just go straight to Mars, you have to create this elliptical orbit with Earth at one point and Mars at the other side at the far end of the ellipse and then time the where you are in that ellipse to intersect with Mars.โ
You cannot aim at where Mars is. You aim at where it will be, and you commit to that arc before you leave, because there is no correcting it once you are on it.
The destination is not there when you depart. You are flying at a version of it that does not exist yet.
Earth and Mars only line up for this roughly every twenty-six months. The universe hands out departure times and does not take requests.
Musk: โthe actual distance traveled on the arc is close to it like a thousand times further than the Moon.โ
A thousand times further than the farthest point any human being has ever traveled.
The distance was never the hard part. Hohmann worked out this exact transfer in 1925. The math has been sitting finished for a century.
What nobody could solve was money. Every previous attempt at deep space ran on government appropriations, which means it ran on election cycles.
Programs that outlast a presidency are rare. Programs that outlast a generation barely exist.
Musk: โStarlink internet is whatโs being used to pay for humanity getting to Mars.โ
A rural household finally getting connected. A boat in the middle of the Pacific. A village nobody ever ran a line to. Every one of them is a payment toward a launch.
Musk: โIโd just like to thank everyone out there who has bought Starlink because you are helping secure the future of civilization and helping make life multiplanetary.โ
That is not marketing language. That is accounting.
The financing is the real breakthrough. Building something people want this month to pay for something that pays off after everyone alive is dead.
Every monument in human history was built with money taken from people who were never asked. Tithes, taxes, tribute, conscription. The pyramids and the cathedrals and the moon landing were all funded by force.
This is the first project at that scale that runs on people choosing it, which makes every dish on every roof a vote rather than a levy.
Nobody had to be chosen for this. A working connection in a place the old providers gave up on puts you on the ledger.
Every generation inherits one project large enough to be remembered by. Almost nobody alive for those ever got close enough to touch theirs.
Civilizations do not get to choose whether they become permanent. They find out afterward.
Every one before this looked up at the sky and wanted it.
This is the first one writing the check.
๐๐ The upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket struck the Moon early Wednesday, Aug. 5, around 2:35 a.m. ET โ an unintentional impact near the Einstein and Bell craters on the western lunar limb, at roughly 5,400 mph.
The stage had been drifting since Jan. 15, 2025, when it carried the Blue Ghost and Resilience landers toward the Moon and was then left in a moon-crossing orbit. After 19 months, its trajectory finally intersected the surface.
Impact was inferred observationally: astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile detected a plume of sodium and lithium gas, with a corroborating sodium emission spotted from Massachusetts. A lunar orbiter is expected to image the new crater later.
Two clarifications worth noting: this is the rocket's second (upper) stage, not the returnable booster โ and it is a distinct event from the well-known March 2022 Falcon 9 impact, which involved a different 2015-era stage. The trajectory was first calculated by Bill Gray of Project Pluto; the accompanying study is a preprint, not yet peer-reviewed.
Context: There is still no formal tracking system for space debris beyond low-Earth orbit โ a gap likely to matter more as lunar traffic grows.
Sources: CBS News, CNN, ABC News, TIME, https://t.co/CxHSJvpc2G
@prakdadlani All the river front, sea front promenade, newairport and unnecessary uniform colour enforced on personal property makes no sense when the basic water drainage system is in shambles or doesnโt exist at all, Town planning department of DNHDD should be fired!!
#Corruption
Watch the Moment Water Is Born at the Nanoscale ๐ง
This astonishing video captures hydrogen and oxygen combining to form water at the nanoscaleโrevealing one of natureโs most fundamental reactions in an extraordinary way.
NEW: NASA has increased the chance a major asteroid smashes into Earth in 2032, now giving it a 3.1% chance, up from 2.6% last week.
NASA says the odds the asteroid hits Earth is 1 in 32. It is big enough to wipe out an entire city.
The large cities with the highest risk are Bogotรก, Abidjan, Lagos, Khartoum, Mumbai, Kolkata and Dhaka.
According to experts, the 177-foot diameter asteroid would release 8 megatons of energy on impact, 500 times the energy released by the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
NASA has successfully tested asteroid deflection technologies. China will also be testing its own technology on a small asteroid in 2027.
"This is not a crisis at this point in time. This is not the dinosaur killer. This is not the planet killer. This is at most dangerous for a city," said the head of the European Space Agency's planetary defense office, Richard Moissl.
@KFC_UKI I ordered a supercharger sub box mealโฆcan you confirm if this is a supercharger sub sandwich and why is it that your service keeps deteriorating at this particular restaurant!!!!
A man working as a welder at SpaceX for $28 an hour has just become a millionaire.
Juan Hernandez, who came from Mexico, welded rockets for SpaceX at $28 an hour.
SpaceX gave him $10,000 in stock when he went full time in 2015, and he bought more with every paycheck for 10 years.
$SPCX is now trading at $167, making his shares worth over $1 million.
SpaceXโs IPO Just Made Elon Musk The Worldโs First Trillionaire https://t.co/6uwB7bvMks (Illustration: Fernando Capeto and Macy Sinreich for Forbes; Photo: Martin Schoeller for Forbes)
Rocketmaker SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq Friday, boosting Elon Muskโs fortune to an estimated $1.1 trillion.
The idea of anyone becoming a trillionaire seemed unfathomable even just a couple years ago.
Here's a closer look at Musk's race to the top: https://t.co/FaIFthbWYG