SpaceX CEO Elon Musk believes that there may be a path for the company to ultimately build the massive Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster (formerly BFR) for less than Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy, a rocket 3-9 times smaller than BFR. While it certainly ranks high on the list of wild and wacky things the CEO has said over the years, there may be a few ways – albeit with healthy qualifications...

We take for granted that we live on a planet that is rich in life. With over 14 million identified species, the sheer biodiversity on Earth is outstanding. We depend on this diversity for food and resources, which in return allow us to flourish and thrive. However, this symbiotic relationship doesn’t necessarily exist for the rest of the universe. In The Beginning of Infinity, physicist David Deutsch invites readers to conduct the following thought experiment: imagine the universe was divided into cubes the size of our solar system. What would a typical cube look like?

Ready to start a new life on Mars? Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur vying to send humans to the red planet within the next decade, claimed on Monday that the cost of a ticket will one day enable “most people in advanced economies” to feasibly give up their Earth-bound dwellings and move to Mars. The SpaceX CEO stated via Twitter that he’s “confident” moving to Mars will one day cost $500,000 for a return ticket, possibly dropping further to below $100,000. These figures, Musk explained, are “very dependent on volume.”

Elon Musk has been at SpaceX's test site for its rocket engines in central Texas this weekend. The facility near McGregor is where the company both tests Merlin engines for Falcon 9 flights and also performs some experimental firings. Due to a variety of reasons, including financial pressures, SpaceX is pushing hard on the development of its next-generation Super Heavy rocket and Starship spacecraft.

So SpaceX is making a huge rocket out of stainless steel. As far as we know, this marks the first time the material has been used in spacecraft construction since some early, ill-fated attempts during the Atlas program in the late 1950s. We know he is doing this this because, after weeks of rumors about a tweak to the design, a few days before Christmas Musk revealed that there would be much more than a tweak. The state-of-the-art carbon fiber forming the body of the Starship rocket (formerly known as the BFR, or Big Falcon Rocket, or Big F-other-word Rocket) and its Super Heavy booster would be replaced by 300-series stainless.

Before the United States can return astronauts to the moon, it needs to send robots there first. As part of that ultimate mission, several lunar lander companies — including Cape Canaveral-based Moon Express — were selected to compete for up to $2.6 billion worth of NASA contracts that will fast-track the nation’s return to the moon.

Today -- Dec. 8, 2018 -- marks a big anniversary in SpaceX history. It's been more than 12 years since SpaceX launched its first rocket, an experimental Falcon 1, from Kwajalein Atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to ensure it wouldn't hurt anyone if it blew up. (Spoiler: It blew up). It would be two more years before SpaceX succeeded in getting a rocket into orbit, and two more years after that before SpaceX built a rocket big enough to carry significant commercial payloads.

Drawn in by Teslarati photographer Pauline Acalin’s most recent photos of Port of LA Falcon 9 recovery operations SpaceX is in the midst of, CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter on December 8th to discuss titanium grid fins and – more importantly – answer a miscellaneous handful of questions about the status of BFR’s development.

SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk says a redesigned test vehicle for the company's next-generation reusable launch system could be ready for initial flights early next year. In a tweet early Dec. 24, Musk posted a photo of two parts of that initial test article, a conical section next to a cylindrical unit with landing legs. "Stainless Steel Starship," he wrote.

NASA is buzzing with excitement these days about its ambitious new mission to return to the moon — this time to stay. The agency set an aggressive timetable to have the Gateway space station orbiting the moon by 2024, then begin ferrying astronauts from the station to the lunar surface sometime after 2026.

The commercial space business has blossomed over the past decade. Two companies, though, have grabbed the spotlight, emerging as the most ambitious of them all: Blue Origin and SpaceX. At first glance, these two companies look a lot alike. They are both led by billionaires who became wealthy from the Internet: Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin earned his fortune from Amazon.com, and Elon Musk of SpaceX got rich initially from Web-based businesses, notably PayPal.

Eleven months ago—just after SpaceX astonished the world by launching and landing its titanic Falcon Heavy rocket while beaming back images of a red Tesla leaving Earth orbit—company founder Elon Musk had already begun to look beyond the moment. The Falcon Heavy was a big, capable rocket. But it wasn't large enough to fulfill his aspirations of reaching Mars. Neither did the company have a spacecraft capable of landing there.

Come one, come all and behold the future of space travel: steam power! No, seriously; half a century after the world's first manned space mission, it seems that interplanetary travel has finally entered the steam age. Scientists at the University of Central Florida (UCF) have teamed up with Honeybee Robotics, a private space and mining tech company based in California, to develop a small, steam-powered spacecraft capable of sucking its fuel right out of the asteroids, planets and moons it's exploring.

Scientists have discovered a defect in the engines of Russia’s new flagship heavy lift space rocket that could destroy it in flight, an apparent setback to a project President Vladimir Putin has said is vital for national security. The Angara A5, which was test-launched in 2014, is being developed to replace the Proton M as Russia’s heavy lift rocket, capable of carrying payloads bigger than 20 tonnes into orbit. A launch pad for the new rocket is due to open in 2021.

ThumbSat aims to make access to space for the scientific community a much more affordable endeavor.

Spacewalks have become a regular feature of life in the International Space Station, but they are still a risky adventure. By Jason Caffrey.

For the second time in less than three years, a spacewalk outside of the International Space Station has been cut short because of a water leak in an astronaut's helmet. A spacewalk involving NASA astronaut Tim Kopra and British colleague Tim Peake was called off about 2 hours early today (Jan. 15) when Kopra noticed some water inside his helmet.

Astronaut ice cream — did it really fly? Vox's Phil Edwards investigates, with the help of the Smithsonian and an astronaut.

There are only few places in the world where rockets lift off. That short list will get a little longer on Tuesday, when Russia plans to open a new gleaming gateway to orbit. The Vostochny (Eastern) Cosmodrome should officially enter service with the launch of a Soyuz rocket scheduled for 10:01 p.m. EDT on April 26. The first mission from a brand new launch pad will deliver three satellites into the Earth's orbit—and it could deliver much more than that.

SpaceX has successfully landed another Falcon 9 rocket after launching the vehicle into space this evening from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Shortly after takeoff, the vehicle touched down at SpaceX’s Landing Complex 1 — a ground-based landing site that the company leases at the Cape. It marks the second time SpaceX has pulled off this type of ground landing, and the fifth time SpaceX has recovered one of its rockets post-launch. The feat was accomplished a few minutes before the rocket's second stage successfully put the company's Dragon spacecraft into orbit, where it will rendezvous with the International Space Station later this week.

NASA is working on sending a submarine into the depths of the Kraken Mare — the largest ocean on Saturn’s moon Titan. There are really two big reasons why we want to go to Titan. Number one: “to determine if hydrocarbon based life is possible on Titan,” said Jason Hartwig, a NASA cryogenics engineer, in a presentation at the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium in Raleigh on Wednesday.

The so-called EmDrive creates thrust by bouncing microwaves around in an enclosed chamber, and uses only solar power - and now a Nasa lab is set to reveal its findings on the technology.

New results on the controversial, “impossible” EmDrive propulsion system could be soon published in a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, according to credible rumors. “It is my understanding that Eaglework’s new paper has been today accepted for publication in a peer-review journal, where it will be published,” said high-reputation poster José Rodal, Ph.D, on the NasaSpaceFlight forum, which is often the primary source of updates for all things EmDrive. “Congratulations to the Eagleworks team!” The poster added that the sources of the leak are not employed by NASA.

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos says the big, re-usable rocket he has been developing inside his Blue Origin space company will be called New Glenn, after John Glenn.

SpaceX’s recent Falcon 9 explosion seems to have been caused by a breach in the "cryogenic helium system" of the vehicle's upper oxygen tank, according to an update from the company. However, SpaceX says the accident is not connected to last year's Falcon 9 explosion, when a rocket disintegrated en route to the International Space Station. On September 1st, one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets exploded on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida as the vehicle was being fueled in preparation for a static fire test.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk has outlined his highly ambitious vision for manned missions to Mars, which he said could begin as soon as 2022 – three years sooner than his previous estimates. However, the question of how such extravagantly expensive missions would be funded remains largely in the dark.

One of my earliest memories is sitting on my grandfather's shoulders, waving a flag as our astronauts returned to Hawaii. This was years before we'd set foot on the moon. Decades before we'd land a rover on Mars. A generation before photos from the International Space Station would show up in our social media feeds.

The European Space Agency has teamed up with Russia's Roscosmos program to land a spacecraft on Mars on Wednesday, October 19. If they stick the landing, they’ll join NASA as the only space agencies in history to successfully land a spacecraft on Mars (minus the failed Mars 3 probe). And that will only be the beginning - the lander will then start a whole new quest to search for signs of life on the Red Planet.

Why blow billions of dollars on space exploration when billions of people are living in poverty here on Earth? You’ve likely heard the justifications. The space program brings us useful innovations and inventions. Space exploration delivers perspective, inspiration, and understanding. Because it's the final frontier. Because it's there. What you haven’t heard is anything to inspire a sense of urgency. Indeed, NASA’s struggle to defend its existence and funding shows how weak these justifications sound to a public that cares less about space than seemingly more pressing needs.

In space, metals can weld together without heat or melting.

If Elon Musk's SpaceX can get to Mars and bring samples back to Earth before the United States can get there, it would be cause for celebration not lament, said NASA's new science chief. "If Elon Musk brought the samples in the door right now I'd throw him a party out of my own money," Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's newly named associate administrator for science, told reporters Monday.

The results of NASA's tests on the 'impossible' EM Drive have been leaked , and they reveal that the controversial propulsion system really does work, and is capable of generating impressive thrust in a vacuum, even after error measurements have...

When a scientist announced last decade that he’d built a new form of spacecraft propulsion called the EmDrive that didn’t require conventional fuel, it sounded too good to be true. But the great thing about science is that you don’t have to take someone’s findings at their word; you can test it for yourself. NASA did just that—and while the space agency hasn’t officially released its findings yet, a leaked copy of NASA’s report reveals the EmDrive seems to work as advertised.

The most advanced weather satellite ever built rocketed into space Saturday night, part of an $11 billion effort to revolutionize forecasting and save lives. This new GOES-R spacecraft will track U.S. weather as never before: hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, volcanic ash clouds, wildfires, lightning storms, even solar flares. Indeed, about 50 TV meteorologists from around the country converged on the launch site—including NBC's Al Roker—along with 8,000 space program workers and guests.

The so-called 'impossible' hypothetical EmDrive thruster, that was designed to propel craft through space using electromagnetic waves, is scientifically possible, physicists have said. Since the theory behind the EmDrive was released in 2006, the potential thruster has proved controversial. Until now, a lack of independent verification left the device open to criticism, but a new peer-reviewed paper, looking at the 'impossible' drive, is set to change this by giving the propulsion method more credibility than it has had before.