In a triple header of Elon-Musk related news Monday:
SpaceX
SpaceX is on the verge of announcing the name of person who would be the first private passenger on a trip around the moon.
The identity of the traveler will be revealed at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, during an event Monday evening.
SpaceX gave no details of the flight but said it would be “an important step toward enabling access for everyday people who dream of traveling to space.”
SpaceX founder and chief executive Musk outlined a somewhat different mission last year.
Musk said two people who know each other approached the company about a weeklong flight to the moon and back.
He had said that the trip would happen this year and would not involve a landing, but rather a long loop around the moon. Musk did not name the clients last year or say how much they would pay.
Musk said the pair had paid a “significant” deposit and were “entering this with their eyes open, knowing that there is some risk here.”
That original mission would have used a Falcon Heavy rocket — the most powerful rocket flying today — and a Dragon crew capsule similar to the one NASA astronauts will use to fly to the International Space Station as early as next year.
The new SpaceX strategy is to still fly around the moon without landing, but use an even bigger rocket still in development that has its own dedicated passenger ship. The rocket dubbed BFR has not been built so any flight presumably is at least several years away.
On its website, SpaceX is touting the “first passenger on lunar BFR mission,” implying there will be more moon trips.
Astronauts last visited the moon during NASA’s Apollo program. Twenty-four men flew to the moon from 1968 through 1972 and half of them made it to the lunar surface.
The space agency is planning its own lunar flyby with a crew around 2023.
It also aims to build a staffed gateway near the moon during the 2020s. The outpost would serve as a stepping-off point for the lunar surface, Mars and points beyond.
Another problem at Tesla?
The electric-car maker has struggled to ramp up production of its Model 3. But CEO Musk says he’s now having trouble getting the vehicles to customers.
“We’ve gone from production hell to delivery logistics hell,” he told a Twitter user who complained that the Tesla she had ordered was stuck at a railway depot.
While it’s not clear how many cars are waiting to be delivered, Musk said this problem is “far more tractable” that production delays.
“We’re making rapid progress,” he said on Twitter. “Should be solved shortly.”
Saudis back another electric car maker – not Tesla
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund invested over $1 billion Monday in an American electric car manufacturer just weeks after Tesla CEO Elon Musk earlier claimed the kingdom would help his own firm go private.
Tesla stock dropped Monday on reaction to the news, the same day that the Saudi fund announced it had taken its first loan, an $11 billion borrowing from global banks as it tries to expand its investments.
The Saudi Public Investment Fund said it would invest the over $1 billion in Newark, California-based Lucid Motors.
The investment “will provide the necessary funding to commercially launch Lucid’s first electric vehicle, the Lucid Air, in 2020,” the sovereign wealth fund said in a statement. “The company plans to use the funding to complete engineering development and testing of the Lucid Air, construct its factory in Arizona, enter production for the Lucid Air to begin the global rollout of the company’s retail strategy starting in North America.”
Lucid issued a statement quoting Peter Rawlinson, its chief technology officer, welcoming the investment.
“At Lucid, we will demonstrate the full potential of the electric-connected vehicle in order to push the industry forward,” said Rawlinson, who worked as the lead engineer of the Tesla Model S before joining Lucid.
The all-electric Lucid Air will have a range of over 400 miles (640 kilometers). The company already is taking deposits for the vehicle, which they’ve priced at $52,500.
Lucid plans to make the Air at a factory it’s building in Casa Grande, Arizona. The company wants to make up to 130,000 vehicles per year by 2022.
The Saudi announcement comes after Musk on Aug. 7 tweeted that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. Investors pushed Tesla’s shares up 11 percent in a day, boosting its valuation by $6 billion.
There are multiple reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the disclosure, including asking board members what they knew about Musk’s plans. Experts say regulators likely are investigating if Musk was truthful in the tweet about having the financing set for the deal. Musk later said the Saudi Public Investment Fund would be investing in the firm, something Saudi officials never commented on.
On Monday, Tesla stock fell 1.25 percent in early trading to $291.50 a share.
Meanwhile, the sovereign wealth fund known by the acronym PIF said it had taken its first loan, an $11 billion borrowing. It did not say how it would use the money, only describing it as going toward “general corporate purposes.”
The Las Vegas-based Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute estimates the Saudi fund, known by the acronym PIF, has holdings of $250 billion. Those include a $3.5 billion stake in the ride-sharing app Uber.
Saudi Arabia’s 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has talked about using the PIF to help diversify the economy of the kingdom, which relies almost entirely on money made from its oil sales.
