rockets

AUSTIN, Texas -- SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk wowed a capacity SXSW crowd here today with the first public showing of a video of a rocket capable of blasting off and then returning safely and gently to the ground. And he later added he hopes to one day travel (perhaps one-way) to Mars.

The video of the company's Grasshopper rocket, filmed just about a day-and-a-half ago, demonstrates one of SpaceX's key propositions: That it can develop reusable rockets at a fraction of the cost of a traditional NASA mission, and that it can bring them back down … Read more

YouTube hosts millions of free videos, including tons of tunes; so much that it's sometimes easier to download and save your favorites. You have many choices when it comes to free tools that can do the job. One of the best we've seen is MP3 Rocket, a tool that can search for, find, download, convert, and save video and music files from YouTube. It handles most video formats, including HD, and audio formats, too. It also shows online TV programming, plays 'Net radio, and even accesses lots of games.

MP3 Rocket's tabbed interface involves an integrated media … Read more

When relationships end, there isn't just one guilty party. Unless there is.

It might well be that your ex was a lovable person whom you treated like an errant musketeer. Or it might be that, one fine day, you discovered your ex's words were merely the arbitrary squeakings of a pygmy.

Rebecca Gibbs clearly became disenamored of her husband, Stephen Page. Where once their wedding proudly adorned YouTube, more recently the site reverberated with the whooshing sound of their marriage going up in smoke.

Or into space, to be more precise.

For Gibbs decided to take their wedding … Read more

Most of us spend a large part of our day reading and writing e-mails. If you're a Hotmail (now Outlook.com), Yahoo! Mail, or Gmail user, you may already be familiar with using Webmail keyboard shortcuts. They can save you time by not having to constantly take your hands off of the keyboard to reach for a mouse. But how many of those shortcuts have you actually learned?

KeyRocket for Gmail is a Chrome extension that can help you learn Gmail keyboard shortcuts, while you're using Gmail. All you have to do is install the Chrome extension, make … Read more

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and its attached Dragon spacecraft exhaled flames for a few seconds today at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

After pausing the first attempt at a test firing of the Falcon 9 due to a glitch just moments before the end of the countdown, SpaceX proceeded with a second attempt, which succeeded. The rocket remained stationary, but the system passed the "static fire" test with flying colors, putting Elon Musk's commercial space venture one step closer to reaching the International Space Station for the first time.

The test firing was the height … Read more

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Not to be outdone by "Titanic" director James Cameron, Amazon's Jeff Bezos has just announced that after searching the seafloor, he's located the rockets that thrust Neil Armstrong toward the moon more than 40 years ago and plans to bring them back onto dry land.

Writing on his "Bezos Expeditions" blog today, the e-commerce guru and would-be space explorer said his team had located the five F-1 rockets that lifted the Apollo 11 mission spaceward and then plunged into the Atlantic.… Read more

Not long ago, word leaked of a plan that could take anyone with an extra $150 million on a trip around the moon. So SpaceX founder Elon Musk's assertion today that he hopes to be able to take people on a round-trip to Mars for $500,000 signals a much better deal.

Musk told the BBC that he expects to unveil details of his plans sometime later this year or in early 2013. Essentially, though, Musk believes that with its Falcon 9 launcher and Dragon spacecraft, SpaceX may already have the base infrastructure in place that could get paying … Read more