This week’s news is less crazy than last week’s. The biggest news is a rocket blowing up on the pad. It’s Thursday and I’ve registered for a chance to fly to the Moon! It’s another week with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, NFT art sales become the next digital bubble, SpaceX lands a rocket that blows up, and Fly Me to the Moon. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.
WANT TO GO TO THE MOON, ENTER TO WIN A SEAT ON A BILLIONAIRE’S FLIGHT
Yesterday Japanese fashion mogul, Yusaku Maezawa, is paying for a trip to the Moon for 8 people who consider themselves artists. Yusaku has extended an invitation to the public for a 6-day SpaceX trip around the Moon in 2023. There are 8 seats available and potential passengers can apply for a seat up until March 14th. Maezawa has called the mission, Dear Moon. Maezawa had originally intended a search for a life partner to make the trip with him, and now has opened it up. Maezawa isn’t the only billionaire taking people to the Moon. Jared Isaacman, the CEO of Shift4, is taking one person up with him to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Hospital. I registered.
SPACEX LANDS MARS SPACESHIP PROTOTYPE SUCCESSFULLY BEFORE IT BLOWS UP
In other space news, SpaceX’s latest prototype craft named, Starship, was launched yesterday at 6:14pm. The craft is designed to be a fully functional and reusable spacecraft for Mars flight. The rocket successfully launched and hover 6 miles above the surface before coming on approach for a landing. Starship’s onboard computer was able to successfully adjust rocket for landing and had a soft touchdown. Unfortunately, the rocket blew up 2 minutes after landing. Yesterday’s launch mission objective was to gather data for Starship’s computer controlled flight systems, not necessarily landing safely.
#SN10 reflew a lot quicker than any of us expected 🤯 that was insane!!!! So…. congrats and also RIP 🤷♂️😂 bye bye SN10, congrats on making history!!!! @spacex @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/FkDTa9ISRi
— Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) March 3, 2021
NFT ART ATTRACTS FUNGIBLE DOLLARS
In latest and greatest news, digital art has become the latest bubble. Authenticated digital art technology, made possible by a new use of blockchain technology, is starting to attract large sums. Music producer and spouse of Elon Musk, Grimes, has sold over $6 million dollars of art using a technology called Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). NFTs provide a means of creating digital certificates of authenticity for art work. This insures there is some degree of rarity for digital art. Thing is though, the purchaser of the NFT doesn’t have ownership of the underlying art asset. Just the ability to…use it? NFTs started gaining hype last year when Beeple made all of their artwork available digitally.