By Alex Plough November 7, 2014
Setbacks for Space Tourists
The cult classic 1968 Stanley Kubrick film “2001: A Space Odyssey” predicted that orbital space flight would soon become as routine as travelling from New York to London.
While technology has not advanced as quickly as the 1960s futurologists predicted, the baton of private sector space tourism has been picked up by several of today’s wealthiest entrepreneurs.
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, the earliest of these ventures, plans to charge up to $250,000 for a trip to the edge of space. Other billionaires with interstellar ambitions include Elon Musk, CEO of space cargo transporter SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos, whose Blue Origin is developing technologies to lower the cost of space flight.
Last Friday tragedy struck the fledgling industry, however, when one of Virgin Galactic’s spacecrafts exploded and crashed into the Californian Mojave desert, killing one pilot and severely injuring another.
Days earlier, a rocket from private firm Orbital Sciences blew up 20 seconds after it launched. Thankfully the rocket, laden with supplies for the International Space Station, was unmanned.
But the two events refocused public and regulatory concerns about the safety of space tourism. Space flight is no easy feat. It’s literally rocket science.
Tesla Confounds
Elon Musk ©JD Lasica
Meanwhile one of Elon Musk’s other ventures, the electric car manufacturer Tesla, released is third quarter financial results on Wednesday.
The news was mixed – losses for the quarter doubled but demand for the company’s Model S surged, according to Musk. The CEO predicted 50 percent growth over the next few years, with projected sales of 50,000 Model S vehicles in 2015. Tesla shares rose 4 percent on the news and by end of Wednesday’s trading they had gained 54 percent this year.
For years, the firm’s advancing share price has defied conventional market wisdom about stock valuations. Currently Tesla’s market capitalization is $30 billion, despite 2013 revenues of just $2 billion on sales of 22,477 of its flagship Model S car. By contrast, tractor manufacturer John Deere has a market cap of $31.6 billion on $37 billion in revenues.
Some analysts noted that Tesla has run into a few manufacturing glitches and is struggling to keep up with demand.
Gross Making Waves
Bill Gross ©JD Lasica
Investors pulled $48 billion out of Pacific Investment Management’s Pimco mutual funds in October, following the departure of celebrity manager Bill Gross a month earlier.
The flagship Pimco Total Return Fund lost a record $27.5 billion, while its Total Return ETF bled a total of $437 million according to financial data provider Morningstar. Executives have prepared for up to $100 billion in outflows across the firm as they try to reassure investors rattled by Gross’s departure in September.
While still one of the largest investment firms in the world, which once had almost $2 trillion in assets under management, Pimco was rocked by the very public resignation of Gross’s heir apparent Mohamed El-Erian amid accusations of infighting between the two star fund managers.
Corporate Tax Scheme Uncovered
This week a renowned team of cross-border investigative journalists published leaked documents exposing the machinations of secret tax deals between global companies and Luxembourg authorities.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reviewed documents leaked from the Luxembourg office of PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of the world’s largest accounting firms.
Muckrakers found that almost 350 companies from around the world, including Pepsi, IKEA, AIG, Coach and Deutsche Bank, secured secret deals from Luxembourg that allowed many of them to slash their global tax bills.
The news raises questions about the role Europe’s top official, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, played in the deals when he was Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1995 to 2013.
Cabbie Hack
Civic hacker and self-proclaimed ‘data junkie’ Chris Whong published a fascinating visualisation of a day-in-the-life-of a New York taxi driver. Based on a database of over 170 Million individual trips, the project gives an insight into daily lives of NYC cabbies.
New York City cabs ©Counselman Collection
