Elon Musk Competing Wit...

Last week Mark Zuckerberg took his little Harvard project public in the largest tech IPO ever and quickly followed it up by marrying his Harvard sweetheart . However, the honeymoon was cut short as the Facebook stock has yet to impress. Meanwhile, the tech world’s equivalent of Tony Stark, announced via Twitter yesterday that the Tesla cars were approved for sale to the public after passing the necessary federal crash tests. That announcement was followed up this morning with SpaceX becoming the first privately owned company to launch a rocket destined to dock with the International Space Station. So then the question becomes whether or not launching a rocket combined with a major milestone in a separate company outshines taking Facebook public. In my book, rockets and fast cars win every time. Musk’s car company is on a tear lately. Tesla announced in early May that it was on-track to deliver the Model S to customers next month, a full month prior to the original July rollout (June 22nd according to today’s press release ). Then, a few days later, Tesla revealed that it will begin repaying the $465 million by the end of the year which would make the auto company the first startup to begin repayment. Falcon flew perfectly!! Dragon in orbit, comm locked and solar arrays active!! Feels like a giant weight just came off my back :) — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 22, 2012 Dragon spaceship opens the navigation pod bay door without hesitation. So much nicer than HAL9000 :) #DragonLaunch — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 22, 2012 SpaceX, one of Musk’s other ventures, had an impressive milestone of its own today, becoming the first privately-owned space company to launch a rocket headed for the ISS. History will no doubt forget that this event happened a few days late. The rocket was supposed to launch on Sunday, May 19th but the launch was aborted with a half a second left on the countdown clock. The rocket’s automated systems flagged abnormal pressure in one of the engines and automatically killed the launch, which would have likely caused a catastrophe.

Sprint’s EVO 4G LTE Has...

Sprint’s launch plans for the HTC EVO 4G LTE were ruined last week when shipments of their shiny new Android handset were held up by United States Customs, but we’re hearing that they may been hitting doorsteps and store shelves sooner than expected. According to Sprint , the devices are now currently sitting safely in Sprint’s warehouses and are expected to start trickling out into the world “on or around May 24.” And rest easy, you faithful pre-orderers — the world from on high is that you’ll still be getting your devices first. In case you’re new to this little shipping snafu, shipments of Sprint’s new EVO (along with those of their AT&T-based cousin, the One X) were prevented form entering the country thanks to an exclusion order handed down by the International Trade Commission. The entire convoluted story started last year, but here’s the tl;dr: Back in July, HTC was found by ITC judge Carl Charneski to have infringed on one of Apple’s patents — specifically, it involved recognizing a particular structure within a set of data and binding it to a particular action. Sounds pretty dry, I know, but if your phone lets you directly a call a phone number by touching it in an email, you’ve seen the patent in action. At the time, HTC stated that they were working on fixing the offending UI flourish, and part of the holdup for customers was apparently because the phones were being spot-checked for compliance. With Sprint’s EVO shipments said to be on the move once more, now the question becomes whether or not shipments of AT&T’s One X are as well. I’ve reached out to AT&T for confirmation one way or the other, and I’ll be updating the post as I hear more.

SpaceX To Attempt A Sec...

SpaceX and Elon Musk will not be held from the history books. Last night the company announced that engineers were currently replacing a faulty valve on engine #5, and if successful pending a data review today, the company would attempt a second launch on Tuesday, May 22nd. This comes as SpaceX’s maiden voyage to the International Space Station was cut a half second short by an automated safety function built into the rocket. SpaceX is attempting to become the first privately owned entity to reach and dock a capsule with the ISS, therefore increasing its chance to win what will likely be a lucrative contract to ferry cargo and humans between Earth and Space. So far these duties have been carried out by the U.S., Russia and Japan. However, as governments are cutting space budget programs they are looking to hand over these relatively nominal duties to the private sector and redirect funds to long-range space exploration and science programs. Come next Tuesday, SpaceX will attempt to make history again .

Real Tech Alert: Elon M...

Watch live streaming video from spaceflightnow at livestream.com SpaceX , the private space exploration company founded by PalPal and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk , is ready to boldly go where no private company has legitimately attempted to go before: The International Space Station . (Live video of the rocket at Cape Canaveral in Florida is embedded above.) In just a few hours at 1:55am Pacific Time (which is 4:55am Eastern time) Saturday morning, SpaceX will attempt to make the first ever privately-funded launch to head to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch will be made with its Falcon 9 rocket, which is set to deploy its Dragon capsule . As SpaceFlightNow has very clearly reported , this is a risky and unique proposition in many ways: “SpaceX aims to launch its privately-built Dragon capsule Saturday aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, fly the craft to the International Space Station, and deftly approach the complex for astronauts to grab the free-flying satellite with a robot arm. It is the first time a private company has attempted such a feat.” Obviously it is a super ambitious and expensive endeavor, but the SpaceX company is very keen to remind people that this is still an experiment. After all, this is the first time that a non-government US entity has made a move to land on the International Space Station . As SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell told SpaceFlight Now: “We know this has been touted as a huge mission. We keep trying to say it’s a test. Nonetheless, it’s a big job.” The company has repeatedly emphasized to the press that this is “just a test flight.” Indeed, it is possible that we could watch the Falcon 9 go down in flames. But of course, the smart people at SpaceX have clearly taken great care to make sure that is not the case here on Saturday’s launch. In any case, we’ll have to wait and see to be sure — and the high stakes are a part of the excitement of it all. In a slightly larger lens, there is the hope that some of the newly-minted Facebook affiliated folks who acquired millions on Friday will opt to invest in projects that are nearly as interesting as Elon Musk’s endeavors. One can dream, at least.

Study Says Social Media...

In a shocking development, a research company has chosen this particular week, of all weeks, to post their forecast for what is in store for social media ad spending in the US over the next several years. Do you think it was just dumb luck that it coincides with Facebook’s IPO ? Hey, who can blame BIA/Kelsey for jumping on the train that is the Facebook IPO Express? Here is the picture version of this predicted US social media spend through 2016. Let’s consider the whole Facebook IPO thingy in light of these numbers. In 2011, Facebook did somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 billion in revenue. That revenue is in total, not just in the US. What percentage of revenue is international I don’t know. Right now US users number somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 million which would be about 17% of Facebook’s total user base. It is likely that the US market spends more than most, however, and it is fair to think that the US proportion of revenue contribution is higher than that 17% of total users. With the US numbers for ad spend which are projected here, one wonders where all the revenue will come from in the future to support the reported valuation Facebook will receive this Friday. Let’s compare this to Google whose market cap sits just below $200B but did just under $38B in revenue last year and is tracking to go well north of $40B this year. Does anyone else see a disconnect with valuing Facebook at 50% of Google’s market cap while only currently generating less than 8% of Google’s total revenue? Marry that with the Kelsey numbers that caps the social media advertising spend potential at $10B annual in TOTAL for the US (remember all that spend won’t be just for Facebook) 4 years from now and you have to scratch your head just a little. Facebook will need to do something other than advertising especially if that facet of their business is being called out by some as ineffective . The other side of the Kelsey data shows that Facebook’s idea that their advertising value is best for big brands could be right on point as much of the ad spend will be on a national level. But wait. If national big brands will be the bulk of ad spend in social media in the next four years (according to this study only mind you) but Facebook is being outed as being ineffective by some big brands (which could be turned around to also read that said big brands and their agencies are clueless as to what they are doing in social media advertising) then where is all the revenue for Facebook going to come from to support what is supposed to be an earth shattering IPO? One assumes that it would have to be the international market that Facebook is banking on but with a shaky world economy and very different approaches to media and advertising in different areas of the world (as well as China currently being a walled garden of sorts) how reliable will that be for Facebook? I am not a financial analyst. I have not done any type of in depth analysis here. I am just looking at some numbers that are being thrown around and wondering if Facebook math is creating a “1 + 1 = 3 or more” scenario. I have no skin in this game and I, like the rest of us, would figure out a way to carry on in this world if Facebook were to do a MySpace. I’m not saying that will happen at all but anyone who can add 1 + 1 and get the correct answer should have a few questions here, don’t ya think? I would also be just fine if Facebook hit a grand slam and killed this thing. It will be what it will be. So what do you think it will be? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!