Darrell Etherington
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The Latest from Darrell Etherington
United Airlines agrees to purchase 15 Boom supersonic airliners
United Airlines is the first official U.S. customer for Boom Supersonic, a company focused on making supersonic commercial flight a reality once again. Boom unveiled its supersonic sub-scale testing a
Virgin Galactic to fly Kellie Gerardi to space on a dedicated research mission
Virgin Galactic has a new customer: The International Institute for Astronautical Sciences (IIAS), which will be flying researcher, citizen scientist and STEM influencer Kellie Gerardi on an upcoming
SpaceX will launch four private astronaut missions to the Space Station through 2023
SpaceX is going to be providing more rides to the International Space Station for private astronauts, on top of the previously announced mission set to take place as early as next January. All four of
Rocket Lab cleared by the FAA to resume launches after mission failure last month
Rocket Lab has already received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to resume its launch activities, following a failure during the second-stage burn of its 20th Electron rocket mi
Max Q: Selling space
Max Q is a weekly newsletter from TechCrunch all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox. This week actually includes two, since I was out last week for a Canadian nati
SpaceX’s first ocean spaceport is being built and will host launches next year
SpaceX is already underway on building its first floating spaceport platform, and the plan is for it to start hosting launches as early as next year. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared those details on the p
TC Sessions: Space is returning in December
Last year, we held our first dedicated space startup event, TC Sessions: Space, featuring some of the industry’s top founders and leaders, including Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck, Lockheed Marti
Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander will fly to the moon on a SpaceX Falcon 9 in 2023
Firefly Aerospace may be developing rockets of its own, but it’s also simultaneously building Blue Ghost, its first lunar lander. Blue Ghost will hop a ride with a rocket from a different launch
Bessemer’s Tess Hatch will join us as a judge at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021
Tess Hatch, vice president and partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, will join us at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 as a judge for our Startup Battlefield competition. By the way startups, you can still appl
Women-led sports media startup The GIST raises $1M to challenge sports reporting norms
The three co-founders of The GIST are all themselves sports fans, but realized in 2018 that sports media in general left a lot to be desired when it comes to catering to audiences outside of the male-
Blue Origin reveals highest bid for a seat on its first human spaceflight, currently at $2M
Blue Origin is taking a novel approach to selling the first available private spaceflight seat on its New Shepard rocket, with an auction that will award the spot to the highest bidder. The company us
May Mobility’s Edwin Olson and Nina Grooms Lee and Toyota AI Ventures’ Jim Adler on validating your startup idea
Read on for highlights from our chat with Olson, Grooms Lee and Adler, or watch a recording of the full session, including our live pitch-off.
Discovery’s new reality show ‘Who Wants to Be an Astronaut?’ will pick one winner to go to space
Discovery has ordered a new reality show, to air in 2022, which will be an eight-episode competition series where competitors will vie for a chance to take a trip to the International Space Station on
How one founder’s startup journey began with dropping out of school to work with Drake
This week’s episode of Found features Courtne Smith, founder of NewNew, a social app where people pay to vote on your decisions. The platform takes the concept of social polling to the next leve
Rocket Lab’s 20th Electron launch ends in failure with the loss of its payload
Rocket Lab flew its 20th Electron mission on Saturday morning, but the launch ran into a significant issue just after its second-stage engine ignited. The engine appeared to shut down just after the i
Google Cloud teams up with SpaceX’s Starlink for enterprise connectivity at network’s edge
SpaceX’s bourgeoning Starlink satellite-based broadband internet service just got a big boost from a significant new partner: Google Cloud. Thanks to a new partnership between the two, SpaceX wi
SpaceX’s inaugural moon-tour private astronaut is heading to the International Space Station first
SpaceX private spaceflight ambitions got a big boost in 2018 when Japanese entrepreneur and billionaire Yusaku Maezawa announced he’d be taking a trip aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon on a round-trip
With new owner Naver, Wattpad looks to supercharge its user-generated IP factory
Toronto-based Wattpad is officially part of South Korean internet giant Naver as of today, with the official close of the $600 million cash and stock acquisition deal. Under the terms of the acquisiti
SpaceX launches and lands a Falcon 9 rocket booster a record 10th time
SpaceX has launched another 60 Starlink satellites — making 180 delivered to orbit in under two weeks — but the launch early Sunday morning was more notable because it set a new, key record for Fa
How one founder realized the potential of sustainable energy stored deep below our feet
On this week’s Found podcast, we sat down with Dandelion co-founder and President Kathy Hannun. Kathy came up with the idea for Dandelion while working at Google X, tackling some of the world