5 things you should know about tech today

1. Branson’s glide hustle

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity comes into land in New Mexico

Just a few weeks after finding the time to send a nice note to everyone at Virgin Australia as the business slid into administration owing creditors Au$7 billion-plus, the show has gone on for Richard Branson, with NSYE-listed Virgin Galactic Holdings announcing its SpaceShipTwo, VSS Unity, took its first solo test glide in New Mexico on Friday.

2. Shooting for the moon

The space companies owned by billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos among 3 companies chosen by NASA for its Artemis program to land the first woman and another man on the Moon by 2024.

NASA is asking SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Dynetics to design a lunar lander, giving them US$967 million (A$1.5bn) and 10 months to come up with initial designs

Bezos’s Blue Origin is developing the Integrated Lander Vehicle – a three-stage lander to be launched on its own New Glenn Rocket System and ULA Vulcan launch system. Dynetics, a subsidiary of defense, aviation, IT, and biomedical research company Leidos, is developing the Dynetics Human Landing System– a single structure providing the ascent and descent capabilities that will launch on the ULA Vulcan launch system; while Musk’s SpaceX , is developing the Starship – a fully integrated lander for the SpaceX Super Heavy rocket.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said it was “the final step needed to land astronauts on the Moon”.

“This is the first time since the Apollo era that NASA has direct funding for a human landing system, and now we have companies on contract to do the work for the Artemis program,” he said.

As part of the Artemis program, NASA is investigating new mobility capabilities to allow robots and crew to travel greater distances and explore new regions of the Moon and has proposed building a new habitat and rovers, testing new power systems and much more to get ready for human exploration of Mars.

3. Tanks for that

You may have read a couple of weeks ago that Australia spent $94 million on crude oil when prices were at record lows. One of the reasons is that we’re meant to have a 90-day emergency stockpile under international fuel security rules, but Australia hasn’t met that benchmark for some time.

In fact we’re well short of that figure when it comes to what’s locally available – just 25 days worth of car petrol, 22 days of turbine fuel, and 20 days of diesel, but the government likes to include oil on its way in ships in that figure, and the oil its just bought will be stored in the US. To put things in perspective $94m gets you 4-5 days worth of additional supply, but it still has to make it to Australia, which is why the following caught our eye.

Shipbuilding company, Submarinery, says it will supply its first batch of 5000-ton crude floating storage units (CFSU) this month – they look like submarines and store the oil at sea. Storage has become a major issue, and that’s while the price of oil has dropped.

The Chinese company, based in Haiyan, was founded by a scientist who claims to have invented a non-metal composite material 25 times stronger than steel at the same weight. They’ve been using it to build  1000 ton crude tanks and a 40,000-ton version is on the drawing boards.

Imagine parking a couple of those in Botany Bay and Port Philip Bay so the next time we’re running low on oil, we don’t have to ring the US for a delivery.

Submarinery’s 5000 tonne crude oil tankers