Bloomberg BusinessWeek, June 25, 2018

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(1) Ashlee Vance, This Startup Got $40 Million to Build a Space Catapult.

Quote:

"On June 14, a Silicon Valley startup called SpinLaunch revealed the first details of its plans to build a machine to hurl rockets into space. [It has secured $40m from companies listed in Note (a) below.] SpinLaunch remains tight-lipped about exactly how this contraption will work, but its name gives away the basics. Rather than using propellants such as kerosene and liquid oxygen  to ignite a fire under a rocket, the company plans to get a rocket traveling in a tight radius at up to 5,000 miles and then let it go -- more or less throwing the rocket to the edge of space, at which point it can fire up and deliver payloads including stellites into orbit.

"To overcome gravity and Earth's atmosphere, rockets must be almost perfectly engineered, and even then, they can push only a relatively payload into space. The items carried on a typical rocket make up less than 5 percent of its mass, with the rest going toward fuel and the body. (Airplane passengers and cargo, by contrast, can total as much as half a plane's nass.)  

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Airbus, Alphabet, and Kleiner Perkins are backing SpinLaunch's effort to fling objects into space
(b) There is no need to read the rest, because no technical details are supplied.

(2) Bloomberg News (which s the authorship), Ant Financial Is Too Big to Ignore.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/a ... e-on-helping-rivals

Note:
(a)
(i) summary underneath the title in print: The Chinese fintech powerhouse scares banks but wants to make them customers
(ii) Print and the online version are identical.
(b) "Eric Jing, chief executive Officer of Ant Financial"  蚂蚁金服集团总裁 井贤栋