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If you are a fan of space exploration, this is a pretty exciting time to be alive!  Honestly, after the space shuttles were retired back in 2011 I was worried about where the space program in the United States (and the world, for that matter) was going.  Since then, the rocket engines of my imagination have been re-ignited with a new space race amongst the world's billionaires.

In case you missed it, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson became the first person to go to space in a ship he funded himself.  Branson beat fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) by just over a week, as Bezos is set to lift off in a Blue Origin rocket (his company) on July 20th.

A third member of the "Billionaire Space Yacht Club," has yet take a ride beyond the wild blue yonder aboard one of his vessels - but Elon Musk isn't out of the space-race by a long shot.  According to the report from TPR.org, the tiny town of McGregor, Texas is getting a 2nd gigantic rocket motor factory!  Forget going to space - Elon wants to stay there!

Musk's stated goal with the new factory is to help build a fleet of ships that would make a human colony on Mars a reality by the year 2050.  New factory is set to churn out 2 to 4 humongous Raptor 2, heavy-lift rocket engines every day!  These bad-boys will power SpaceX's monstrous Starship prototype that is currently being tested in another small Texas town called Boca Chica.

If you missed it, here are the same engines I was talking about above in action during the latest test of the Starship concept:

Thanks to the ultra-rich trying to out-do one another with their incredibly sophisticated and powerful toys, we may finally be getting closer to exploring the stars.

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Stacker ranked the most expensive climate disasters by the billions since 1980 by the total cost of all damages, adjusted for inflation, based on 2021 data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The list starts with Hurricane Sally, which caused $7.3 billion in damages in 2020, and ends with a devastating 2005 hurricane that caused $170 billion in damage and killed at least 1,833 people. Keep reading to discover the 50 of the most expensive climate disasters in recent decades in the U.S.

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Stacker took the guesswork out of 50 random events to determine just how likely they are to actually happen. They sourced their information from government statistics, scientific articles, and other primary documents. Keep reading to find out why expectant parents shouldn't count on due dates -- and why you should be more worried about dying on your birthday than living to 100 years old.

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