Category Archives: Blog

TL;DR: As of Feb. 5, you can pick up a refurbished Microsoft Surface 3 Tablet for only $159.99 instead of $594 — that’s 73% in savings.

Whether we like it or not, multitasking is a necessary skill in today’s world. From balancing work and home life to juggling side hustles and 9-5 gigs, we’ve all got a lot of balls in the air. And sometimes, we need a little help keeping track of everything…which is where a tablet can really come in handy.

If you’re looking for a quality tablet that won’t put a big dent in your wallet, a refurbished model is a great option. Not only are you helping the environment by reducing e-waste, but you’re also receiving an awesome gadget for a fraction of the price. Like this Microsoft Surface 3 Tablet in sleek silver, which typically costs $594, but is available now for 73% off at just $159.99 for a limited time. 

The Microsoft Surface 3 Tablet could make your life a little easier…or a lot more organized. It comes equipped with a quad-core Intel Atom x7-Z8700 processor that’s ready to help you multitask away, letting you work in between apps without any annoying lag. Load up your tablet with apps that make your day-to-day go smoothly thanks to the 64GB of storage, a generous amount that also lets you save your important files right to the device. Need more storage? You can easily expand it up to 200GB with a microSD card. 

Enjoy a 10.8″ full HD display that supports up to 4K with a 1920×1280 resolution, with three available external displays — including Mini DisplayPort for one display and one USB port for a second, if needed. Two USB 3.0 ports are available for your convenience, and a kickstand folds from the back when you’d like to take a much-needed break and sit back, relax, and stream a show. 

This tablet hails from 2015 but includes Windows 10, which is compatible with most apps and software. It offers an impressive amount of battery life, with up to ten hours of video playback. And it supports standard WiFi protocols and Bluetooth 4.0 for easy connecting. 

Simplify your life with this refurbished Microsoft Surface 3 Tablet for $159.99, 73% off the usual price tag, for a limited time. 

Prices subject to change.

TL;DR: As of Feb. 5, you can score a Nationwide Players Pass Annual Golf Membership and a $50 Restaurant.com eGift card for only $49 — that’s a 75% discount from the usual value.

It’s never too early to start planning for golf season. Soon enough, you may be making the switch from home golf simulators back to the links you know and love. You may be able to make this upcoming golf season the most exciting one yet with a Nationwide Annual Golf Membership Player’s Pass. It even comes with a $50 Restaurant.com eGift Card so you can have a celebratory dinner after your first day back on the course. The golf membership plus the gift card are on sale for just $49 (reg. $199). 

Play at thousands of courses nationwide 

You may be used to your home course, but this membership gives you access to a whole lot more: 3,000 courses nationwide. Just check out the full list of links to see where you could be playing. There are courses in every state except North Dakota and Alaska, and there may be a few close to you. Your membership also includes two-for-one green fees and up to 70% off last-minute tee times. With savings of $20 to $40 every time you play, your membership pays for itself in just a few rounds. 

Celebrate the end of your first game this season with a meal covered by your $50 Restaurant.com eGift Card. You might be flying around the country on a golf tour, but that’s no problem. Restaurant.com has selections in all 50 states, even North Dakota and Alaska. You’ve got over 62,000 restaurants to choose from, and you don’t even have to dine in (your card also works for takeout and delivery). Just go to Restaurant.com and search your zip code to see what options are available. You might want to specify which hole you’re at if you try to get a pizza delivered to the golf course, though. 

It’s time for a great meal and an awesome game of golf

In some states, the golf season might already be starting. Get the Nationwide Annual Golf Membership Player’s Pass and a $50 Restaurant.com eGift Card for $49 (reg. $199). 

Prices subject to change. 

You may have heard that an eBay user is selling a jar filled with what they call sand from “Tom Brady’s exact retirement spot,” and it’s been bid up to an astonishing $99,900.00 as of this writing. But is this actually a jar of sand kissed by the butt cheeks of the greatest NFL quarterback of all time on one of the most auspicious days of his career? 

It’s highly doubtful, our investigation has found.

To recap, on Feb. 1, the ageless Tom Brady (actual age: 45) announced his apparently real-this-time retirement after a lackluster final season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The announcement came in the form of a video posted to Twitter and Instagram around the same time, showing Brady on a sandy beach. It looks for a second like he’s going to announce that he’s engaged to himself, but then he gets to the point right away and makes his announcement.

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In short order, the video was watched by millions of people, and Miami area Brady fans were quickly able to identify the stretch of beach where Brady made the video: Surfside Beach in Surfside, Florida, on a patch of sand near the 94th street entrance. 

One fan who found the spot was TikTok user @betrcaroline, who posted a video explaining that she was bitter after apparently gambling on the Buccs all season, and was going to make all her money back by selling Brady’s butt sand. She then holds up a bag of sand. There’s no word on how she plans to sell it. 

It’s not abundantly clear when @betrcaroline scooped up that sand, but regardless of when the video was posted, it does seem to have been filmed the afternoon of Feb. 1, since it’s daylight, and @betrcaroline says “good afternoon” at the start of the video. 

On Feb. 2, an eBay auction appeared, titled “Tom Brady’s exact retirement spot –  Bottled Sand.” The auction is for “an 8oz mason jar bottled with the exact sand the GOAT Tom Brady made his retirement video on,” according to the text of the auction, which sounds much more pro-Brady than the embittered @betrcaroline. The hands in the eBay auction photos are clearly not @betrcaroline’s.

One photo on the eBay auction includes the Feb 1 New York Times. This is a famous method for dating photos during kidnappings and other situations where proof is needed that someone is still alive. Since newspapers don’t magically vanish after one day, the newspaper proves only that the photo was taken on Feb 1 or any time after that.   

@betrcaroline’s TikTok post and the eBay auction both blew up online and started getting a lot of publicity. An article in The Daily Mail on February 4 attributes that eBay auction to @betrcaroline, who sometimes shortens her name to Carol, saying “Carol helps prove the authenticity of her jar of sand by photographing it in front of Brady’s retirement video backdrop,” and that “She also includes a copy of the February 1 edition of The New York Times to prove that the photos are recent.”

But a second @betrcaroline TikTok video about the sand seems to refute this. @betrcaroline says in the video that she plans to put her bagged sand on eBay for the relatively low starting price of $100. Her Feb. 1 video showed her holding what she calls, “the real sand from the day of, and not this fake shit that they’re putting up because the wind blew.” 

“It’s probably not even the real sand,” she says.

Mashable has asked @betrcaroline for a link to the correct eBay auction, and for the exact time she scooped up her sand, but as of this writing, she had not replied.

But assuming she really did get there on Feb. 1 hours after Brady had posted the video, is @betrcaroline’s sand the actual sand from the video, with possible fibers from Tom Brady’s khakis mixed in? 

That’s pretty doubtful.

On the night of January 31 — mere hours before the retirement video was posted — Tom Brady was in Los Angeles to attend the premiere of 80 for Brady, the movie he just produced starring Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Lily Tomlin, and Rita Moreno. Here’s a video of him taking photos on the red carpet:

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Assuming Brady didn’t sit through the film screening, is it possible he hopped on a private jet immediately, caught forty winks on the plane, rushed to Surfside Beach at what would be 5:12 a.m. Los Angeles time, and then made and posted the video? 

Yes, it’s certainly possible. But is it more likely than Brady being asleep in his Los Angeles mansion at 5:12 a.m., and having his handlers post a prerecorded video of his retirement announcement taken days earlier when he was in Florida, and posting it in time to coincide with the release of his movie, meaning the actual sand he sat on was scattered and blown out to sea ages ago? You be the judge.

There are now hundreds of eBay auctions purporting to offer Tom Brady’s butt sand from his retirement video. There are also parody auctions, like the one selling a picture of an exasperated guy reacting to the Tom Brady butt sand eBay listing, and one selling an empty jar with no Brady Sand, with the bidding starting at $25,000. 

If you have all the money in the world, feel free to bid on any or all of these. They’ll get you basically the same thing: nothing. If, however, you need your money for things like food, housing, and even personal enjoyment, we can’t recommend spending it on any eBay auction involving Tom Brady and sand.

Twitter is considering charging businesses and brands $1000 to retain gold verification checkmarks on the platform, a new report from The Information revealed on Friday afternoon. In internal documents obtained by the outlet, Twitter would also charge an additional $50 for every affiliated account as well. For companies seeking to keep their verification, $12,000 a year is a costly change for a feature that has previously been a free tool used to stop bad actors from engaging in impersonation.

Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, was the first to point out this pricing change and his tweets align with the report from The Information. There is no date set for this move as pricing is still being finalized and is subject to change. Before charging users $8/month for Twitter Blue, Musk originally planned for a $19.99/month subscription before decreasing the price after backlash, so there is precedent for a price change.

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The gold checkmark is a recent addition to Twitter, having been rolled out in December as “Verified for Organizations” (formerly Blue for Business). This was a part of a site-wide relaunch of Twitter Blue, after its disastrous initial launch in November alienated and drove many brands away from the platform due to impersonation concerns. The initial Twitter Blue rollout allowed anybody willing to pay $8 to be verified, and required no identity checks whatsoever, opening the door for many users to tweet seemingly on behalf of corporations and government officials.

Twitter has not officially announced the policy, and did not immediately respond to Mashable’s request for comment. If the plan does go forward, it would be an unsurprising move for the platform since Elon Musk took over last year. Musk stated before buying Twitter that he would look for avenues to monetize the app. Taking a concept meant to ensure validity and charging a stack for it fits Musk’s pattern. Musk has attempted to boost revenue in other ways including mass layoffs, banning third-party APIs since they don’t bring in ad revenue, and the possible introduction of a costly ad-free Twitter Blue subscription tier.

Additionally, Musk has stated that Twitter is looking to compensate creators through features like Coins and a creator fund. However, as it stands, Musk might not be in the financial situation just yet to deliver on his promises. Maybe that $1000 per month from businesses will help.

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s advanced chatbot developed from its language model GPT3, can do almost anything. From helping you to find love, draft cover letters and resumes to even writing poems in the voices of dead authors, ChatGPT has your back. The new fresh hell we find ourselves in now is ChatGPT has the ability to nail job interviews.

Artificial intelligence may not be on the verge of replacing most jobs, but it’s fascinating how easy it is for this simple chatbot to win over recruiters for some very high-paying positions. This recent trend of AI job-hunting shouldn’t worry you yet, but we looked at some of the jobs ChatGPT is getting shortlisted for:

Coder at Google (average salary: $187,000)

According to PayScale, the average salary for a software engineer in the United States is around $90,000 a year. That’s a lot of money, which makes the interview process a bit of a challenge for those looking to rake in the dough. However, for ChatGPT, apparently, it’s a breeze.

In an article published by PCMag, the chatbot was able to “amazingly” pass Google’s level 3 engineering coding interview. While an L3 Engineer at Google is an entry-level position, it comes with a $187,000 salary. However, it should be noted that Google’s coding interview relied on technical questions which are easy for a language-learning model to answer. But behavioral questions, such as “tell me a time when,” are a barrier for the AI.

Coder at Amazon (average salary: $135,000)

Google was not the only big tech company where ChatGPT was able to gain a coding position. According to Business Insider, an engineer at Amazon asked the chatbot interview questions used by the company for its coding jobs and got them right. In internal Slack documents acquired by Insider, the employee wrote “I’m both scared and excited to see what impact this will have on the way that we conduct coding interviews.” Entry-level software engineering jobs at Amazon start at $135,000.

More broadly across the tech spectrum though, many across the internet, especially on Reddit, have spoken out about how ChatGPT has helped them to land job interviews and with the job interview process.

Communications Consultant at Schwa (average salary: $56,000 US)

ChatGPT has its fingers in the consultancy game, it seems, according to an article from Sky News. The outlet reported that Schwa, a communications consultancy firm in London, had used AI to help with its hiring process. The chatbot was so good, they mistakenly shortlisted the AI for the job.

“It was more competent than a lot of the bad people who apply to us,” Neil Taylor, the owner, and founder of Schwa told Sky News.

However, despite being shortlisted for the job, Taylor told Sky News that ChatGPT’s initial responses were “competent but a bit dull.” With more specific prompts, the AI sounded more “opinionated” and “punchier.”

Consultancy is a well-paying job, and the average salary in the United Kingdom is around £47,000 (just a bit over $56,000 US) according to Glassdoor.

As for what the job actually is, a communications consultant is “a professional who provides expert advice and support to organizations and individuals in effectively communicating their messages to target audiences,” according to the best expert Mashable could find on short notice: ChatGPT.

Imagine a distant planet where life could potentially thrive — but perhaps only on one particularly bright side.

Astronomers announced the discovery of a world beyond our solar system, an exoplanet dubbed Wolf 1069 b. Their finding, recently published in the science journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, is intriguing exoplanet research for a number of reasons:

• Wolf 1069 b is around the same mass of Earth. That’s rare. Among thousands of confirmed exoplanets, “only about 1.5 percent have masses below two Earth masses,” notes a release from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, a research institute in Germany. Importantly, we know from experience that rocky, Earth-like worlds can create conditions that might allow life to survive.

• Even rarer, Wolf 1069 b orbits in its solar system’s “habitable zone,” meaning a special region where liquid water can exist on the surface.

• To researchers’ current knowledge (this can change with more observation), the planet isn’t being pummeled with harmful radiation. Wolf 1069 b orbits a star (Wolf 1069) that’s smaller and cooler than the sun, allowing the world to orbit pretty close and still be a potentially habitable world. The planet orbits its small star every 15.6 days!

• A weird quirk: Like the moon, Wolf 1069 b is “tidally locked” in its orbit, meaning the same side is constantly facing the red dwarf star. As a result, the planet’s “dayside” is perpetually day, and the nightside perpetually night.

So, if you stood on the star-facing side of Wolf 1069 b, a year would last about 16 days, the sun wouldn’t set, gravity might be similar to that on Earth, and you might even find water sloshing over the surface.

Crucially, however, there’s still no evidence of life in the universe beyond Earth — though there are exciting contenders for potential habitability in our own solar system. “A habitable planet can be habitable but not inhabited,” Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, an exoplanet researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told Mashable earlier this year.

Finding an Earth-sized planet

Finding an Earth-sized world is a huge challenge.

Many exoplanets are found by watching to see if a star dims when one of these extremely distant planets passes in front of it. Many of the exoplanets discovered so far, however, are much bigger than Earth, so this slight dimming is “easier” to find. Scientists used a different strategy to sleuth out Wolf 1069 b, which is a small planet. They looked for tiny but periodic changes in light from the star, a technique called the “radial velocity method.” This can provide evidence that a planet is tugging on its star. Then, scientists calculate the world’s mass and other information by measuring how much the star’s light changes.

A graphic showing three different exoplanets (Wolf 1069 b on top) orbiting in their solar systems’ habitable zones (green area).
Credit: MPIA graphics department / J. Neidel

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In the vast universe, Wolf 1069 b is a relatively close Earth-sized discovery at just some 31 light-years away. That makes it a rare finding, and an exciting planet candidate to study for biosignatures, which are evidence of past or current life. “Because of its favourable prospects regarding habitability, it is among a small illustrious group of targets, such as Proxima Centauri b and TRAPPIST-1 e, to search for biosignatures,” the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy noted.

Huge, future telescopes will look for these possible biosignatures. What’s out there?

The following bad tweet did not, according to a jury in San Francisco on Friday, constitute fraud:

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Elon Musk’s famous “funding secured” tweet was, however, thought to constitute fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission back in 2018. That agency charged Musk with fraud, in the months after he tweeted it, saying he knew any such transaction was much less certain than he was letting on, that he “had not discussed specific deal terms, including price, with any potential financing partners.”

In short, the SEC thought he was lying, sued him, and Musk settled that fraud lawsuit by stepping down as Tesla’s chairman and paying $40 million.

In this latest trial, however, things went his way.

This suit, which also included Tesla and the Tesla board of directors as defendants, had been brought by Tesla Investors, arguing that Musk had injured them financially by giving the false impression that the car company’s stock price would soar to $420 per share in the course of going private.

The market seemingly reacted to the tweet, sending Tesla shares up 11 percent the day he tweeted it, but not to $420 — just $387.46. Then, Tesla stock promptly plunged to around $262 about a month later, around the time Musk went on the Joe Rogan Experience and smoked weed on camera. This drop no doubt resulted in great pain for shareholders, but that pain wasn’t the result of fraud on Musk’s part, according to the jury.

Over three weeks, Tesla and Musk argued that the “funding secured” tweet was actually true, and, for good measure, that the $420 a share thing wasn’t a weed joke, and just happened to be Musk’s best guess as to how the transaction would shake out.

An anonymous male juror stuck around after the trial and explained why the jury accepted Musk’s version of events, telling the New York Times, “There was nothing there to give me an ‘aha’ moment,” and that “Elon Musk is a guy who could sneeze and the stock market could react.

One interesting new detail from the latest proceedings is that we now know Musk did at least talk to one potential financing partner about financing the transaction: the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the meeting minutes from Musk’s interaction with that group showed they weren’t fully on board, and still wanted to know more.

Also, Musk said in order to complete the transaction, he would have done something similar to what he did to buy Twitter: leverage shares of another company he owns a large stake in: in this case, SpaceX.

After more than a decade on Mars, NASA’s Curiosity rover is quite used to traversing the Red Planet in solitude.

But last week, on its 3,724th Martian day rumbling over Mount Sharp, it encountered another foreign visitor, something that also traveled an extraordinary distance through space before winding up in the dusty barren desert: a one-foot-wide meteorite.

NASA is calling the space rock Cacao, one of a handful of meteorites the plucky robot has discovered since it arrived on Mars in 2012. Using its Mast Camera, Curiosity snapped a photo showing its new find on Jan. 27, with its own Johnny-5-like shadow creating a frame. The selfie [see below] has ragged edges because it is actually composed of six images stitched together.

“There’s no way to date these,” NASA said through its anthropomorphized Curiosity account on Twitter. “But it could have been here millions of years!”

Curiosity’s shadow casts a frame around the newly discovered meteorite on Mars.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

On Earth, scientists estimate about 48.5 tons of billions-of-years-old meteor material rain down from space daily, much of which vaporizes in the atmosphere or falls into the ocean, which covers over 70 percent of the planet. More than 60,000 meteorites have been discovered on our planet. The vast majority comes from asteroids, but precious few originated on Mars or the moon, according to NASA. At least 175 identified here hail from the Red Planet.

“It could have been here millions of years!”

Curiosity, a car-size rover, and its predecessors have found meteorites before, and The Meteoritical Society is starting to keep a database of their finds. The international organization has given formal name recognition to 15 such specimens since 2005.

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It’s not clear which planet, moon, or asteroid Cacao expatriated, but mission scientists say it’s an iron-nickel meteorite. This class of space rock isn’t rare among those found on Earth, but it is less common than stony meteorites. Other meteorites that rovers have discovered on their expeditions have had similar iron compositions.

Scientists speculate iron meteorites may be resistant to erosion on the Red Planet. That could explain why this big space rock appears to be sitting on flat ground rather than in a hole.

“There likely was a BIG crater in the ancient past,” Curiosity tweeted. “Over time, erosion and other forces flatten the area around it, carving away everything but the hardest material.”

Elon Musk lost his claim as having the most powerful space-worthy rocket when NASA blasted its own mega rocket to the moon in November.

But the SpaceX founder could win back the title with his company’s next big project. Starship, SpaceX’s skyscraping rocket and spacecraft, will launch on its first mission soon. During the test flight, the colossal booster will separate about three minutes after liftoff and land in the Gulf of Mexico, according to federal filings. The ship will fly in space around Earth at an altitude of over 150 miles, then splash down off the Hawaiian coast.

This will be a crucial demonstration of hardware NASA is depending on to get humans back on the moon in the next few years. And, if successful, it’ll mean Musk is one small step closer to realizing his personal dream of building a city on Mars.

The billionaire business magnate has oversold timelines in the past, but here’s what we know so far.

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What is the SpaceX Starship?

Starship is a super-heavy-lift rocket and spacecraft, built to carry immense cargo and numerous astronauts into deep space.

The 400-foot-tall stainless steel tower looms over NASA’s rocket, the Space Launch System. It would take about five billboards stacked on top of the latter to measure up to Musk’s space vehicle. SpaceX estimates its rocket also has about twice as much thrust.

The rocket is made of stainless steel, a material Musk is particularly fond of due to its relatively low price. Unlike NASA’s mega moon rocket, which flies on super-chilled liquid hydrogen and oxygen, this beast is fueled with 10 million pounds of liquid methane and oxygen. The new fuel can be stored at more manageable temperatures than liquid hydrogen, meaning it doesn’t need as much insulation and is less prone to leaks, a problem that often stymies NASA launches.

SpaceX’s Starship is made of stainless steel and runs on liquid methane.
Credit: SpaceX

Starship is intended to evolve into a fully reusable launch and landing system, designed for trips to the moon, Mars, and other destinations. Its reusability is “the holy grail of space,” Musk said at a company event in South Texas last February, because it will make spaceflight more affordable to the average person.

“It’s a very hard thing to do,” he said. “It’s only barely possible with the physics of Earth.”

“It’s only barely possible with the physics of Earth.”

NASA tapped SpaceX to develop a human landing system version of Starship.
Credit: SpaceX

How will NASA use Starship?

NASA plans to use Starships to land astronauts on the moon during Artemis III and IV, two upcoming missions which could come as early as 2025 and 2027, respectively.

The space agency has tapped SpaceX to develop a human landing system version of Starship with a $4 billion contract. As part of the deal, the company will need to demonstrate an uncrewed test flight to the moon beforehand.

During Artemis III, Starship will transfer astronauts from NASA’s Orion spacecraft to the lunar south pole and back. But in the fourth mission, Starship is expected to dock at a moon-orbiting space station, the yet-to-be-built Gateway, and ferry astronauts back and forth to the moon.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson told reporters in December that SpaceX appears to be on schedule with the contract and intends to do an uncrewed moon landing toward the end of this year. That mission would be followed by another landing with astronauts in late 2024.

“Slips are always possible because it’s a brand new system,” Nelson said. “But they have been quite impressive with what they have done with other systems.”

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When is Starship’s first space launch?

SpaceX is indeed close to launching Starship, despite the fact that the company has not formally announced a date.

Shortly into January, the company stacked the jumbo rocket at its launch pad on Texas’ Gulf Coast, then loaded it with fuel for a so-called “wet dress rehearsal.” SpaceX said the test, a key practice run for any new rocket, was successful.

Next the team said it would disassemble Starship for a test fire of the rocket booster’s 33 Raptor engines, according to recent updates from SpaceX on Twitter.

“Slips are always possible because it’s a brand new system. But they have been quite impressive with what they have done with other systems.”

But in order for Starship to actually reach ignition, the Federal Aviation Administration must license the launch, which won’t be done until “SpaceX meets all licensing, safety and other regulatory requirements,” according to an agency statement given to Mashable in January when asked for the status. The review is ongoing, a spokesman said.

SpaceX will launch Starship for the first time from its spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.
Credit: JIM WATSON / AFP via Getty Images

Where will Starship launch?

Perhaps surprisingly, Starship won’t lift off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, where most space fans are accustomed to watching historically significant launches.

Instead, it will take off from Boca Chica, Texas, at SpaceX’s own spaceport. Eventually, the company will launch the rocket from a site under construction in the outer perimeter of the famous Florida pad that shot Apollo 11 to the moon.

“Their plan is that they’re going to do a few test flights there,” in South Texas, Nelson said. “Once they have the confidence, they will bring the missions to the Cape.”

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How likely is Starship to succeed?

SpaceX has launched partial prototypes of Starship to practice landing, and several exploded or crashed in the process. One succeeded in returning unscathed, however, in May 2021, after flying about six miles up in the sky.

Musk, who doesn’t parse words when it comes to the realities of spaceflight, once said Starship’s test in space wasn’t likely to succeed on the first try.

“There’s a lot of risk associated with this first launch, so I would not say that it is likely to be successful.”

“There’s a lot of risk associated with this first launch, so I would not say that it is likely to be successful,” he said during a video conference with a National Academies panel in 2021. “But I think we will make a lot of progress.”

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What is SpaceX’s plan for Mars?

The SpaceX founder’s ultimate vision is to use a fleet of Starships to send 1 million humans to Mars by 2050.

To be clear, Musk doesn’t just want to establish a place for people to visit but a self-sustaining city. He imagines that, with a bit of warming, humans could restore a thick atmosphere and oceans on Mars, making it a more hospitable environment, even able to grow crops.

“There’s a fundamental juncture in the history of really any civilization on a single planet, which is, do you get to the second planet, or do you not?” Musk told the National Academies in 2021. “I propose we do, and I think we should as soon as possible.”

SpaceX test fired a Starship prototype spacecraft on the ground in December.
Credit: SpaceX

“There’s a fundamental juncture in the history of really any civilization on a single planet, which is, do you get to the second planet, or do you not?”

The spacecraft would be spacious enough for 100 passengers, along with their luggage, plus the materials to build homes, businesses, rocket fuel stations, and iron foundries.

The journey getting there would be long, Musk said, but the Starship would have entertainment, such as zero-gravity games, movies, lectures, and a restaurant.

“It can’t feel cramped or boring,” he said at the International Astronautical Congress in 2016, in Guadalajara, Mexico. “It’ll be really fun to go. You’ll have a great time.”

TL;DR: Aspiring jet setters can now score Frontier’s GoWild! all-you-can-fly summer pass for $399. Read on for all of the chaotic caveats and fine print.

Frontier is letting passengers fly as much as they want all summer for a flat rate that matches the average cost of a single round-trip domestic flight.

The recently-announced GoWild! all-you-can-fly summer pass is the shorter version of Frontier’s already-existing annual pass. Rather than $1,299 for unlimited flights throughout the entire year, the one-time $399 purchase of a summer pass (plus one cent in fees for each trip) unlocks unlimited flights to both domestic and international Frontier destinations between May 2 and September 30. Frontier serves more than 100 airports across the U.S., Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America, with new locations frequently being introduced to the lineup.

Before you ask, yes, we have the same question: Is Frontier for real right now?

On paper, it sounds like an amazing deal. Many of us have begrudgingly coughed up a similar amount for a single roundtrip flight at least once. That was probably an extra-common experience during the unprecedented airfare spikes in 2022. Bankrate’s assessment of last year’s Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the average price of a “good deal” roundtrip domestic flight was $398 — up $100 from 2021. There’s no question that an ultra-accessible summer pass could be a serious vacation hack at a time when everything, travel-related or not, is more expensive.

But you’d still be right to be skeptical. Frontier’s reputation for arbitrary baggage fees and sketchy customer service — plus the general drama of canceled flights by all airlines that has plagued travel for a while now — makes the premise of unlimited flights sound too good to be true.

If you’re planning on traveling a lot this summer, the GoWild! pass just might save you some money.
Credit: Frontier Airlines

Frontier’s new summer pass is legit, but not without its caveats

The first piece of fine print to consider is the lack of wiggle room the pass affords planning-wise. GoWild! only covers domestic flights booked *checks notes* the day before and international flights booked 10 days or less before. No booking past 24 hours means no booking roundtrip. Instead, you’d technically have to book your flight back on the last day of your trip, and 1. Hope that Frontier has a flight home that works for your schedule and hotel or rental check-out times or 2. Be down to pay for a non-Frontier flight. (Connected itineraries are included granted there are still seats available.)

Not all airports participate, either. For instance, Frontier does not serve LAX. The “unlimited” calendar is also subject to blackout periods, including Memorial Day itself and the Friday before, the Fourth of July and surrounding days, and other random dates that could throw a wrench into plans.

If something goes wrong, don’t count on live customer service

All airlines come with their fair share of cancellation or delay woes. While lower-cost airlines like Frontier and Spirit face the brunt of inconvenience-related airline memes, Frontier actually canceled fewer flights than Southwest, American, and United between the summer of 2021 and 2022. It was also one of the airlines with the least mishandled baggage issues.

If something does go awry during your Frontier journey, however, good luck with a timely resolution. Back in November 2022, Frontier decided that a live customer service phone line wasn’t that important. Customers with concerns can either try the ever-helpful live chat tool online or talk to an employee at the airport.

Frontier’s baggage policy has…baggage

Unless you can pack everything you’ll need in a bag that fits under the seat in front of you, you’ll be paying more than “$0.01 in airfare plus applicable taxes” per flight.

While most airlines only make you pay for checked luggage and allow a personal item and a carry-on item for free, Frontier charges for the carry-on. (So does Spirit.)

The policy is stingy yet tolerable if you don’t fly that often. But for the amount of flying that you’ll likely be squeezing in to make the GoWild! pass worth the money, you could end up spending an extra few hundred bucks on top of the $399 over the course of the summer.

Budgeting for a carry-on bag is also more of a rough estimate than a confirmed calculation with Frontier. This is because the airline changes what it charges for non-personal items depending on your flight date, time, distance, etc. A carry-on could cost as low as $30 if you add it at the time of booking, though that number can reach between $50 and $90. It depends on how Frontier’s Bag Price Checker is feeling that day.

Social media is full of Frontier passengers complaining that they were charged for a carry-on that they swear is personal item-sized. While dimension restrictions are listed online and sample compartments to measure your bags should be present at your gate, many people have been hit with surprise fees right before getting on the plane.

Is the GoWild! summer pass worth it?

If you were already planning to do quite a bit of jet-setting this summer or would be on the move if it were more affordable, $399 for all or most of your plane tickets is hard to pass up. The pass is also a no-brainer if you were already researching a big dream destination trip and know that your flight would have been more than $399 anyway.

But you’ll have to be OK with flying by the seat of your pants. Plane pun very intended.

Whether the (lack of) advanced booking notice is enough cushion depends on your specific plans — and your stress levels. For flights within the U.S., not being able to book more than 24 hours in advance means booking a roundtrip flight is off the table — so you’ll need to factor in the possibility of not having solid return plans when you leave. That may not cause as much of a scramble if you’re visiting someone with a flexible schedule. But if you’re dealing with a rental with strict checkout times or a hardcore cancelation policy, a backup plan with backup funds is necessary.

The fine print, annoying baggage fees, and general planning chaos don’t take away from the props Frontier deserves for making travel this accessible — especially during inflation. The GoWild! pass could present serious exploring opportunities for people who weren’t frequent travelers before, or could be someone’s key to traveling abroad for the very first time. Now, get on that passport application.