Elon Musk: Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX and underground tunnels - where did the richest man in the world start
Today, Elon Musk is one of the most influential people on Earth. But he's not going to stop there, ahead of the colonization of Mars and other equally ambitious projects. The article will tell us how our lover of space, cryptocurrencies, and memes started.
A lot can be said about the primary inventor of modernity and the wealthiest man in the world. Elon Musk owns Tesla and SpaceX, the largest private companies in the electric car and space equipment industries.
With their help, the billionaire plans to implement ambitious projects for the colonization of Mars, the development of his satellite network, the creation of a full-fledged artificial intelligence, and much more.
Everything you need to know about Elon Musk
His fortune was estimated at $ 256 billion last year; he overtook the previous leader in the rating - the head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. After the victory, Musk sent him a massive statue with the number 2.
Elon Musk sold off most of his property to confirm the seriousness of his intentions to colonize Mars, and now almost all of his fortune is shares of SpaceX and Tesla Motors.
To understand how much money he has, imagines: Musk can spend 10 million dollars a day, and it would still take about 70 years for the funds to run out.
Suppose we ignore the ambitious plans and all his special activities. In that case, the bottom line is just a fun guy who, despite an insanely busy schedule, will not miss the opportunity to joke on Twitter once or twice after work.
But first things first, let's go back a little.
Africa, first game, and early career
Elon Musk was born in Pretoria (South Africa). His parents are an electrical engineers and a model who divorced when he was ten. He and his brother and sister stayed in Africa with his father.
According to Elon's stories, his father was a rigorous person but instilled a love for programming in his child. At age 12, Musk created his own video game, Blastar, which he sold for $500. By the way, you can play this game here. Management leaves much to be desired, but it can deliver some pleasure.
Musk used the proceeds from the sale of the game to buy shares in a pharmaceutical company. Having made some money selling them, he could go to Canada, where he studied for some time before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania in the USA. There he completed his undergraduate studies in two areas at once: physics and economics.
He then went to graduate school at Stanford, studied there for less than a week, and left to start a business with his brother Kimbal. The company was called Zip2 and sold programs that can be called the progenitors of modern Google. Maps, 2GIS, Yandex.Maps, etc. During the two years of its existence, the company grew significantly and was sold for $307 million. Musk, at that time, owned about 7% of the shares and received $ 22 million due to the transaction.
PayPal
Almost immediately, Musk invested in X.com, getting the opportunity to become its CEO. A year later, the firm merged with Confinity, which owned the PayPal money transfer system.
Sometime after the merger, Musk began to insist that all the company's software be transferred to the much more promising Windows OS (at that time, everything worked on UNIX), for which he was removed from the post of CEO.
Despite the removal, he remained on the board of directors and actively promoted the company on various online auctions, including eBay. Shortly after that, PayPal began to grow at a tremendous rate and entered the stock market. A year later, the company was sold for $1.5 billion, and Musk received a share of $180 million.
SpaceX
With more than half of the money received from the sale of the previous company, Musk invested in a new business, which he had long dreamed of. This is how SpaceX was born. Today it is the largest company in space equipment and technology production. Its main goal is to make space travel more accessible. In addition, with the help of SpaceX, Musk plans to fly to Mars before 2025 and contribute to its colonization in the future.
As Musk has repeatedly said in many interviews, his passion for space was strongly influenced by the works and views of Isaac Asimov, an American writer and popularizer of science. Asimov believed that it was important to explore space in order to save the human race. For example, if another meteorite falls on Earth, the entire population will be destroyed. In the case of colonization of other planets, the threat of extinction will be greatly reduced.
Over the 20 years of its existence, SpaceX has managed to create several Falcon launch vehicles, a full-fledged Crew Dragon space shuttle, and many other equipment for space flights. The first flight of the Dragon spacecraft with astronauts on board took place in May 2020.
Another important task of SpaceX is to create an entire satellite network that would provide the entire population of the planet with cheap high-speed Internet. Just imagine - you are a Bedouin, traveling through the desert and at any time you can sit down to relax and watch the Friends series from your phone.
Electric car in space and David Bowie
In 2018, Musk launched an electric Tesla Roadster into space as a test flight for the Falcon Heavy rocket. The flight was a demonstration that the rocket could launch a payload to orbit Mars. According to the billionaire, he wanted to send into space "the most stupid thing imaginable."
Behind the wheel of the car sat a mannequin named Starman, which is the title of one of the songs of the British rock musician David Bowie. True, when the car was started, his much more popular song “Space Oddity” played in it.
In the glove compartment of the electric car was a copy of the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and a towel with the words Don't Panic (Russian - "without panic"). This small element is a tribute to the writer, who repeatedly joked in his works that a towel is an essential attribute of any traveler.
Tesla
Tesla Motors is Musk's only public company on the market, and its name refers to the famous physicist Nikola Tesla.
One of the most common misconceptions is that Musk is the founder of the company. Actually it is not. It was created by engineers Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning in 2003. Elon Musk joined the company a year later and invested in it some of the money received from the sale of PayPal.
But the company is not just associated with his name - for almost 18 years of managing the company, he managed to bring it to the stock market and achieve a capitalization of $ 1 trillion. Prior to this, only Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet (Google) took such a bar.
An important goal of Tesla Motors is to make the planet cleaner. That is why the company not only creates electric cars, but also invests in projects to develop alternative energy sources. One such project is Tesla's subsidiary SolarCity, an energy company that sells and installs solar panels.
Another achievement of the company is the creation of a full-fledged autopilot. At the moment, the autopilot is almost not regulated by law, and it is recommended to use it in a limited way - keep your hands on the steering wheel and still follow the road.
In the coming years, the billionaire plans to create entire taxi fleets consisting exclusively of cars with an autopilot, and they can be controlled using a mobile application.
More projects
Musk has repeatedly expressed concerns about the creation of artificial intelligence, since it can potentially pose a much greater threat than, for example, nuclear weapons.
But still, the billionaire is one of the founders of OpenAI, an American company that develops technologies based on machine learning. Its main goal is to create a full-fledged artificial intelligence that would work for the benefit of all mankind.
Another interesting project is the neurotech company Neuralink, which developed a small N1 brain chip in the summer of 2019. After several years of testing, the company held a spectacular presentation - during it, the monkey was able to play a video game using only a chip implanted in the brain.
In the short term, the company's developments should contribute to the treatment of serious brain diseases, and in the long term - to improve people.
The last project in this chapter that deserves attention is the construction company The Boring Company. Its main task is to create a system of underground superhighways and solve the problem of traffic jams.
In 2017, the firm began construction of one of the underground tunnels in California.
According to Musk, perhaps in the future The Boring Company will be used for a colony on Mars.
In addition, with the help of this company, Musk sells a huge amount of comic merchandise. For example, high-tech whistles, flamethrowers and children's (!) ATVs.
Iron Man and fantasy
The director of the Marvel film series about Iron Man, Jon Favreau, has repeatedly stated that when creating the image of the main character, he was largely inspired by the personality of Elon Musk. The billionaire even got a small cameo in which he played himself, and many scenes of the franchise were filmed in the main building of the Musk space company.
In addition to Iron Man, Musk has appeared as a cameo in many other projects. Among them: The Simpsons, Rick and Morty, The Big Bang Theory, etc.
As mentioned above, Musk is a big fan of science fiction and does not hesitate to openly declare it. For example, the Falcon booster was named after one of the ships in Star Wars.
Another billionaire bought the Wet Nellie submarine, which was filmed for one of the films about special agent James Bond, for $ 1 million. In the future, he plans to rebuild it with the latest technology from his car company.
Interesting fact:
Elon Musk and Canadian singer Grimes have a child together with a rather unusual name - "X Æ A-12". Hidden in the name is the mathematical variable X, the designation for artificial intelligence "AI" and their favorite model of the A-12 reconnaissance aircraft, which has no weapons on board, and its main advantage is its high speed.
Twitter, cryptos and memes
Musk gained great popularity on the Internet thanks to his love for Twitter. In it, he advertises the company's products, expresses thoughts, or simply communicates with fans and jokes.
Separately, it is worth noting that a large percentage of his tweets are dedicated to cryptocurrencies. Often, such messages greatly affect the value of coins, especially small ones.
For example, Musk has repeatedly spoken out about the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, which is why its quotes have grown by more than 100%. True, before that, he also dropped them by almost 40%.
In the Russian-speaking part of the Internet, the meme “How do you like it, Elon Musk?” is associated with the billionaire, in which the characters create ridiculous situations, for which they then come up with no less ridiculous engineering solutions. For example, attaching a broom instead of a windshield wiper to a car, trying to drive a bicycle wheel with a homemade cola and mentos motor, etc.
For some time, the meme lived its own life, until it went beyond the Internet - straight to the NTV channel. In one of the stories, a teenager from Nevinnomyssk managed to turn the seat and steering wheel, as well as swap the trunk and hood in one of the old Zhiguli. All this created the impression that the car was going backwards.
Then NTV employees tweeted an excerpt from the plot and added the inscription: “How do you like it, Elon Musk?” To which the billionaire replied in Russian - "ha ha, awesome."
Summarizing the article, we can only add that Elon Musk is not only a successful businessman, a talented engineer and a big dreamer, but also just a fun guy who will not miss the opportunity to chat with fans on Twitter after work.
And while his plans to conquer space may (and should) cause some skepticism, it's nice to see that such an influential person spends his colossal resources on developing technology and moving humanity forward.
From electric cars, solar batteries or space rockets, Elon Musk seems to be a Tony Stark of real life. As general manager of Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and co-founder of OpenAI and Neuralink, Musk always seems to be at the forefront when it comes to launching the most futuristic technologies possible.
But his path to the title of the richest man in the world was not a smooth one at all. From school problems to bankruptcy, countless lawsuits and government problems, Elon Musk's life has been full of ups and downs.
Born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa, problems arise since childhood. His parents divorce, and the two brothers, Elon and Kimbal, choose to live with their father. "It wasn't a good idea at all," Musk told Rolling Stone, as his relationship with his father was extremely difficult.
1.Naming his kids
2.Elon Karen Musk
3.Darth Vander?
4.You have 3 hours
In 1983, a 12-year-old Elon Musk sold a $ 500 video game to a tech magazine called "Blastar." His school years, however, were not pleasant at all, as he was often beaten or verbally assaulted by school children.
After graduating from high school, Musk and his mother, brother and sister moved to Canada where he began his graduate studies at Queen's University in Kingston Ontario. After two years of study, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a bachelor's degree in physics and economics.
After college, he left for California to pursue a doctorate at Stanford College, but dropped out a few weeks later to focus with his brother Kimbal on launching their first company, Zip2. With the help of investments from Silicon Valley, the company that provided information on transport and traffic for newspapers such as the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, ends up being bought for 341 million dollars, thus Musk obtaining 22 million dollars. He often slept in the office and washed in a nearby youth hostel.
5.Tesla Phone
6.Stock Market Traders
7.I’m here with you
8.One year apart
9.Die on Mars
Musk is about to launch his next company, namely the online banking site X.com with 10 million of the 22 obtained from Zip2. A year later, his company merged with Confinity, Peter Thiel's company, thus forming PayPal. The South African is appointed general manager, but a misunderstanding in the company leads to his dismissal and replacement with Peter Thiel in 2000.
However, the company launched by him and Thiel ends up being bought by eBay in 2002 for $ 1.5 billion, and Musk, as the main financier, earns $ 165 million. With 100 million from PayPal sales, the engineer is setting up Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX. His goal is to make space travel 10 times cheaper, while his ultimate dream of making it possible to colonize the planet Mars.
In 2004, Musk made a $ 6.5 million investment in Tesla Motors, a company originally founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, which will produce exclusively electric cars. The South African takes an active role in the company and helps create and launch the first car in 2006. At the launch of the Roadster, Musk is also a financier and general manager of the company.
10.Normal people vs Elon Musk
11.Elon Musk being Elon Musk
12.Smiling for Elon
13.Wants proof
14.Private jets
In the same year, he provided his cousins, Peter and Lyndon Rive, with the capital needed to launch the dollar-based energy company SolarCity. In 2007, he took full control of Tesla after the removal of Eberhard and the other directors. In 2008, in the midst of a financial crisis, with a financing and a subsequent loan amounting to 80 million dollars, Musk manages to personally save Tesla from bankruptcy.
Even with these millions of companies, Musk is on the verge of bankruptcy in 2008. He described 2008 as the worst year of his life. Tesla was constantly at a loss, and SpaceX was struggling to launch its first rocket, the Falcon 1. By 2009, Musk would be living solely on credit and loans.
But as Christmas approaches 2008, Musk receives the first good news, with SpaceX reaching an agreement with NASA to send $ 1.5 billion into space resources, and Tesla is finally finding outside investors. In June 2010, Tesla had a successful listing on Wall Street, raising $ 226 million, making it the second largest carmaker to do so since Ford's launch in 1956. To reorganize its finances, Musk sells $ 15 million worth of shares at launch.
15.Crypto stuff
16.Starting new university
17.The UN
18.Electric car
19.Elon Musk vibes
By the end of 2015, SpaceX will be transporting more than 24 supplements to the International Space Station, breaking countless records along the way. In February 2018, the most powerful rocket built by SpaceX, Falcon Heavy, has a successful launch watched by millions. On board the rocket launched to Mars was Musk's personal Tesla Roadster.
Musk continues to come up with ideas from science fiction, with the appearance of Hyperloop and The Boring Company. Hyperloop is based on the idea of a super high-speed train that will travel in a tube that should transport passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in about 30 minutes. The Boring Company's mission is to build underground tunnels between America's major cities to create areas of fast congested traffic.
South Africa is facing problems in 2018, when it decides to be part of the personal business council of US President Donald Trump, a decision strongly criticized by public opinion. He leaves the council after Trump pulls America out of the Paris Agreement on global warming. In the same year, he wrote on Twitter that he would like to transfer Tesla to the private sector for $ 420 per share and that he would already have interested investors.
20.Elon Musk be like
21.Perfection
22.About 2 billionaires
23.Pumping on the Plan
24.Rich man
25.Take notice
His plan, however, does not take shape because it receives a lot of summonses and lawsuits from the SEC, the body that governs these passes. After a lengthy trial, Musk is found guilty of making false statements and having to pay fines of $ 20 million. He must also step down as the company's boss, and Tesla must set up a committee that will focus on communicating South Africans in public.
The year 2020 proved to be one of the most successful for his two companies. SpaceX completes an agreement with NASA to send astronauts into space aboard the company's rockets for the first time in November. Tesla entered the S&P 500 index in December among the top 500 companies, which increased its shareholding value considerably. Now, the company's capitalization is approaching $ 500 billion.
Due to these successes, but especially to the growth in value of Tesla, Elon Musk was declared on January 7, 2021 the richest man in the world with an estimated fortune of 187 billion dollars. It outperformed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who had held the title since July 2015.
26.Not doing it now
27.What do you think?
28.My wife just left me
29.Tesla’s administration
30.End world hunger
The first single in the genre of electronic dance music (EDM) was released by American entrepreneur Elon Musk.
The song is called Don't Doubt ur Vibe - "Do not doubt your emotions." Such a phrase sounds in the first part of the track, in the second part another phrase is repeated - Because it's true, "Because it is true."
It is not clear if Musk's girlfriend, pop musician Grimes, helped him to to create the track. We can only guess.
Elon Musk previously pleased his audience by quoting a song about The Witcher from the eponymous series.
Mr Musk posted the new song on his Soundcloud page on Thursday, and told his followers that both the vocals and lyrics were entirely his own.
Elon Musk is an entrepreneur, engineer, inventor, investor, philanthropist and visionary. A lot of activities, right? Not nearly. If we list the number of companies he founded or is currently CEO, we fill another line - PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, Hyperloop, OpenAI, The Boring Company, Neuralink, Zip2.
Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa and has had entrepreneurial values for a long time. He currently has it all started when he founded Zip2 in 1995 with his brother. The business involved an online city guide, which at the time was in the realm of science fiction. He made his first money from selling it in 1999. He earned about $ 30 million for his share of the company. That's where the ascent began.
This was followed by a series of investments, from his next company, X.com, which later turned into PayPal, and then came Tesla and SpaceX, businesses that really brought him fame. Elon Musk is also known for his ambition to prevent a possible human extinction, bringing our species to the rank of "multi-planetary civilization" by creating a colony on Mars that can support life. He has often been ridiculed for his conceptions, which seem very "ahead of their time," but all the time he has proved us right.
Other ideas that Elon Musk came up with include Hyperloop One, the way he wants to reinvent the transportation industry, inventing a fifth way we can move. It is a vacuum tube through which pressurized capsules with speeds of up to 900-1000 km / h are to circulate, which is currently being tested. It would link, in the first phase, San Francisco to Los Angeles, and, in the other part of the world, Dubai to Abu Dhabi.
- “People work better when they know WHERE they want to go and WHY.” - Elon Musk
- “What really matters is a person's good heart.” - Elon Musk
- “I'm looking for a long-term relationship. I'm not looking for a one-night stand. I'm looking for a serious partner, a soul mate, things like that. If I'm not in love, if I don't have a stable partner, I can't be happy.” - Elon Musk
- “Big companies are built on big products.”- Elon Musk
- “I would like to die on Mars. But not during a fatal impact.”- Elon Musk
- “Life is too short for long-term resentment.” - Elon Musk
- “I like to be involved in world-changing actions. “- Elon Musk
- “I think we are at the dawn of a new era of space exploration.”- Elon Musk
- “When I was a kid, I used to say, "I don't want to be alone!"- Elon Musk
- “It's important for people to come to work and enjoy what they do.”- Elon Musk
After so many innovations in a very wide range of fields, you would be tempted to say that Musk doesn't have much time for anything else. Wrong. SpaceX created the world's first reusable orbital rocket and managed to reduce the cost of launching into space by a third. Asked at one point by a journalist if he didn't feel like he needed a vacation, Elon Musk responded by saying, "I once took a vacation and a rocket exploded. I'm not going to repeat this mistake. "
Space X has become a US government contractor and frequently flies to the International Space Station to carry supplies and food. Most of its launches take place on ramp 39A at Cape Canaveral, which is also the starting point for Apollo 11, the mission that took the first humans to the moon. The missiles used are their own products and are called Falcon, an allusion to the famous ship "Millennium Falcon" from the Star Wars series.
- “I don't create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to do the job.”- Elon Musk
- “The only thing that makes sense is to work together for collective enlightenment.”- Elon Musk
- “If humanity did not land on Mars during my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.”- Elon Musk
- “Patience is a virtue, and I am still trying to learn to be patient. It's a hard lesson.”- Elon Musk
- “In order for your voice to be heard in Washington, you have to make a small contribution.”- Elon Musk
- “It's OK to have all the eggs in one basket as long as you know what's going on in that basket.”- Elon Musk
- “When I say something, it usually happens. Maybe not immediately or scheduled, but it happens.”- Elon Musk
- “When something really matters to you, you do it even if you are unlucky.”- Elon Musk
- “Some people don't like change, but we have to accept it when the alternative is disaster.”- Elon Musk
- “People have to do exactly what they love. This will make them happier than anything else.”- Elon Musk
In addition to space travel and various tubes, Musk focuses heavily on the intelligent use of electricity. Tesla is proof of this obsession of his, the autonomy of the cars he created being the highest in the industry. The name is a tribute to the famous scientist Nikola Tesla. Musk is also experimenting with new technologies that he can implement on Tesla, such as Autopilot, which is already being implemented, in a somewhat more primitive way than he intends in the future.
Recently, Musk also invested in a startup called SolarCity, which plans to replace the traditional tiles you have on the roof of your house with some based on photovoltaic cells. They would be marketed at an extremely attractive price, incomparable to that of alternative technologies already present on the market. In short, you won't have to spend a lot of money on huge solar panels, but you can turn your roof into something like that. This technology will also be implemented on Tesla, the tailgate of the car will be replaced.
Seen as one of the most controversial startups in the world, Neuralink aims to integrate Artificial Intelligence into the human brain. Elon Musk co-founded this business in 2016, wanting to create a fusion between the brain and software so that man can take the next step forward. Among the benefits of this technology on the brain could be the increase in human memory capacity, as well as finding a way to interact more directly with digital devices.
- “There's a big difference between me and Tony Stark. I have 5 kids, so I spend more time at Disneyland than at parties.”- Elon Musk
- “If you wake up in the morning convinced that you will be fine in the future, then you will have a bright day. If not, no!”- Elon Musk
- “I think this is the best advice: to constantly think about how you could do things better and always ask yourself questions.”- Elon Musk
- “Do you want to be extremely rigorous about the best things you can do? Find the "faults" in your business and "fix them"!”- Elon Musk
- “I anticipate that in 30 years, most cars in the US will be electric, and I'm not talking about hybrid cars, but all-electric.”- Elon Musk
- “I believe that the purpose of life on earth means more than solving problems. It must have an inspirational purpose, even if the purpose is for the benefit of someone else.”- Elon Musk
- “I think it's wrong to hire a large number of people to solve a complicated problem. Numbers will never be the equivalent of talent in finding the optimal solution. Two people who know nothing are no better than one who knows.”- Elon Musk
- “It's not like we can burn coal in power plants. Coal is a finite resource and we need to find alternatives until we run out of coal, and by then, only God knows how many tons of carbon dioxide from the ground we send into the atmosphere.”- Elon Musk
- "A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it's just as good as its people and how excited they are to create. I want to recognize a lot of super-talented people. I'm just facing companies ". - Elon Musk
- "Avoid hiring MBAs as much as possible. MBA programs do not teach people how to start companies. ”- Elon Musk
Contrary to the suggestive name, this startup of Musk is not boring at all, and the origin story is very interesting. One day, while he was stuck in traffic, Musk posted a message on Twitter saying that he would start digging some tunnels to solve the traffic problem. Said and done. As the company was founded at the beginning of the year, it could not quickly obtain testing permits in living areas. So he set to work in the backyard of SpaceX in California.
In private, Musk is very discreet. Its estimated wealth is 13.6 billion euros, ranking 80th in the top of the richest people in the world. The South African lives in the famous Bel-Air neighborhood of Beverly Hills and has 6 children from an older marriage. Now, he is with Amber Heard, Johnny Depp's ex-wife, a relationship with which he does not go out very often.
When he's not trying to change the world and take us to Mars, Elon Musk is a regular at surprise movie appearances. He had episodic scenes in "Machete" and, more recently, in "Why Him," a film that tells the story of a more nonconformist entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. He is also a big fan of the series "The Big Bang Theory", where he appeared in an episode, playing himself.
- "Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and looking into the abyss of death." - Elon Musk
- "The brand is just a perception, and the perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be before, sometimes it will be behind. But the brand is simply a collective impression that some have of a product." - Elon Musk
- "Don't be fooled into believing that something works when it's not, or you'll be stuck on a bad solution." - Elon Musk
- "Failure is an option here. If things don't fail, not innovative enough." - Elon Musk
- "I am always optimistic, but I am realistic. Not with the expectation of great success I started Tesla or SpaceX ... I just thought they were important enough to do anyway. ”- Elon Musk
- "I always invest my money in the companies I create. I don't believe in using just other people's money. I don't think that's fair. I will not ask other people to invest in something if I am not prepared to do it myself. ”- Elon Musk
- "I think there is a lot of potential if you have a convincing product and people are willing to pay a premium for it. I think that's what Apple showed. You can buy a mobile phone or a laptop much cheaper, but the Apple product is much better than the alternative and people are willing to pay this premium. ”- Elon Musk
- "I don't create companies to create companies, but to get things done." - Elon Musk
- "I don't spend my time pontificating on high-definition things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems." - Elon Musk
- "I don't think it's a good idea to plan to sell a company." - Elon Musk
- "I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not in time, but it usually happens." - Elon Musk
- "I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you constantly think about what you've done and how you could do it better." - Elon Musk
- "I think the best way to attract venture capital is to try to come up with a demonstration of any product or service that is and, ideally, take it as far as you can. See if you can sell this to real customers and you can start building momentum. The more you get, the more funding you will have. "- Elon Musk
- "I think we have a duty to maintain the light of conscience to make sure it continues in the future." - Elon Musk
- "I would have just asked things ... It would make my parents angry ... That I wouldn't have believed them just when they said something, because I would have asked them why. And then I would consider if the answer was sensitive given everything I knew. "- Elon Musk
- "I wouldn't say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I'd like my fear emotion to be less because it's very distracting and fried my nervous system." - Elon Musk
- "I'm interested in things that change the world or that affect the future and the wonderful, new technology in which you see it and say to yourself, 'Wow, how did this happen?' How is that possible? '"- Elon Musk
- "Actually, I haven't read any books on time management." - Elon Musk
- "If something needs to be designed and invented and you have to figure out how to make sure the value of the thing you create is greater than the cost of inputs, then that's probably my core skill." - Elon Musk
- "If something is important enough you should try, even if the likely result is failure." - Elon Musk
- "If you get up in the morning and think the future will be better, it's a bright day. Otherwise, it's not." - Elon Musk
- "If you're a co-founder or CEO, you have to do all sorts of tasks that you shouldn't do ... If you don't do your business, the company won't succeed ... No task is too menial." - Elon Musk
- "If you try to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You need to have all the ingredients in the right proportion. ”- Elon Musk
- "It is a mistake to hire a large number of people to do a complicated job. Numbers will never compensate for the talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress and make the task incredibly expensive. ”- Elon Musk
- "It's okay to have eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to this basket." - Elon Musk
- "It's very important to like the people you work with, otherwise your life and job will be pretty miserable." - Elon Musk
- "My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone's talent and not someone's personality. I think it's important if someone has a good heart." - Elon Musk
- "People should follow what they are passionate about. This will make them happier than almost anything else. ”- Elon Musk
- "People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important for people to look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoying work. ”- Elon Musk
- "Persistence is very important. You don't have to give up if you're not forced to give up." - Elon Musk
- "Really pay attention to negative feedback and ask for it, especially from friends. ... Almost no one does that and it's incredibly useful. ”- Elon Musk
- "Some people don't like change, but you have to embrace change if the alternative is disaster." - Elon Musk
- "Starting and developing a business is just as important for the innovation, strength and determination of the people behind it as the product they sell." - Elon Musk
- "Talent is extremely important. It's like a sports team, the team with the best individual player will often win, but then there's a multiplier of how these players work together and the strategy they use." - Elon Musk
- "The first step is to determine that something is possible; then the probability will occur." - Elon Musk
- "There are really two things that need to happen for a new technology to be accessible on the mass market. One is that you need economies of scale. The other is that you have to iterate on design. You have to go through several versions. ”- Elon Musk
- "There is an extraordinary prejudice against risk-taking. Everyone is trying to optimize their bottom coverage. ”- Elon Musk
- "At SpaceX we have a 'strict no-rope policy.' - Elon Musk
- "What makes innovative thinking happen?" I think it's really a thought. You have to decide. ”- Elon Musk
- "When Henry Ford made cheap and reliable cars, people said, 'Nah, what about a horse? "It was a huge bet that he made and it worked. ”- Elon Musk
- "When someone has an innovative evolution, it's rarely a small thing. Very rarely, it is a small thing. It's usually a bunch of things that collectively are a huge innovation. ”- Elon Musk
- "When something is important enough, you do it even if the chances are not in your favor." - Elon Musk
- "It simply came to our notice then. That is, you only need to enter weeks between 80 and 100 hours each week. [This] improves the chances of success. If other people put in 40 hours of work and put in 100 hours of work, then even if you do the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what they need a year to accomplish. ”- Elon Musk
- "You have to say, 'Well, why did he succeed where others failed?' ”- Elon Musk
- "You shouldn't do things differently just because they're different. They have to be better. ”- Elon Musk
In recent years, the two wealthiest people on the planet have been competing not only on Earth but also beyond. The article explains how much it costs to fly into space, why some flights can hardly be called space flights, and what private space programs are criticized for.
Elon Musk and SpaceX
Elon Musk is the wealthiest man on the planet with a fortune of $ 220 billion at the time of writing, one of the founders of the PayPal payment system, a space enthusiast, and CEO of two of the most prominent American companies in the fields of electric cars and space equipment - Tesla and SpaceX.
SpaceX was established in 2002 and, during its existence, has managed to develop a whole series of Falcon launch vehicles of various payloads, as well as the Dragon space shuttle, designed to replenish supplies to the ISS. This ship is launched into orbit by the Falcon 9 launch vehicle, the latest in the series.
The main feature of these launch vehicles is that they are reusable. They are equipped with special equipment for return and vertical landing.
The second version of the Falcon 9 flew for the first time last September with space tourists on board.
The company has two ambitious goals - to contribute to the colonization of Mars and to reduce the cost of manufacturing space equipment as much as possible.
Over the 20 years of its existence, SpaceX has managed to conduct many successful launches. Among them are dockings with the ISS, the launch of shuttles into low Earth orbit, and even the launch of one of Tesla Motors' electric cars into space.
But there were also significant failures. For example, the first Falcon 1 rocket exploded at launch, and the attempt to correct the situation for many years did not yield any results. The second and third versions of the missile also exploded in subsequent years.
And only by 2008, on the fourth attempt, did they finally manage to launch a rocket into space.
Problems also arose during the landing of launch vehicles on water. It was not immediately possible to establish a working landing system - from 2013 to 2016, the landing systems of the missiles regularly failed.
SpaceX is not limited to flights alone. The company is also building a global Starlink satellite network to provide the entire population of the Earth with a fast internet connection.
Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin
Bezos is the founder of the world's largest online retailer Amazon, the private aerospace company Blue Origin, and the owner of The Washington Post. He is also known for his charitable work and the fact that for many years he has been competing with Musk for the title of the wealthiest man on the planet, but at the moment, he is slightly inferior to him, with a fortune of $ 173 billion.
He founded his space company two years earlier, but its goal is almost identical - significantly reducing the cost of producing rockets and equipment.
Blue Origin has working shuttles and launch vehicles in its arsenal, prototypes that have yet to be built and tested, and rocket engines. Among them:
New Shepard is one of the first projects of the company. This is a reusable spacecraft, a human-crewed capsule with a capacity of up to 6 people. It flies only in suborbital space. The first launch took place last summer. On board, in addition to Bezos himself, were his brother, an 82-year-old woman who was a former pilot, and an 18-year-old graduate of the school.
The New Glenn is an even heavier reusable launch vehicle that uses one of the company's specially designed engines. There are plans to use the shuttle to deliver satellites and people into orbit, but launches have been delayed for several years.
Blue Moon is a moon rocket that the company has developed for one of NASA's latest space programs.
Not exactly spaceflight
It would seem that both companies are doing about the same thing, but what is the difference? The answer is range.
Bezos's company is currently mainly engaged in suborbital flights, that is, flights with low speed to enter the orbit of an artificial Earth satellite. To overcome this barrier, the ship must reach the first space velocity - almost 8 km / s.
For example, the relatively recently launched New Shepard flew 100 kilometers, although the altitude of low Earth orbit is almost one and a half times higher.
Richard Branson and his company Virgin Galactic are also engaged in similar flights. Last summer, he and other space tourists made a suborbital flight on the Unity rocket.
SpaceX The mask plays big and launches rockets into space. The two-stage Falcon 9 boosters push the spacecraft through the atmosphere, breaking first space velocity, while the shuttle's engines are already starting to work in orbit.
The last flight took place last year. During it, the Crew Dragon spacecraft, with ordinary people on board, rose to a height of 585 km and entered the Earth's orbit. It was the company's first "tourist" launch.
Space tourism
In the United States, flights, including those near space, are the responsibility of the Federal Aviation Administration - FAA. According to his criteria, anything below 80 km from Earth is not yet considered space.
Branson's and Bezos' shuttles are quickly up to the mark, earning the billionaires their official astronaut title late last year. The FAA gave them the Astronaut Wings badge of honor, a significant award in commercial space missions.
Musk is generally happy that his competitors are funding space projects but emphasizes that suborbital flights are the first step in the right direction.
Criticism
Unfortunately, such flights' importance for science development is often downplayed and perceived only as entertainment for the rich. And there are reasons for that.
According to NASA, flying into space is not cheap.
To fly on Bezos' ship, you have to pay $28 million - this is the cheapest offer on the market.
A flight on the SpaceX shuttle will cost $60 million, and on a Virgin Galactic Unity rocket, as much as $250 million before the first successful launch, and after that, already $450 million per seat.
Space tourism is also present in Russia. Roskosmos is going to send two people to the ISS until 2023. Such a flight will cost 2.573 billion rubles per person, which is approximately comparable in cost to the Blue Origin travel program.
But it would help if you did not immediately end the dream of flying into space - such a trip can be won in the lottery. For example, Sian Proctor, a 52-year-old entrepreneur, and geologist grabbed such a prize. She won a charity competition funded by Jared Isaacman, a pilot, astronaut, and billionaire.
The high cost of travel is a thorn in the side of Musk and Bezos regularly.
For example, the head of Blue Origin spent almost $ 5 billion for 4 minutes in zero gravity during the flight. According to estimates by the international human rights organization Global Citizen, with this money, 2 billion people could be vaccinated, or 40 million could be helped with food.
But the wave of criticism does not end there. As it turned out, space flights are an excellent way to get rid of paying taxes since American taxation still poorly regulates private space flights.
In previous years, billionaires either paid no income tax at all or did so at a reduced rate of 16%, according to one investigative journalism report. For most Americans, a progressive taxation system works, where citizens pay from 10 to 37%, depending on their annual income. It is not difficult to guess what rate the two wealthiest people on the planet should have.
Even though attempts to make space more accessible have not yet been crowned with much success, it is good to see that every year this industry attracts more and more influential players who spend vast amounts of money on the development of science and technology.
Bitcoin vs Dogecoin. Elon Musk has started a disscusion on Twitter which generated a lot of memes
The head of Tesla, Elon Musk, opened another discussion on Twitter, in which he explained to his readers why Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin, and what, in his opinion, Dogecoin should be in order to become the currency of the world.
Elon Musk, a former bitcoin supporter, changed his mind and informed the public about the shortcomings of the first cryptocurrency. Musk questioned the decentralization of the currency, and recalled the recent drop in the hash rate, which happened due to the power outage in China.
This happened on April 10, when in China a huge number of mining farms were temporarily out of order, transactions in the blockchain system became slower, and the BTC rate decreased by 10% because of this.
“Bitcoin is actually very centralized and the vast majority are controlled by a handful of large mining companies,” Elon Musk wrote in response to a tweet claiming Dogecoin is highly centralized. “The only coal mine in Xinjiang is flooded, almost killing miners, and the hash rate of the bitcoin network has dropped by 35%. Does that sound “decentralized” to you? ”He added.
These two months have been very dynamic for the first cryptocurrency. Bitcoin in April rose to its maximum of $ 64,829, but after numerous speeches by the billionaire, it has already managed to fall to $ 42,000, and in just a week, the value of Bitcoin fell by 20%.
Much attention was drawn to Musk's response to SNL when he was asked to comment on a tweet that said investors would bite their nails when Musk sells his bitcoin assets in the next quarter. Elon Musk answered ambiguously: "Without a doubt." Musk later made it clear that Tesla had no plans to sell bitcoin, but the BTC rate had already fallen by more than 10% during this time.
The billionaire said last week that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin as a form of payment because bitcoin mining is energy-intensive and therefore harmful to the environment. Tesla will only consider cryptocurrencies more than 100 times greener than bitcoins.
Dogecoin is more environmentally friendly than bitcoins, because, unlike bitcoin, it does not have a coin emission limit, which makes Dogecoin mining less energy-intensive. It also makes the currency more convenient for replacing fiat money, because in the long term, the value of one coin will not rise much.
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