Elon Musk : undaunted visionary character shaping our future

If you’ve ever dreamt of going to Mars and drinking a cool coffee looking at the Martian sunset or to have space ride around the Earth or a long thrilling drive around the Moon then it is very important to know about this man, Elon Musk. He’s the one who can fulfill your all your such dreams.

Visionary entrepreneur Elon Musk, currently the CEO of space giant company SpaceX and leading electric vehicle company Tesla, founder of The Boring Company, Hyperloop and co-founder of OpenAI, Neuralink, SolarCity. It seems like there’s nothing Elon Musk can’t do. His astounding success has given rise to compares him with the best inventors in the world.

But it hasn’t always been smooth flight for Elon. There were lots of turbulence and obstacles throughout the path. Musk was born and brought up in Pretoria, South Africa. He had terrible upbringing. He was loner throughout grade school and suffered for years at hands of bullies. From very young ages he seemed to have book in his his hand all times. At the age of 12, he wrote game code for his video game Blaster. Musk’s early inclination towards computer and technology had fostered an interest in Silicon Valley and very soon he realised that South Africa was like a prison for him and America was the place to get things done. At 17, he left South Africa for Canada. Attended to Queens university and then transferred to University of Pennsylvania two years later, where he received bachelor’s degree in Physics and Economics. He moved to California for his PhD but after attending for a day he realized that this place is not made for him and decided to pursue business career instead of enrolling.

He talked to his brother moving into Silicon Valley so they could conquer the Web together. He co-founded a software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal Musk. The idea behind was to make a website for businesses which include their locations, details, Menu cards etc. Just like Google map does today. After Zip2 acquired by Compaq for $340 millions in 1999, he then came with the online banking idea in the year 2000 and founded breakthrough company X.com which later merged and rebranded with Peter Thiel’s PayPal with Musk as largest share holder. In 2002, eBay offered $1.5 billion for PayPal and Musk and rest of the board accepted the deal. Musk netted about $250 millions from sale to eBay or $180 millions after taxes. Enough for his very wild dream possible.

He could have stated there and lived a comfortable life but he’s Elon. He is unstoppable being. What he did was, invested this whole amount in two companies SpaceX and funded in Tesla without keeping a single penny in the pocket. In 2002, he founded SpaceX, aerospace manufacture and space transport service company, to make space flight cheaper and joined CEO of Tesla in the year 2004.

The real struggle started from year 2002. It wasn’t to be an easy ride after setting of SpaceX. He was having back to back failure and consequently running out of him. In 2008, when Tesla was at major crisis and for SpaceX, after having 3 consecutive rocket failures, they can only afford one final launch and if they were unsuccessful then it would have been worst nightmare. But they made that possible and successfully sent the payload in the low Earth orbit. NASA then came forward and contracted with SpaceX for $1.5 billions and from then Elon has never looked back and kept lifting his dreams up. SpaceX is now the top private aerospace company in the world.

Musk’s long term goal behind the SpaceX is to built a habitual colony on the Mars. He think one day human has to leave this planet and make human as multi planetary species. He’s aim is as optimistic as him. If you strive for Mars you could end up to Moon and he’s almost closer to bring us to the Moon(search for Dear moon project) and surely in a decade or two this man will definitely takes us to Mars. He even tried sending his own Tesla car to Mars but unfortunately it missed the trajectory. He once quoted “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing you are not innovating.”  shows how optimistic he is.

If you closely look up at companies he founded, they all are futuristic which bring change in entire human being. He’s highly inclined towards Artificial Intelligence. He even started couple of companies for research in AI. All of his companies have well implemented AI technology whether it’s in aerospace or Tesla or the boring company or hyperloop or Neuralink, never ending loop. Ever driven to ensure a bright future for humanity. Take a bow Elon.

Amid these things, Musk developed a relentless work ethics. He is widely known to work as many as 80 to 100 hours per week. He’s even served as an inspiration for Marvel’s movie IronMan. Basically a real life Tony Stark. He even had cameo in “Iron Man 2”

Whatever skeptics have said can’t be done, Elon has gone out and made it real. It’s a paradox that Elon is working to improve our planet at the same time he’s building spacecraft to help us leave it!! But true vision is binocular- and Elon is clearly a man who see many things at once.

If you want to know him more deeply I would suggest to read his autobiography written by Ashlee Vance named “Elon Musk”. I’m putting down the link for your convenience if you want to purchase. If not reading, there’s lots of interviews available on You Tube.

https://amzn.to/3hbJI3P