Some even consider him a genius. So, sit back, because now we begin our journey through the technological empire created by Elon Musk. But first, I advise you to subscribe and click on the bell, so as not to miss new videos and contests! So hit the button and we will start. This is exactly what Elon Musk's ambitious plans, which he announced at the Axel Springer Awards in 2020, look like. But this phrase, uttered by Elon about a year ago, was preceded by a very, very hard work, both on himself and professionally.
CHILDHOOD In order to understand how Elon Musk became the person he is today, you need to rewind time to the following point. June 28, 1971. It was the day when the future genius was born. And it should be noted that he was born far from the country in which he began to live and work. His homeland is not the United States, as some may mistakenly believe, but South Africa. His parents, engineer Errol Musk and model May Musk, were very wealthy people.
But this fact made Elon’s career more interesting, he did not settle for what his parents could give him, but preferred to determine his own destiny. Elon Musk's mother's modeling career is no accident. The girl was fond of this activity since school. And at the age of 15, she entered one of the local modeling schools. She even managed to become a finalist in the Miss South Africa beauty pageant. But little is known about Errol, the father of Elon Musk. Yes, even Google won’t tell you anything. The maximum that can be squeezed out of the world wide Web is some of Errol's memories of Elon's childhood, but no one knows how he ended up in South Africa.
All we can say is that Errol and May knew each other since they were teenagers, because they lived in the same neighborhood. Around the time they got married, Elon's father worked as an engineer and his mother as a nutritionist. And who knows, perhaps, it isn’t an accident that today the Elon Musk Corporation builds rockets. Maybe the urge to fly is hereditary? After all, Elon's grandfather was an aviator. He loved air transport so much that even was an owner of a single-engine airplane. Although it was quite small, there was enough space for traveling with the family. Many routes were completed from one point to another in North America. If we can easily say about a variety of celebrities:
"His or her childhood was not different from the childhood of many other children", then in the case of Elon, this statement will not correspond to the truth, because Elon Musk was a special kid. His first feature was that since childhood he grew up a closed and unsociable person. While his peers played games, he stayed away. In principle, he did not like to communicate with other children as well as play some games. It didn't matter if it was a street game or a board game. Elon wasn't interested in it at all. Literature was the thing that he really liked.
He learned to read at an early age. He absorbed a lot of information, finding it on the pages of various books. Perhaps it was because he rarely saw his parents. “I didn’t really have a primary nanny or anything. I just had a housekeeper who was there to make sure I didn’t break anything... I was off making explosives and reading books and building rockets and doing things that could have gotten me killed. I’m shocked that I have all my fingers. I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.” Musk didn't read just to keep himself occupied, he was keenly interested in everything around him. He thought, analyzed, observed.
Otherwise, it isn’t simply possible to explain why at the age of 4, when other kids were interested in toys and cute animals, a very young Elon Musk was interested in the question of where our world begins and where it ends. The child answered this question to his parents, and surprised them. Of course! If he had asked it at the age of 15, no one would have paid attention to it. But the interest in such things in a 4-year-old child already spoke volumes. It was clear that the future genius was growing. Elon didn’t receive an answer to this question from his parents, because they simply did not know what to say to him about this. Elon also has a brother, Kimbal, and a sister, Tosca.
It is interesting that, in the end, each of the children of the Musk family became successful and even famous. Of course, both Kimbal and Tosca are far from the achievements of their older brother, Elon. But, nevertheless, Kimbal became a well-known restaurateur, and Tosca - a producer of feature films and television programs. When Elon was nine years old, he suffered a very serious moral blow. His parents divorced. And it left a mark on the psyche of the future genius. Elon changed quickly enough. From a quiet, inconspicuous child, he became quite aggressive. And this aggression spilled out with the same force with which lava spills out of the crater of a volcano. Aggression was expressed during communication with classmates. To say that he often had conflicts with his peers is an understatement.
Conflicts at this age, as a rule, end in a fight. And, as you know, in fights there are winners and losers. Elon fell into both categories. Once he was beaten so badly that his nose had to be repaired with surgery. By the way, it is worth noting that after Elon Musk's parents divorced, the boy, like his brother and sister, went to live with his mother. However, then Elon changed his mind and moved in with his father, who was a fairly wealthy man, owned several houses, as well as a farm with horses. Musk said that he felt sorry for his father, because he was left alone. He decided to "brighten up his loneliness" and moved. But according to Elon, it was a bad idea. After all, at that time he did not understand what kind of person his father was. Errol Musk is a brilliant engineer who often worked on secret and even dangerous objects. I’m naturally good at engineering that’s because I inherited it from my father ...What’s very difficult for others is easy for me. For a while, I thought things were so obvious that everyone must know this.” In one of interviews, in a trembling voice Elon said that his father was the embodiment of evil.
You have no idea about how bad. Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done. Almost every evil thing you could possibly think of, he has done. As an adult, Musk bought for his father and his new family a house in Malibu, several cars, and a yacht. However, he admits that his father has not changed at all, and that is the main reason why Musk broke off any relationship with him. He claims that all this helped him to understand how important it is to be useful and stand up for the world. When Elon was 10 years old, he was given his first computer – the Commodore VIC-20. The boy was incredibly pleased. After all, this was not just a toy, but a very useful and expensive thing. Not everyone could afford personal computers in the 80s. So, from an early age, the future genius didn’t just study the computer, but taught himself to code. At 12, he learned to program.
His first invention was the video game Blastar, which he sold for $ 500. By the time Musk graduated from high school, for his age he already had a decent amount of money. The injuries received in one of the fights did not prevent him from returning to school and finishing it. He even went to the University of Pretoria, but events in the country did not allow him to start studying. In those years, the situation in South Africa became very unstable. And Elon decided to leave the country, moving to Canada, where at that time and for a long period his mother lived. Getting citizenship of this country was not a problem, because May is a native of Canada. It was there that Elon Musk entered the university, where he planned to continue his studies. At the same time, the father did not really believe in the future of his son. “He said rather contentiously that I’d be back in three months, that I’m never going to make it, that I’m never going to make anything of myself. He called me an idiot all the time. That’s the tip of the iceberg, by the way.” STUDENT DAYS Initially Elon entered Queen's University at Kingston, which is located in Ontario. And it is not his study that is remarkable during this period of his life, but his work.
Despite the fact that Elon had excellent programming skills, and he was a fairly erudite guy, he took on the most ordinary work, combining it with studying at the university. Elon changed many jobs living in Canada. How did the man who builds spaceships today start his career? Initially, he worked on the farm of his relatives, where he performed the tasks of a fruit picker and did a common labour like carrying baskets of grain. It seems fantastic, doesn't it? After working on a farm for a while, Elon moves to Vancouver, where he gets a job as a lumberjack. Then he became a janitor on a sawmill. Elon Musk had a lot of perseverance and diligence. And that's one of the reasons why he became what he became. Despite the fact that he earned quite good money as a janitor for that time, it was $ 18 for an hour, Elon did not stop there. Especially because at that time his younger brother Kimbel arrived in Canada. Do any of you have the courage to call a well-known local entrepreneur and invite him to have lunch with you? Of course not everyone would be able to do that. But Elon and Kimbel did! The brothers did it in order to make useful connections and acquaintances. The story is silent about how many entrepreneurs agreed to have lunch with two unknown guys, but it is known that this way Elon managed to get a job. The new position was given to him by Peter Nicholson, who was that time the head of the Nova Scotia bank. He was surprised by the persistence of the young people, so he agreed to meet with them. It was Elon who got the job for the reason that Peter saw him as a more intelligent and talented guy compared to his brother.
By the way, tellingly, the job that Elon Musk got on the patronage of Peter Nicholson, brought him less money than the previous one. Namely, 14 dollars per hour compared to the 18 that he received earlier. The young man did not stay long in Canada. It's hard to say for sure what caused him to move to the United States, but he is transferring from Queen's University at Kingston, to the University of Pennsylvania. All this happened in 1992. We can safely assume that by that time Elon had enough financial savings, because he, along with one of his new friends, rented a house with 10 rooms. The name of the friend with whom Elon got so close is Adeo Ressi. It can be said that two geniuses found each other. After all, in the future, Adeo Ressi, then unknown to anyone, would create TheFunded and The Founder Institute, becoming CEO. However, let's go back to the student years of the hero of our video. What is Musk planning, renting such a huge house with his friend? Well, friends create a kind of nightclub, which turns out to be so popular that a huge number of students regularly gather there. And then Elon's entrepreneurial spirit showed up. What was the point of letting students into your house, which was not cheap to rent, so that they were rowdy until the morning? The question loses its relevance as soon as you find out that each student's friends took money for admission.
Yes, yes, and the money Elon and Adeo earned was enough for renting a house, for studying, and for other expenses. Despite the fact that Elon did not drink at such events, unlike other participants of the party, and ensured order, it can not be said that in life he was an exemplary guy. No, he didn't have problems with the law. We are talking about the fact that he was not a diligent student. Despite his intelligence, understanding of the workings of economics he did not want to study conscientiously. Perhaps it is strange to realize the fact that Elon could be dropped out of the university without finishing it several times. However, although the management of the educational institution considered the issue of expelling the student repeatedly, nevertheless, did not make the appropriate decision. And Elon Musk continued to study science, still having parties at his house with a friend. Whatever it was, the future rockets and electric cars builder managed to finish the University of Pennsylvania.
He even got a bachelor's degree in economics and physics. After Elon completed his studies at the university, he moved to California. That was in 1995, and Elon Musk was 24 years old at the time. What did future genius do in California? He decided to enter a postgraduate programme at Stanford University. His goal was a doctorate in physics. But Musk's plans did not come to fruition. And not because he was kicked out for bad behavior or unfair studies. No. Everything was typical and simple. He changed his mind about moving in that direction. Just 2 days after entering into a programme, Elon Musk picked up his documents from Stanford University, and that's where his study ended. It should be noted that Musk has a negative attitude to university education. He believes that studying at universities is useless and that it is only necessary for young people to have fun before real work. “What's next?"- you may ask. And here, perhaps, begins the most interesting thing in the life of a genius. After all, he left postgraduate education for a reason. Thought everything out, he decided to start developing his own projects with his brother Kimbel.
It is 1995 that can be considered the starting point of Elon Musk on the way to the person he is today. Zip2 So, the first project of Elon Musk, which brought him a lot of money and some fame, was Zip2. You need initial capital to start absolutely any project. The Zip2 was no exception. But where did Elon take the money? According to one version, it was Elon’s father who helped him and acted as a sponsor, providing the necessary amount for the development of the idea. According to the second version, Errol offered his son some money, but Elon refused it, because he wanted to achieve everything on his own. By that time, he was working hard and skimping on absolutely everything, even on house renting, which he simply did not have. He wanted to reduce costs and lived in an office that he rented for work. It is difficult to say which of these versions is true. But this, in fact, is not the main thing in our story. The main thing is that the Zip2 project was very successful because it perfectly fit into the development of the world wide Web.
The company was engaged in converting what was printed on paper into electronic form. First, they came up with a service that linked electronic geographical maps to office addresses from the business directory. In fact, it was the prototype of what much later became known to us as Google maps. It was a service which gave the possibility to find on the map the office of a company and showed the shortest route to it. The idea was a success, because the software created by Elon and his brother Kimbel significantly simplified the work of commercial enterprises, making it more efficient. Therefore, the demand for the invention of the Musk brothers was considerable. They had been working on this project for several years.
And it was so innovative at the time that many companies wanted to buy it out. There were two conclusions that could be drawn from the development of events in Musk's life related to this project. Firstly, Elon knew that this invention won’t get him very far. And, secondly, despite this, it should not be sold immediately. The Internet developed rapidly. And Musk believed that his brainchild would increase in price. And so it happened. The foresight of the young genius allowed him and his brother to sell the project for $ 307 million. And they also received $ 34 million worth of securities. The buyer of the Zip2 project was the AltaVista Search Engine, which later became part of the Compaq company. Elon Musk personally received a good for a guy of his age amount of money – $ 22 million. He was a dollar millionaire when he was not even 30. Isn't that cool? But to achieve this, you need to work really hard. Understanding that it wasn’t not time to relax, Elon Musk divided the profit received, allocating 12 million from it for the creation of a new project. Elon's new brainchild was called X.com. X.com This project was an online bank. Even then, at the turn of the millennium, Musk prudently realized that electronic payment systems would be widely used in future. But at that time, it wasn’t the only electronic money payment system. The main competitor of the project X.com was "Confinity", which was managed by Peter Thiel. After a reasonable discussion, Thiel and Musk decided that it was better to cooperate than to compete.
That is why the two projects merged into one. And that is how the payment system that we know today originated. Its name is PayPal. Yes, it was Elon Musk who was one of the creators of this enterprise. And although he did much for the development of the payment system, the board of directors often clashed with him on various issues. Elon Musk held the position of executive director, but it did not prevent the board of directors from firing him without his knowledge when he was on one of his business trips. Since then, Elon Musk was engaged in solving significantly fewer issues in the company. And when the board of directors thought about selling PayPal, he was categorically against it, but, not surprisingly, no one listened to him. The buyer of the second brainchild of Musk was the Internet giant eBay.
The transaction amount was $ 1.5 billion. Despite the fact that Elon did not hold the position of executive director at that time, he didn’t stop being a co-owner of the enterprise. Therefore, he legally got a part of this $1.5 billion. He made a net profit of $ 175 million. Money that he could spend as he pleased. The deal with eBay was made in the fall of 2002, and from this moment, Elon Musk began to develop as a rocket and electric cars engineer, because it was this $ 175 million that gave him the opportunity to do what he wanted. However, Musk wasn’t a poor man at all by the time he received the money from the sale of PayPal.
Moreover, he already had some experience in the field of space. We need to go back to the events that took place about a year before the deal for the sale of PayPal was made to find out what experience it was. SpaceX It was 2001. Elon Musk announced his first space-related idea. Namely, the project of a space greenhouse designed to work in the conditions of Mars. Musk offered his idea as one of the options for starting the colonization of Mars, since the greenhouse he designed as a result was supposed to be an autonomous ecosystem. I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration. Theory cannot produce results without practice.
Elon needed the appropriate equipment, capable of delivering cargo to space to practice in this area. He decided to negotiate with the Russian company Kosmotras, which produced the Dnepr intercontinental ballistic missiles. From Elon's point of view, it was a suitable rocket for experiments with cargo delivery to orbit. But the deal was canceled, because the Russian side considered that Musk wouldn’t find the use for missiles. However, this did not stop Elon. And after a while, he makes a second attempt to buy a rocket. This time, they meet him halfway, but the announced cost of one rocket of $ 8 million does not satisfy Musk. And then he comes to the conclusion that he needs to create his own missiles. It's just a matter of funding.
The company Space Exploration Technologies, which today even kids know as SpaceX, appeared in 2002, in May, shortly before Musk received 175 million from the sale of PayPal. 100 million of this amount was allocated to them for the SpaceX and rockets development. This money was enough for the first time, but the project needed more funding. It needed investors. And they were found! Against the background of offers from a number of commercial companies, there were others who wanted to invest in the project. For example, DARPA. It is an agency of the US Department of Defense. The results were not long in coming. The first developments of the company were a two-stage light-lift launch vehicle and two-stage medium-lift launch vehicle, which were named Falcon-1 and Falcon-9. And soon a spaceship called Dragon was created. We must say that such developments did not go unnoticed. NASA became interested in the opportunities that the SpaceX launchers opened up. The first Musk rockets were shown to the public in 2006, and in 2008, SpaceX received its first commercial contract from NASA, the terms of which involved sending cargo to the ISS. Needless to say, a lot depended on the fulfillment of this contract, the amount of which was $ 1.6 billion.
Even the existence of SpaceX. After all, it was a serious customer, serious money and a serious task. But Elon Musk and his team coped with it. The first successful launch of the Falcon 9 rocket took place on June 4, 2010. It was an experimental flight, not a commercial one. As for the commercial flight aimed at fulfilling the terms of the contract, it took place a little less than two years later – on May 22, 2012. Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon cargo ship launched from Cape Canaveral, the docking with the ISS took place on May 25. The ship returned to Earth in the same month on the 31st. It was a significant event, given the fact that SpaceX is a private company. Of course, the future development of SpaceX didn’t go smoothly. There were a lot of successful launches, but the first three attempts to launch the rocket were unsuccessful, the money was barely enough for the fourth, however, it coped with the task. However, sometimes the rockets did not take off at all, sometimes they even exploded. When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
If you trace the entire history of SpaceX in terms of successful and unsuccessful launches, it can be noted that there are many more successful ones. But almost every year since its foundation, various launches have not ended as planned. The only exception was 2017, when everything went according to plan. Though the most significant fiascos are linked with the testing of the reusable ship prototype, Starship. Recently, several prototypes exploded on landing. But still, in November 2020, the Crew Dragon spacecraft with four astronauts successfully docked to the International Space Station. And after 167 days, it successfully landed in the Gulf of Mexico. It was the longest mission by a U.S. spacecraft since the last Skylab mission in 1974. The flight was postponed several times due to adverse weather conditions, but in the end everything was successful. Thus, SpaseX became the first private company to send people to the ISS. SpaceX's main achievements are the reuse of orbital-class launch vehicles and the reduction of costs in the space launch industry.
The man who never made a mistake, never made anything. Space exploration isn’t the most studied area. You need to be prepared for the fact that not everything will go as planned. However, we will not go into the details of the activities of SpaceX, because in this case it would be necessary to make a full-fledged documentary for at least 3 hours. In this video we tell you about the achievements and career of Elon Musk, and SpaceX is not Elon Musk's last company. Let's go back to 2003. Tesla Motors In July, a little more than a year after the founding of SpaceX, Elon Musk invested in a new project – the company Tesla Motors. This was not his brainchild. Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning are at the origins of its creation. By the way, the amount he invested in this project was $ 70 million. And it was the money which he received from the sale of PayPal. So, who knows. If the board of directors had listened to Elon's opinion then and did not sell PayPal to the trading giant eBay, maybe there would not be a Tesa Motors company now, because it was the money from this transaction that became the starting capital.
In an interview, Elon admitted that the foundation of SpaceX and Tesla was a huge risk for him. After all, at that time, he had invested all his money in these companies and they would either have brought him great success, or would have left him without a cent in his pocket. Back then, he didn't even have the money to rent a house, so he spent the night on the floor of a friend's house, or at a factory, completely immersed in his work. At the time when Musk invested in Tesla Motors, the company had existed not so long. Its founders positioned their brainchild as a pioneer among electric cars, but it was a promising pioneer. The first result of the joint work was shown in 2008. In the same year Elon Musk received a large order from NASA, which we mentioned earlier. So, we can say that 2008 was a year of double success. The first product of the car company was called the Tesla Roadster. In fairness, we should note that this wasn’t know-how or development "from scratch". The basis was the English car Lotus Elise. But, nevertheless, a lot was done.
It was the development of this car that allowed Elon to receive the 2006 award in the field of ecology, as well as to find those who wanted to invest $ 100 million in the company, which was helpful for the company. The situation with Tesla Motors was complicated. Still, if people had already flown into space before Elon Musk appeared in the space sphere, then electric cars were a less well-known area. The company was once almost on the verge of closing, but it was saved by the fact that the German car giant, Daimler, invested $ 50 million in the project. And after that the US Department of Energy helped Tesla Motors get a loan on fairly attractive terms. So, the company continued its work. By the way, it should be noted that the breakthrough of Tesla Motors has had an impact on the automotive industry not only in the United States, but also around the world.
The fact that a recently founded corporation was able to create a car that run on electric energy, was a great incentive for the automotive giants to start developing in this area in order to compete with the products of Tesla Motors. We should recall one event, dated 1956 to understand how successful Tesla Motors was. That year the American automobile corporation Ford, founded by Henry Ford, participated in an IPO. And since then, none of U.S. automotive companies has managed to repeat this. Only after more than half a century, in 2010, it was Tesla Motors Company that became the participant in an IPO. By this time, Elon Musk was already a very well-known and authoritative person in the field of technological development. Therefore, when he entered into a debate with a correspondent of a prominent New York Times publication, and said that in a couple of decades at least 50% of the vehicles produced by all the concerns of the world would have electric motors, his words had an effect. This allowed Tesla Motors to sell 10,500 vehicles in the first 6 months of 2013. Now you are watching the video and thinking that everything is so easy and simple. However, in the same year, when Tesla successfully sold cars, production stopped for a while because… the company's warehouse ran out of USB cables worth $ 3 apiece. Don't you believe it? Here is a confirmation of this fact! SpaceX and Tesla still operate today.
These are successful industrial giants offering the world sophisticated technology. And although these are the most famous projects of Elon Musk, we should say that they are not the only ones. Musk always has unusual and complicated ideas. And this is why he is interesting to society, as a person, an inventor, a strategist. It seems that he does not live in the present day. Reading about the ideas of Elon Musk, it is impossible not to recall an equally brilliant man, a writer Jules Verne. For example, his "20,000 leagues under the sea." When he wrote this novel, such a thing as a submarine didn’t exist, it wasn’t even designed, people didn’t even think about it. And after some time, the watercraft was invented.
Jules Verne described cars, elevators, skyscrapers, and much more in his novels. In those years, it all was so fantastic and unusual that the publisher, after reading the masterpiece, criticized its author very unpleasantly. However, who can be surprised by a car or an elevator now? The ideas of Elon Musk are pretty similar to Verne’s. Some of them seem fantastic. When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, 'Nah, what's wrong with a horse?' That was a huge bet he made, and it worked. Mars Musk is passionate about the idea of colonizing Mars. Recently, he announced that in the near future he would sell all his property, converting it into money, in order to speed up the preparation of a flight to Mars with the further colonization of the Red Planet. He says that he does not need real estate-he can sleep in the office at the Tesla factory. His children need a house, but he can rent it, he doesn't have to be the owner. The entrepreneur understands that a flight to Mars is not available for many people because of the very high cost of the expedition. Therefore, for the colonization of Mars, he is going to allocate funds to those who do not have them.
In addition, all these people will get jobs on the Red Planet. Elon Musk plans to declare Mars independent of Earth.He also said that the laws of the Earth will not apply on the Red Planet. But where is the origins of such a passionate desire to go to Mars? Why does Elon want to colonize it so much? For Elon , this is an opportunity to insure humanity against a global catastrophe and, as a result, extinction. And also it is plan B in case all the resources of the Earth are exhausted and humanity is left with nothing. “It’s insurance of life as we know it, and it makes the future far more inspiring if we are out there among the stars and you could move to another planet if you wanted to.” Other Companies The American billionaire owns many more enterprises. SolarCity. The company is a subsidiary of Tesla Motors. It specializes in the production of solar panels. OpenAI. A non-profit organization created for the purpose of researching the possibilities of artificial intelligence.
Musk sincerely believes that artificial intelligence can pose a serious threat to humanity. The businessman supposes that artificial intelligence can become so advanced that people will only be an obstacle for him. According to him, if artificial intelligence is not controlled, then in the future humanity will become just a pet of machine mechanisms. Neuralink. The main specialization is the design and production of implantable neurocomputer interfaces. The Boring Company. A construction company that specializes in creating tunnels. In 2017, Musk announced plans to create tunnels for cars, through which cars could safely move at a speed of 240 kilometers per hour. The tunnels would connect Washington and Baltimore. However, the project is not even close to completion today. It is mired in regular delays, land rights disputes, and environmental assessments. But still, the Boring Company managed to do something. In 2021, testing of the LVCC Loop underground tunnels built under the Las Vegas Convention Center began. Several dozen Tesla cars were used for the tests. According to the company, these tunnels turn a 45-minute walk into a two-minute ride. Numerous videos and photos from people who had already been able to drive through two one-way tunnels with a 1.2 km length appeared on the network. We would also like to add that Elon is not only just an engineer, but also an excellent manager. He does not rest on his laurels, but takes a considerable part in the work of companies. He often spends the night at the workplace, so as not to waste time on the way home and the next day – to work. To do this, he keeps a sleeping bag in the Tesla conference room. He has earned a reputation as a tough, aggressive, at times even tyrannical, but effective manager.
At the same time, Musk is always ready to listen to an informed, carefully considered opinion and change his point of view, if there are good reasons for this. He learns from his engineers and does not think that he knows absolutely everything in the world. “The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.” An excellent example of his work can be a story linked with Tesla. Although Elon was an investor of the company almost from the very beginning and was involved in many processes, he was not a full-fledged leader. Until the moment when the company had a crisis that could lead it to bankruptcy. One of the reasons was mismanagement and ill-conceived logistics, which led to unplanned large costs. Then the CEO and one of the creators of Tesla, Eberhard, resigned from his post.
Musk became CEO instead of him and in a year actually rebuilt the entire management system of Tesla, significantly reshuffling the staff. From the very first day, Tesla employees were able to get acquainted with the classic Musk, well known to those who worked at SpaceX. Musk solved every problem head-on. One day, he flew to England on his plane to pick up new processing tools for body panels, and personally delivered them to a French factory so that there would be no downtime in the production schedule. Personal Life And what about Elon's personal life? Probably, it's hard to build relationships with such a busy work schedule. As Elon Musk himself said: I would like to allocate more time to dating, though.
I need to find a girlfriend. How much time does a woman want a week? Maybe 10 hours?" Nevertheless, in an interview, Musk admitted that he wasn’t not looking for one-day affairs. He wanted to meet a woman who would become a reliable support, inspiration and the love of his life. Elon got married for the first time in 2000. The chosen one was Justine Wilson, whom he met while studying at a Canadian university. The couple has five children. The relationship lasted until 2008. The second chosen one, who became his wife, was Talulah Riley, an English actress. It is worth noting that Musk was married to this woman twice. They first married in 2010, and the relationship lasted until 2012. They married for the second time in 2013, and divorced in 2016. After that, Musk had a relationship with actress Amber Heard, which lasted about a year. According to the billionaire, it was his and her work that caused the breakup. Moreover, Musk extremely painfully experienced the breakup. In an interview, he admitted that the breakup happened on the eve of an important presentation and it took him a lot of effort to get himself together and speak.
Yes, Amber Heard can break the hearts of such tough guys like Musk and Johnny Depp. Now we will not go into the details of this love triangle, but if you click on the pop-up card in the corner, you can see a detailed biography of Johnny Depp and find out how his career was almost destroyed by a femme fatale. In 2018, he started a new relationship with Claire Boucher, a Canadian singer and musician, better known under the name - Grimes. In 2020, the couple had a baby. In May, at the time of the baby's birth, the couple was not officially married. Nowadays, Elon Musk is actively continuing to develop the company SpaceX, setting the main goal of the flight to Mars, also he is engaged in charity work.
Interesting facts And here are some interesting facts about our hero. Elon Musk has four favorite books that he advises all inventors to read. These are The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, and Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Musk is interested in comics and superheroes. That's why he named some of his robots at the Tesla factory with nicknames from the X-Men. In addition, one of his sons is named Xavier-in honor of Professor X from the same comics about the X-Men.
He even created a school for gifted children, similar to the X-Men school. It is called Ad Astra. There are about 50 children studying there, most of whose parents work for Musk's companies. In an interview, the businessman said that his school has no grades. But instead, the institution has its own currency - "The Astra '', and students receive it not for a correctly solved task, but for the implementation of their ideas. Musk says that someone likes math, and someone likes languages or music, so in school it is more correct to create the program based on the interests of the child, rather than forcing him or her to take pre-described subjects. Therefore, children try to succeed in their field of interest. At school, everyone does something: someone makes websites, someone bakes pies, and so on. Every student has the opportunity to do something and learn how much it is valued. It is on this principle that children learn market relations in practice in advance. Musk's love for superheroes was mutual.
Elon served as the prototype for the movie character - Iron Man. Although the comics about him were created before Musk was born, nevertheless, the character and demeanor of the movie version of Tony Stark are taken from Elon. He even played himself in a cameo role in the second Iron Man. Well, we fully share Elon's interest in comics, and in one of our last videos, we even found an explanation for why superheroes have been so popular for many years. So if you're interested, you should click on the popup card in the corner to get a better understanding of the comic book movies. Click, and we continue. In addition to Iron Man, the billionaire appeared in other roles-cameos on television screens. So, he took part in the "The Big Bang Theory" TV series and in the "Machete kills" movie . Elon Musk has a phenomenal memory. He easily remembers some completely implausible amounts of information.
Musk's money is the last thing on his mind. He has repeatedly admitted that he will fulfill his destiny only when people can fly to Mars, and he promised to donate most of his money to charity. Musk is not lying, because he is one of 183 people who have joined the organization the Giving Pledge (it encourages wealthy people to donate most of their money to charity). The sale of the Zip2 allowed Elon to buy a McLaren F1 car, but he didn’t drive it for a long time. He crashed the car about a year after the purchase, at a time when Peter Thiel was in the cabin with him. Musk's official salary at Tesla Motors is $ 1 per year. Elon Musk is a very ambiguous person. His crazy tweets lead to jumps in the stock market, and his ways to conduct business and manage the company aren’t closed to every employee. But despite his occasional missteps, Elon Musk remains one of the greatest visionaries of our time. His vision and innovative approach are unique. I try to do useful things..That’s a nice aspiration. And useful means it is of value to the rest of society.
Are they useful things that
work and make people’s lives better, make the future seem better, and actually
are better, too? I think we should try to make the future better. Elon Musk is
a dreamer. He has repeatedly proved that any plan can be implemented, if you
have a strong desire. At the same time, Musk remains a person with his own
pains and weaknesses. Let's remember at least the famous moment when he smoked
a joint on Joe Rogan's podcast. But that's why we love him. By the way, if you
click on this video, you can see Joe's biography. He doesn't build rockets, but
he comes up with great jokes and his story may also surprise you. Well, that's
all for today. This is Biographer, thank you for being with us! Like share this article and see you soon! Bye-bye!
