Lately, I followed up on Elon Musk. To me, he is a fascinating person, and even if not everybody sees it, but he is saving the future of humanity.
Elon Musk story
He was born on 28th June 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. His mother was a model and dietitian born in Canada but raised in South Africa. His father was a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer (wonder where Elon Musk got his interest in aircraft and engineering from?! :P)
Elon Musk Childhood
His parents got divorced in 1980 and Musk lived with his father. It seems like this wasn’t the best decision since he described his father as a terrible human being, evil, etc.
Throughout childhood, Musk was severely bullied and was once even hospitalized.
Big Dream America
Musk’s father, of course, wanted him to stay in South Africa, but Musk had the dream to go to America because that’s where big things are accomplished. Just before his 18th birthday, he moved to Canada (with a passport he got through his Canadian-born mother), so he would have an easier way into the USA.
If you want to read his entire story in detail, here is the article on Wikipedia.
I think what’s interesting here is that the relationship to his father wasn’t great. He moved out to a different continent just before being 18. He got bullied. Now I understand why I relate so much to him 😀
Elon Musk today
What’s interesting is that today Musk has 6 children and outside of work his children are his priority. Weekends are for the family.
Now if you thought Musk hadn’t had any other difficult periods in his life, you are wrong. His love life wasn’t easy… He is currently with his 3rd wife. And the hardest thing I believe Musk had to go through is that actually it would have been 7 children. The first child of Musk died after just 10 weeks of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). I can’t imagine how that must feel like.
Oh, I didn’t know that. Well, than do your research next time 😉 In this case I did it for you. So, even if Elon seems a little bit un-human, it comes from a very human story. I hope you can appreciate his efforts more after reading this.
Elon Musk companies
Now, Elon has founded a lot of companies and I am “just” going to mention the ones where he is involved in. I will also comment on each company why I think he founded the described company and how it plays altogether.
Tesla
Well, I guess this is the company Musk got famous with. Tesla is known as an electric car. But what this company really is, it’s a research facility for solar energy and energy storage (batteries). Tesla doesn’t just produce electric cars but also Solar panels.
What is the goal of this company? Well, short-term the goal is to reduce the pollution on this planet by not depending on cars as we know them. The long-term goal is to be able to generate and store energy as efficiently as possible. Why do we need that? As some of you might know one of Elon Musks’ goal is to colonize Mars. Also there we are going to need energy 😉
SpaceX
Rockets and space ships! If you think about space travel there is no one else in the game other than governments. Well, SpaceX is the answer to that. SpaceX tries to make space travel available to “everybody”. In the end, SpaceX is trying to get humanity to a multi-planetary colony. One day we will be able to travel between planets like earth and mars because of it and in the long run maybe even further. Space ships are nothing else than cars for space.
Elon got a lot of backlash for SpaceX, especially from the government. I wonder why? Because then the government can’t control where we will be in the future. Now the thing is, let’s be honest: if we keep going like this as humanity earth will not be habitable in the future and we are not talking about thousands of years here… And also in the very very long run: This solar system will not exist in billions of years. And that’s one of the difficult things to understand about Elon: he things very long term and sees scenarios that are unavoidable and tries to find solutions and backup plans right now instead of waiting for the catastrophes to happen.
NASA, of course, is a big inspiration for Elon and they also worked together in the past. But there were also a few non-supporters. I’ll just let you watch this short clip:
The Boring Company
First of all, great name 😀 To explain it very simply the idea here is to travel in 3 dimensions. The thing is everybody would think of flying cars right? But if you think about it, tunnels are also 3-dimensional travel. Now think about if you would have a lot of tunnels between big cities where your car doesn’t have to drive there but basically is catapulted (in a good way :P) to the other city? That’s a boring company.
If you think about it this company will solve or at least will help to solve 2 problems: traffic and pollution. Here another video to give you a better understanding.
OpenAI
OpenAI is a non-profit organization. I would describe it as an AI research and developing company which makes all results accessible to the public. Since Musk has concerns about AI, in the long run, this is a way to be at the front of the developments and trying to push it in the right direction.
The article “AI for writers” that I wrote was inspired by one of the releases that I saw about OpenAI.
Neuralink
A chip that is implanted in your skull and wired to your brain??? I can’t even explain all the details of how this will change the world. But I also have some other thoughts about this… I will definitely write another article just about Neuralink.
Now, what will Neuralink be able to do in the short-term? Well, for example, people that can’t walk anymore could get this chip and a motorized prosthetic and be able to walk again!
I’ll let the pigs and Elon explain how Neuralink works:
My thoughts about Elon Musk
As you might notice from the style of this article, I am a supporter of Elon Musk. I believe that what he is doing will be life-changing and for most of us, it’s just very difficult to understand what’s going on in his mind.
Now, the thing that I also believe is: We need MORE people that have the balls to do things like Elon Musk does (and having the right motivations for it). There are a lot of stories about Elon Musks’ life that I didn’t mention like he at one point invested all his personal money and assets into Tesla and SpaceX because they were about to go bankrupt. Now, yes he is a billionaire today but not because he does it for the money. If you risk ALL your personal wealth to keep a company alive: was it for the money? NO! You wouldn’t risk your entire wealth for that.
What I want to say is, we need more people with a good morale campus that dare to change the world for the better. And the thing is, it starts by being aware of the choices you make every day. We as humanity decide the faith of humanity. Be aware of the power that every single one of us has! If we don’t buy products from a company as a collective, that company won’t be able to survive. Also the other way around: if we want to see more of something, we should support it.
Go out there and change the world to the better!
