Intro to Elon Musk

(A primer to my review of Elon Musk Biography by Ashlee Vance)

I first came to know about Elon Musk, by reading about a new private space company launched their first rocket in orbit. I certainly at the time, was not aware of the huge significance of it. The name “Elon Musk”, from then on, would continually pop-up in news. Later i’m reading a highly passioned Oatmeal article about why Tesla Model S is the best car ever built with highest safety rating, customer satisfaction; and it’s electric, meaning doesn’t kill mother earth. Part of me thought, if it had been so easy, that a small new company could do it, then why the fuck did the big companies not do it already?! Then sometime later, I’m watching a livestream of Elon Musk unvieling new futuristic Dragon capsule(version 2), and him explaining all the advanced features got me really, genuinely excited about it. I thought, why the fuck was i not excited about space and rockets before?! This is so cool! You see, Elon Musk was born in a time, where everybody was excited about space exploration. He also read a lot of science fiction books growing up. This is how he got big grand ideas floating in his head. Eventually, we saw the hype die down, and those earlier feelings were betrayed. They never got around to my generation. When I was born, people were excited about blowing up monsters in computer games and illegally distributing movies; and not the fucking space. I discovered science fiction as a real thing in my fucking 20s. Fuck this! Anyway, as I read more and more about this man, my jaw lost its elasticity, after being dropped so many times on the floor.

A quick introduction of Elon Musk: He is the co-founder of Paypal, founder of SpaceX, co-founder of Tesla Motors, co-founder of SolarCity. All his companies have changed their respective operating fields in many big ways. He is currenltly valued at $13 billion. He continues to revolutionize the space industry, transportation(and energy) industry. It doesn’t take much effort to understand that he is what’s shaping our future for the better. His dream and driving force behind his relentlessness outlook is “getting Humans on Mars”, and making humanity an “interplanetary specie”.

He is often referred to as real life Tony Stark (billionaire playboy persona). The biography by Ashlee Vance paints a vivid picture of his incredible lifestyle, and how he transformed into humanity’s saviour. Yes, I do not speak lightely when I say savior, he is perhaps the best chance, the best glimmer of hope for humanity, that we have had in recent history. Corporations and Capitalists in general, have shown an utter lack of thought for the well being of future generations, and Earth. They are foolishly driven by greed and short sightedness. This has given birth to a vicious cycle; that, those in power will do anything to maintain their power. Information Technology has given birth to a new age, where it provides us a means to shake these huge power structures. “Disrupt” is a famous buzzword for Silicon Valley startups looking for an industry it wants to revolutionize next. Music, Entertainment, Movies look “meh” when you look at the large behemoths Elon Musk has tackled and so far triumphed over, in an impossibly short period of time. Space, Automobile, Banking these are legacy industries run by giant rotting conglomerates. They have been duping people for ages. “Duping” might be a bit harsh, the people running it were simply too fucking stupid to do anything about it, and you know, went with the flow.

Elon Musk disrupted those industries, in record time.