Elon Musk Artice Highlights: One More Giant Leap from Telegraph (2007)

This was a very well written article, getting alot of the basics down about Elon, Space X, Tesla and his personal life. Here are some highlights from the article that were exciting to read:

Personal Stories

His grandfather:
"His gung-ho drive is probably inherited from his mother's father: an adventurous Canadian who, in the 1950s, emigrated to Africa to search for the Lost City of the Kalahari. 'He would fly from Africa to Australia in a tiny, basic plane without any electronics, just a compass, there and back with my grandmother,' Musk says. 'He'd stop on the way to refuel, but some places only had diesel and some only had gasoline, so he had to rebuild the engine [in transit].' Grandpa also managed to tie for first place in the Cape-to-Cairo rally, a feat all the more impressive given he was driving a station wagon."

Surviving in college on a tight budget:
'It's pretty unpleasant to live on a dollar a day. Buying in bulk is key. I had an orange a day and hotdogs. If you buy a loaf of bread and wrap a slice around the hotdog, it's cheaper than buying buns.'

Philanthropy:
He has a small foundation - 'a few million dollars' - doing paediatric research in developing countries.

Tesla



Pioneering electric sports cars was not Elon Musk's idea. It came from Martin Eberhard, a 47-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who made his name in 1998 with the Rocket eBook, a handheld device used to read books, and who co-founded Tesla Motors in 2003.

SpaceX

The first rocket launch was at Marshall Islands in the Pacific in March 2006 and blew up a minute later.

SpaceX Culture
"Musk learnt some tricks from his Silicon Valley PayPal days: SpaceX is run like Google, not Boeing. Food and snacks are free and on tap (as I arrive, a forklift is delivering catering boxes of M&Ms, beef jerky and Starburst), pets are allowed..."
'You keep your engineers happy and they work a little longer and harder. It's counterintuitive, but it works.'
There is a certain sense of empowerment. One employee scored points for buying a new rocket alignment tool on eBay, saving SpaceX some $25,000.


While this article is a bit outdated (2007) it offers an excelent foundation about Elon's goals and the view he has on space and life. His quote towards the end was very insightful! " life's pretty good. It really is.'"


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