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Happy Birthday Elon Musk

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Hello & welcome to another edition of the GK Nugget. Growing up, we all dreamt of exploring the universe, thanks to Star Wars, Star Trek, ET and other iconic movies & shows. One of the front runners in the race for human interplanetary travel is the subject of this GK Nugget - Elon Musk, the Founder of SpaceX & CEO of Tesla Inc, who was born on 28th June 1971 in South Africa.

Musk believes that it is important to not just travel to Mars, but also to have humans living there. This is so that the human race can be a multi-planetary species as well as to prevent the complete extinction of life in case a catastrophic event destroys earth.

His company SpaceX is working towards drastically reducing the cost of space travel, by developing reusable rockets. The company has returned reusable rocket boosters to Earth 12 times since the first successful Falcon rocket landing in 2015.



The Federation Aronautique Internationale, which is the world governing body for aerospace records, presented Musk with the FAI Gold Space Medal in 2010 for designing the first privately developed rocket to reach orbit. It's the organization's highest award (and has also been awarded to Neil Armstrong).

Jeff Bezos (Founder of Amazon) & Richard Branson (Founder of the Virgin Group) are 2 other billionaires with interests in space travel & tourism. Their space related companies are, respectively, Blue Origin & Virgin Galactic.

With Tesla Inc, Musk is pushing for the adoption of electric cars, as a form of green (non-polluting) technology. Tesla is planning to set up a factory in India, and Musk has publicly hailed India’s aim of moving to an all electric fleet by 2030. (Currently, Mahindra & Mahindra is the only company selling electric cars in India).
  
The Tesla Model S (luxury electric sedan) was awarded 5.4 stars -out-of-5 stars safety rating from the National Highway Safety Administration of America, the highest rating ever given to an automobile.



On 12th August 2013, Musk introduced his latest endeavor -- the Hyperloop, a new form of transportation that could theoretically send people from San Francisco to Los Angeles in half an hour (Or Delhi to Mumbai in 55 minutes) using pressurized tubes. The idea has been open sourced – which means anyone can use the idea and take it further. Musk has said if no one else will build it, he will do it himself.

In 2016, SpaceX built a one mile Hyperloop vacuum track in California, & challenged student teams all over the world to build Hyperloop pods to race on this track. Closer home, a small group of students from BITS Pilani formed Team Hyperloop India in 2015. They are the first and only team from India, and one of the two from Asia that has been selected to build and race their Hyperloop pod (called the OrcaPod) on the SpaceX track.



During his childhood (at the age of 12), Musk taught himself computer programming and created a video game called Blastar, which he sold for $500.

Even though he began his career in IT, Elon Musk isn’t a big fan of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He founded OpenAI a non-profit AI research company that aims to carefully promote and develop friendly AI in such a way as to benefit humanity as a whole. Their belief is that the rapid growth of AI could lead to human extinction and OpenAI is working to create a positive impact to counter the same.

Musk has a very cool Hollywood connection. He provided a large amount of inspiration for the Hollywood character Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man). In fact, parts of Iron Man 2 were actually filmed inside and outside of SpaceX. Musk even has a cameo in the film!



Like Steve Jobs and other famous entrepreneurs, Musk's official annual salary for Tesla Motors is just $1.

He has confessed to naming one of his sons, Xavier, after Professor Xavier of the X-Men.

Musk has been referred to as a "thrillionaire", a new class of high-tech entrepreneurs looking to use their wealth to make science-fiction dreams into a modern reality.

As I close this edition of the GK Nugget, I’d like to share one of Elon Musk’s quotes – “Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating” – We should apply that to all parts of our life.

That’s all on this edition. See you next time.



P.S.: - In case you want to read more about Elon Musk, pick up this book about him. Titled, "Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping Our Future" it is written by Ashlee Vance and available on Amazon. I'm half way through my copy of the book.


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