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.
