Elon Musk: rocketman on a mission
The SpaceX founder is determined to get people to the Red Planet by 2024
IN A world where Covid-19 has dominated headlines, sharing space with only the horrific US riots, it had to take an event that was out of this world to tear people away from the harsh realities of our lives. In this case it was quite literally out of this world – and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Millions across the globe tuned in to watch the Falcon 9 rocket take off towards the International Space Station (ISS), some 406km from Earth’s surface, returning a bit of awe and wonder to the world.
It was the first time in nine years that US space agency Nasa had sent astronauts into orbit from US soil. Before then, any time Americans wanted to leave the planet, it had to be from a launchpad in Kazakhstan.
What made this launch from Florida even more special was that it wasn’t just the government agency sending two astronauts into space – they were basically hitching a 19-hour ride in a privately built cosmic taxi.
Thanks to eccentric billionaire Elon Musk’s aerospace company, SpaceX, the Crew Dragon Demo-2 flight arrived safely, 10 minutes ahead of its scheduled time. And so, it made history as the first private spacecraft to dock at the ISS.
Nasa astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will spend four months on the ISS along with an American and two Russians. Elon (48) was overcome with emotion at the achievement. “It’s been 18
years working towards this goal, so it’s hard to believe it’s happened,” he said after the launch. “This is something I think humanity should be excited about and proud of occurring on this day.” It’s certainly something he’s proud of – and it’s the start of his ambitious plan to get to Mars, insiders say. As Garrett Reisman, former SpaceX director of space operations, points out, everyone at the company – from the senior vice-president to the barista who makes staff their coffee – “will tell you they’re working to make humans multi-planetary”.
ELON has come a long way from being the Pretoria kid who was so brutally bullied he was once hospitalised. Now he’s worth more than $37 billion (R647,6bn), the owner of renowned companies such as SpaceX and electric car company Tesla, and a regular headline-maker – although not always for the right reasons.
Although a genius by many accounts, his erratic behaviour on Twitter has on many occasions left investors tearing their hair out.
After one particular tirade in 2018 he got into legal trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates American markets. He’d made statements that influenced the share price, which is illegal for publicly listed companies.
He was charged with securities fraud, fined $20 million (then R290m) and had to step down as chairman of Tesla for three years.
He also needed to have his tweets vetted by a company lawyer, which may be a good thing given his online antics.
That year wasn’t Elon’s best. In September 2018 he made an appearance on a podcast interview drinking whiskey and smoking dagga. A video of him downing drinks and coughing his way through a haze of smoke went viral, causing consternation at Nasa.
The agency has a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and Elon had to address the issue in a TV interview. “I don’t smoke pot,” he said. “As anyone who’s watched could tell, I have no idea how to smoke pot.”
He clearly got his act together because the recent launch wouldn’t have happened if his security clearances had been revoked.
He also seems to have settled down on the romance front after dating a string of beauties, including actress Amber Heard.
He recently became a father for the seventh time. He and equally eccentric Canadian musician Grimes, real name Claire Elise Boucher, welcomed baby boy X Æ A-Xii (pronounced Ex Ash A 12, we think!) in May.
IT’S anyone’s guess what kind of unusual upbringing the new addition to the Musk family will have but it’ll be nothing like what Elon went through. He and his brother, Kimbal, and sister, Tosca, grew up in a volatile home. His engineer father, Errol, didn’t have a good relationship with his kids or their mother, Maye, and the couple divorced when Elon was eight.
In 2018, Errol admitted he’d fathered a child with his stepdaughter Jana (now 32). He and Elon have been estranged for years. Elon left South Africa when he was 17 to start a new life in his mother’s native Canada, and slowly but surely started to build a life there.
He later got accepted into the University of Pennsylvania in the US to study economics and physics and upon graduating headed to Silicon Valley, California, where he worked on his PhD at Stanford University.
But he lasted just a week before he dropped out to start a business with Kimbal called Zip2, which developed software for media companies.
Zip2 was later sold in 1999 for $341m (then R2bn) and Elon took a $22m (R132m) cut.
Not long after, he spotted his next opportunity: X.com. The online bank was eventually sold to eBay in 2002 and Elon pocketed a comfortable $180m (then R1,6bn) after tax.
That same year he founded SpaceX and announced his ultimate goal was to build a BFR – big f***king rocket, as he put it.
His reason? To help mankind colonise Mars before overpopulation renders Earth uninhabitable.
By 2004 he’d founded Solarcity, now America’s largest installer of solar panels, and Tesla, the luxury electric car company that’s revolutionised the motor industry.
Now, he has his sights firmly set on Mars and he’s given a great deal of thought to what it will be like. There’ll be lots of jobs, he tweeted earlier this year, and it’ll be a “direct democracy” so people living there can make their own decisions, instead of a government doing so.
The city built on the Red Planet will also have food grown on solar-powered hydroponic farms and have “an outdoorsy, fun atmosphere”, he told Popular Mechanics last year. “You’d probably want to have some faceted glass dome with a park so you can walk around without a [space] suit.”
He plans to send a SpaceX rocket to Mars by 2022 and wants to send people there by 2024.
He’s not sure he’ll even make it himself. As he puts it, “I’ll probably be long dead before Mars becomes self-sustaining. But I’d like to at least be around to see a bunch of ships land on Mars.”
Given his history, he’s the one person who could make it happen.