Russian roots of the genius Elon Musk: What secrets are hidden by the biography of an outstanding engineer

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Life story Elon Reeve Musk is a real lesson in how a few simple principles, applied relentlessly, can produce amazing results. A small introverted boy who spends all his time reading books and a computer, which his classmates constantly made fun of. He was regularly beaten by cool bullies until he was strong enough to defend himself. How did a clumsy South African botanist become an internationally renowned entrepreneur, outstanding engineer, and one of the richest people on the planet?

Musk was born in 1971 in South Africa, the son of model and nutritionist Maya and electromechanical engineer Errol Musk. Elon described his father as "a terrible person." As a child, Musk was a real bookworm. Now he is a wealthy, successful citizen of three countries: South Africa, Canada and the United States.

The first steps

Elon showed his talent as a child. At only twelve years old, he not only created a video game himself, but was also able to sell it to a computer magazine. In 1988, Musk received a Canadian passport and left South Africa.

Elon moved to Silicon Valley in the summer of 1995. He initially enrolled in the Ph. D. program in Applied Physics at Stanford University. Just a couple of days later, Musk changed his mind, abandoned it and moved to his brother in sunny California. Kimball Musk is only 15 months younger. He had just managed to graduate from Queen's University with a degree in business. Together, the brothers launched a startup Zip2. It was an online business directory with maps. It didn't take long and he turned into a pretty successful company. In 1999, Musk sold it to computer maker Compaq for three hundred million dollars.

Elon did not want to stop there and founded on his own another company for the provision of online financial services X.com. His main competitor was Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel just months after X.com. They even had offices in the same building. The two companies merged in March 2000. The newly minted firm was named PayPal. This was their main product - online money transfer services. In the fall of 2002, the company was bought out by the online auction service Ebay for their shares worth $ 1.5 billion. Elon Musk, who was PayPal's largest shareholder, now owned $ 165 million in Ebay.

Elon Musk's mission

An ingenious engineer is not one of those who sit idly by. After leaving PayPal, Musk founded three more companies. He invested almost his entire fortune in the creation of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. Ilona's companies are focused on reducing climate risks by accelerating the transition to clean electricity.

In fact, Musk's plans are much more far-reaching. His gaze is directed far into the future. Elon believes that if humanity continues to be limited to one planet for its existence, then its survival will be in great danger. Sooner or later, some kind of catastrophe - maybe an asteroid, a supervolcano, or a nuclear war - will put an end to human existence on Earth. It was for this purpose that Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX. Its global mission is to save humanity from a dying planet.

Musk received the special engineering training required to be able to design rockets. He is the Chief Technology Officer as well as the CEO of SpaceX. Gwynn Shotwell became a key employee of the company. She is Musk's right-hand man and is in charge of business development. Gwynn is a true legend in the world of space technology, without her the company could very well fail.

Musk's first rockets were the Falcon 1 (launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (launched in 2010). They have been designed as economically as possible. Elon's goal was to make his brainchild much cheaper than competitors' missiles. Then there was Falcon Heavy (launched in 2018). This rocket could carry cargo into orbit twice the carrying capacity of the nearest competitor's product, and it cost three times less. After that, SpaceX announced the Super Heavy-Starship system, an even more advanced version. It is designed to provide fast transportation between cities on Earth and the construction of bases on the Moon and Mars.

In addition, SpaceX has developed the Dragon spacecraft. It delivers cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). The Dragon can carry up to seven astronauts.

Personal life and Russian roots

A genius rarely talks about his personal life. Only once did he admit in an interview that he simply cannot be truly happy alone. This fear of loneliness comes from childhood. Musk's parents divorced when he was still a teenager, and the future billionaire met his first wife at university. Justin Wilson was a very beautiful, modest and very ambitious girl. He looked after her very beautifully and persistently. Justin ignored him for a long time, but eventually gave up. In addition to flowers, Musk always gave the girl his credit card when she went to the bookstore. At the same time, he said: "Take whatever you want." The relationship seemed like a fairy tale, but after a couple of years they broke up. The two leaders didn't get along together.

After the divorce, the engineer did not grieve for long. Just six weeks after him, he married British actress Talulah Riley. Just a couple of years later, a peaceful parting followed. The reason was again Musk's obsession with his work. After that, the billionaire was credited with an affair with Cameron Diaz, but there is no confirmation of this. Then he returned to Talulah again. He left again. This was followed by a scandalous relationship with Amber Heard.

Since 2018, Elon Musk has been in a relationship with Canadian singer Grimes (Claire Alice Boucher). On May 5, 2020, the couple had an heir. For Ilona himself, this child became the sixth. Boucher's mother is a prosecutor and a well-known public figure in Canada. Grandma Grimes is of Ukrainian origin. Since childhood, the singer has become accustomed to Russian speech. So she learned the language pretty well.

Boucher more than once left hints of Russian roots in her work. On the cover of one of her albums there is an inscription “I love” and a quote from “Song of the last meeting” by Anna Akhmatova. The singer calls the latter her favorite poet. Once at a concert, Grimes sang Pushkin's poem "I Loved You", transcribed to music, in Russian. Later she sang Yanka Diaghileva's song "I repeat 10 times and again."

Elon Musk once responded in Russian to the meme "How do you like this, Elon Musk?" After that, he sometimes used Russian in messages. When asked to comment, he said that he really liked the sound of the Russian language. Musk's tweets have always generated a lot of speculation. Some users have suggested that Ilona was taught the language by his heart's friend, Grimes.

Tesla

Musk has long been interested in the capabilities of electric vehicles. In 2004, he became one of the main sponsors of Tesla Motors. It is an electric vehicle company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Mark Tarpenning. Tesla unveiled its first car in 2006. He could travel almost four hundred kilometers without charging. Among other things, it was a sports car that accelerated to one hundred kilometers per hour in just four seconds.

Two years later, Tesla unveiled the Model S sedan. The car conquered everyone not only with its amazing technical characteristics, but also with its design. After that, there was the luxury SUV Model X. In 2017, the company released a more budget car - the Model 3.

Is the human species obsolete?

Many thinkers, including Musk, say that artificial superintelligence (AGSI) - smarter than humans - poses a huge existential risk to the future of humanity. It is for this reason that in December 2015, Elon co-founded the nonprofit OpenAI to develop "AI-friendly". OpenAI provides free access to its cutting-edge AI research results. The idea is to spread AGSI security practices and prevent powerful financial groups from monopolizing AGSI.

Mistakes, hard times and controversy

Elon Musk is not a perfect hero who never makes mistakes. He has a brilliant mind, extraordinary vision and just superpowers. Moreover, he is a very difficult person. His former employees tell about it. Musk is used to working 80 hours a week and expects his engineers to work the same amount. He is often impatient with colleagues. Often, being annoyed, he can fire a person right on the spot for what he considers to be a manifestation of incompetence. Others say that this, nevertheless, does not happen so often.

Musk is also very careless in his public statements and judgments. He often sends incendiary tweets, for which he later has to apologize.

In 2018, Musk expressed doubts about Tesla's public trading and wrote a series of tweets about it. He wanted to make this company private. Almost immediately, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for securities fraud. The lawsuit claimed the tweets were "false and misleading." Tesla's board rejected the SEC's proposed settlement. The reason was called Musk's threats to resign in this case. Tesla shares plummeted due to the news. Ultimately, a tougher version of the deal was adopted. The terms of the agreement obliged Ilon to leave the post of chairman for three years. However, they retained the chair of the general director for him.

Hyperloop

In 2013, Musk complained about the high cost of building a high-speed rail system in California. He proposed an alternative faster system, Hyperloop. This is a pneumatic tube, inside which a capsule with 28 passengers can be located. According to the project, it should go about 600 kilometers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in just half an hour. The speed of this transport of the future is almost equal to the speed of sound.

Musk claimed the Hyperloop would only cost $ 6 billion. Considering the fact that capsules can be dispatched every two minutes on average, the system can accommodate about six million people. This is able to fully satisfy the demand for this route. However, Musk immediately said that between the launches of SpaceX and Tesla, he could not devote enough time to the development of Hyperloop.

In May 2020, Musk once again experienced a storm of controversy. It was prompted by his decision to open a Tesla Motors manufacturing facility in Fremont, California, after a two-month closure. By these actions, he came into conflict with the administration of the Alameda County. It ruled that Tesla was not an "important business" and should remain closed due to the announced lockdown.

Despite all the controversy and rash public statements, Tesla and SpaceX have already gone through their rough early years of growth and formation. They are now on their way to becoming mega-profitable businesses. Today, little can stop or slow down Elon Musk, who seeks to take his companies "ad astra" - to the stars.

Fate is not always favorable to geniuses. Read our article about another brilliant engineer, a man far ahead of his time - the sad fall of genius: what went wrong for Nikola Tesla.