Who is Elon Musk ? Person of the year says Time Magazine
This man aspires for a better planet. He is a clown, genius edgelord visionary, industrialist and showman. A madcap mix of Thomas Edison, P.T. Andrew Carnegie, Barnum and Watchmen's doctor Manhattan are three of his many names. He is the blue-skinned, brooding man-god who creates electric cars and takes them to Mars. SpaceX, his startup rocket company, is now America's leading spacefaring venture. His car company, Tesla (worth $1 trillion), controls two-thirds the multibillion dollar electric-vehicle marketplace it created. With a net worth exceeding $250 billion, Musk is the wealthiest private citizen, at least in paper. He is a major player in robotics, solar, cryptocurrency, climate, brain-computer implant to stop the threat of artificial intelligence, and underground tunnels that move freight and people at super speed. He rules Wall Street: Matt Levine, a Bloomberg columnist, wrote that Wall Street is now valued not on the cash flows of things but on proximity to Elon Musk in February. This was after Musk's "Gamestonk!" tweet. The meme-stock craze reached the top of the social media landscape when the tweet "!!" was sent.
Elon MUSK person of the year
Musk has spent his entire life defying the haters; now it seems he is finally in a position to put them in their place. 2021 was Elon Unbound. SpaceX was awarded NASA's exclusive contract in April to send American astronauts to the moon for the first-time since 1972. Musk hosted Saturday Night Live in May. Hertz, a car-rental giant, announced in October that it would add 100,000 Teslas. His unmistakably phallic Twitter avatar sent the juvenile tweets days after one of his rockets had launched NASA's first antiasteroid-planetary-defense test. A few weeks later, another rocket launched a mission to study cosmic-X-rays. And, amid Musk's sale to 10% of his Tesla stock. This process, which roiled markets and cost him billions, should generate enough tax revenue for the Commerce Department for a full year. In a fit of pique at the proposals by liberal Senators to tax billionaires, Musk created a Twitter poll that prompted the sale.
Although many people are considered larger than life, very few of them deserve that title. What percentage of us can live beyond our lifetime? How many of us will make it to the digital textbooks that our spacefaring descendants will read? It's easier to be remembered for doing bad than it is for doing good, as Shakespeare noted in Julius Caesar. How many people will be remembered for their contributions, rather than their crimes, and leave an impression on the world? Musk was mocked a few years back as a con artist and lunatic on the brink of bankruptcy. This shy South African man with Asperger’s syndrome, who survived a terrible childhood and has overcome personal tragedy, now bends governments to his ambitions.
Elon MUSK is world's richest person
Musk believes that his wealth is not a side effect of his ability to see and do things others can't in areas where the stakes could be very high. Antonio Gracias, Musk’s friend for over 20 years, says that Musk was raised in a difficult environment and has a special brain. He also served on the boards at SpaceX and Tesla. "Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of people in that situation don't come out of it. A small number of people do come out of it with the ability to make extraordinary decisions under extreme pressure and the unending drive to change humanity's course.
Musk must still answer to the earthly authorities for such cosmic ambitions rarely come without consequences.
His companies have been accused of sexual harassment and poor work conditions. In October, a federal jury ordered Tesla $137 million to pay a Black employee for claiming that the automaker ignored racial abuse. They were also fined for numerous regulatory violations. Tesla's Autopilot software is being investigated by the feds. It has been involved in a number of accidents with parked emergency vehicles, leading to injuries and even death. China's expansion required that the company abide by its oppressive autocrats.
His hard-driving style is known for the devastating effects it has on his staff.
Musk has been described by former associates as being petty and cruel, especially when challenged or frustrated. His seventh son, Grimes, an experimental musician and his mother, was the reason he split from Grimes. His brother, Kimbal Musk, his business partner, says that although he is an expert in business, his gift is not empathy for people. He made statements deflating the COVID-19 virus and breaking local health regulations in order to keep his factories afloat. This also fueled skepticism regarding vaccine safety. Musk told TIME that he is vaccinating his children and that the science supports it. However, he stated that he opposed vaccine mandates. He said that the unvaccinated are "taking a risk" but that people are always risky. Musk says that he believes we have to be vigilant about the erosion of freedom and liberty in America. The vastness of human misery can seem like an afterthought to someone who has his sights set on Mars.
Musk is often portrayed as a naive supervillain.
He is often grouped with tech bros and space playboys who view money as the highest form of scorekeeping, and rockets as the ultimate toy. He's not like that. He's a manufacturing magnate, and he moves metals, not bits. His rockets were built by an autodidact with a vision that was impossible to ignore. They have saved billions of dollars and reenergized America's space ambitions. It has the potential to blow away global warming if it keeps its promises. The man from the future, where technology makes everything possible, is a throwback back to America's glorious industrial past before it stopped producing anything other than rules, limitations, obstacles, and Facebook.
Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society, says Musk is a humanist.
He is not a nice person in the traditional sense. Musk sent an unsolicited check to the Mars Society in 2001 as a young dot-com millionaire. He wants to be immortal for his great deeds. This makes him an asset to humanity because he defines great deeds as something that is good for the whole human race. He seeks glory. He views money as a means to an end, and not a means. Who is evaluating Thomas Edison today based on which of Edison's inventions made a profit?
Musk is a symbol of the zeitgeist in this liminal age, despite his eccentricities.
This was the year that we emerged from the 100-year plague to discover there was no normal. It was a year that felt like we were on the edge of a brave and terrifying new world. Everything was up for negotiation, from how we travel and work to what we treasure and find meaning in. Musk is the avatar of infinite possibility. He is the one who will bring the remade world to life, where the mundane becomes routine and the unexpected becomes logical. Where Earth and humanity can still survive. Maybe no man should be able to have all of that power. This vision of the greater good may come with a cost. Musk doesn't care if people don't vote or sign up for his wild zero-gravity ride.
Musk is a gentle, soft-spoken man with a quiet voice that elicits joy, exasperation and astonishing ambition all in one quiet register.
Tesla is perhaps his most significant source of fame and wealth, and his greatest contribution to the world. Space is where he has his wildest and most extreme ambitions. Musk's toddler, X AE-Xii (pronounced "X") has just started to say car. His father replies, "Rocket!"
Musk states that Musk's goal was to make humankind multi-planetary and to enable them to be a spacefaring civilisation.
He says this not because it would prove profitable but because it would be exciting. The next big thing is to create a self-sustaining Mars city and bring all the Earth's animals and plants there. It's sort of like a futuristic Noah's Ark. It's possible to bring more than one, but it's still a bit strange if you only have two.
It is easy to see how Musk could believe in something so unlikely. This is especially evident when you consider the incredible success of his spacefaring achievements. SpaceX almost bankrupted Musk before it became America's passport into the solar system. The Falcon 1, its first rocket, was destroyed three times before it reached orbit in 2008. After the Falcon 9 failed three times, the company created the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy. The Falcon Heavy has three clusters of nine engine engines. Because of the many moving parts that can cause catastrophic failures, clustering engines were once considered to be a bad idea. This was one of many assumptions Musk challenged. Scott Pace, director at George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, says that "when I first looked at clustering engines on the Falcon 9 I had to roll my eyes." "But that's what makes Elon Musk smarter than I."
Rockets were not supposed to fly more than one time. Over the decades, used rocket stages were discarded to the sea.
Musk claims that no one has ever created a fully-reusable orbital rocket. Musk says, "We live on a planet that makes this a very difficult job." It's almost like a video game. SpaceX has successfully landed the first stage on 90 Falcon 9 rockets, and reflown 72. Musk has not yet achieved full reusability through reflying both rocket stage.
America's space industry was a dead end before Musk.
NASA canceled the last spacecraft in 2011 after a deal was made with SpaceX to provide uncrewed cargo resupply runs for the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX's 2012 trip was two years ahead of its competition. NASA tapped NASA in 2014 to send crews to the ISS. SpaceX's maiden crew to the ISS was launched aboard a Dragon spacecraft by SpaceX in May 2020. Boeing is unable to plan a test flight without crew until next year due to delays in development.
Musk replaced the old-fashioned instrument panels with three large touch screens for Dragon. The screens are the control sticks. Spacecraft's orbit, attitude and re-entry engine settings are all controlled by the screens. Doug Hurley, an astronaut and commander of the first crewed Dragon spaceflight, was concerned that the screens might slow down reaction times. However, SpaceX has made Dragon an automated ship. Hurley states that there are no plans for any manual flying on NASA missions, except in the event of a system failure.
Musk is still open to taking risks despite his success.
Musk's next rocket, the Starship will be lifted into space by a Falcon Super Heavy. It will land on the moon and then return to Earth. This so-called single-stage-to-orbit model has been the white whale of rocket designers for generations. Four prototype Starships burst on landing during test flights. This was before the successful test in May. A single crash can be devastating for NASA and many private aerospace companies. It can take years to recover. SpaceX is more like a Silicon Valley startup. The goal of SpaceX is to fail quickly, iterate and learn. This can quickly become expensive. This can quickly become expensive.
SpaceX's Starlink program aims to launch as many as 42,000 satellites for Internet service.
However, this kind of orbiting swarm can cause havoc to sky gazing. Neal Lane, senior fellow in science technology at Rice University, asks: "Just how much stuff would you like to put there?" "The astronomers make appropriate noise about interfering in their ability to observe." (Gwynne shotwell, SpaceX president, tells TIME that the company is investigating the issue.
NASA selected SpaceX in April to build the lunar landing platform for its Artemis program.
This was partly due to a $2.9 billion low-ball bid. Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' bid, came in at over twice that amount. Bezos filed suit against Musk, accusing him of undercutting his competition. Musk used the occasion to celebrate his win by slamming Bezos's victory: "If lobbying and lawyers could get you to orbit, Bezos should be on Pluto," he tweeted. The federal claims court ruled in Musk’s favor in November.
Musk plans to launch the Starship into orbit sometime in the next month. The Starship is powered by 33 engines and rests on a massive, 230-ft. long steel tube that weighs nearly 7.5 millions lb. Supercooled liquid fuel. He believes that we could do a loop around it as soon as 2023 and land on its surface in three years.
SpaceX is a privately held company. Therefore, it isn't known if it is profitable.
Musk claims that this is not the point. Musk hopes that one day the rockets will be capable of carrying 100 people to Mars. The ships can then be refilled with fuel from Mars and returned to Earth. Musk stops for a moment and asks when he envisions this happening. He seems to be calculating all variables, including federal regulations, production schedules, test flight targets, and bathroom requirements. Musk finally states, "It'll surprise me if we don't land on Mars within five year."
What are the human activities on MARS ? And for how long?
Since landing on the moon 50 years ago, we have not had much use for it. Musk believes interplanetary life, such as the emergence multicellular organisms and the possibility of humanity finding a home on Mars, is the next big leap in evolution. Experts aren’t so certain. John Logsdon, the founder of Space Policy Institute, says that "I have real doubts regarding the viability of large settlements on Mars." What would the basis of a Mars economy look like? What would the foundation of a Mars economy look like?
Musk isn't afraid.
Musk is not deterred, he continues to gamble on the concrete slab dotted with huge machines of his creation. Musk says that his chances of reaching orbit for the first time are not high. "I would estimate it to be 50%," he says. The dark Gulf surface stretches across his shoulders; the cell phones here receive signals from Mexico, just a stone's throw away. What does it feel like to imagine the largest rocket ever built exploding into a billion-dollar fireball. He smiles and says "Pretty scary!" "So, launch day is guaranteed to be exciting!