Elon Musk

Elon Musk

For a presentation to our U3A science and Technology group I’ve been researching Elon Musk. Musk who is about 45 and an American born in South Africa is a remarkable man. After making millions in Silicon Valley ( he was part founder of PayPal) he has used his money to found some amazing companies which may well transform our lives.

Firstly he helped to found Tesla, the electric motor car company. Tesla, although a minnow in motor industry standards with only about 50 thousand cars built last year, is valued greater than Ford. Not only is Tesla selling premium cars but more recently launched  a model designed for the mass market. Tesla also now owns Solar City a major US solar power venture. In conjunction with Panasonic Tesla is building a giant factory to produce batteries. The name of this, Gigafactory One hints at Musk’s PR obsession. The difference is that Musk while sometimes making apparently wild claims actually follows through and delivers. One gamble he is taking is to build a gigantic 100MW battery in Australia This he has undertaken to deliver in 100 days. If he fails on the 100 day target the battery will be free.

The most astonishing delivery of advanced technology has been with SpaceX. This rocket company founded by Musk is providing Falcon 9 rockets which are on contract to supply the International Space Station as well as selling satellite launches. One amazing thing about the Falcon 9 is that it designed to be reusable in a practical way. Musk is keen to reduce the cost of space launches. The Falcon 9 first stage lands back on barges at sea and then with refurbishment can be reused on subsequent launches.

Musk has near term ambitions to develop larger rockets and develop man rated spacecraft. At present the Falcon’s Dragon spacecraft is limited to delivering and returning freight. Musk has a headline grabbing habit recently shown by announcing a lunar flypast in 2018 with the yet untested Falcon Heavy and Dragon 2. Two very rich people are paying to be passengers on this trip.

Musk does have longer term ambitions which essentially are to travel to, and inhabit, Mars. His famous saying is that he would like to die on Mars but not on impact.. Although this ambition seems very difficult the track record of SpaceX suggests a serious attempt will be made. The hopes for colonisation of Mars are huge, with talk of a settlement of one million people. Obviously SpaceX  sees itself as just a pioneer and such immense plans will demand the involvement of many others.

Musk has been throwing off many ideas such as the apparently outlandish Hyperloop. This is for a sort of train in a vacuum tunnel which would travel at many hundreds of miles per hour. The maglev train would be powered by a linear electric motor. Trains in tunnels are hardly a new idea but serious attempts are being made to develop and test new technology. Part of his idea is to reduce the cost of tunnel boring- it has suited his sense of humour to set up “the boring company” to develop his ideas..

Another illustration of his humour is that the Falcon 9 recovery barges are named ( following the type of name used by the science fiction writer, Iain M Banks ) “of course I love you” and “first read the instructions”.

Trained in both science and business, Musk is now worth billions. He is putting a good chunk of that into developing the futuristic businesses above. Although he is an adept self publicist his ambitions have been realised so far to a remarkable extent. He has set out to change the world and he is well along the way.

His latest venture is to found Neuralink which is exploring man-computer interlinks. Again he seems to have in mind the neural lace of brain-computer interaction first presented as a science fiction idea.

Musk is famously cautious about artificial intelligence ( AI ). He has set up Open AI,  a non profit making company, to try to ensure that it’s development is benign.