Elon Musk Notecards
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 95. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
A group of the head people at Paypal went on a trip to Las Vegas as a celebratory trip, and they said that Elon Musk spent most of his time learning about rockets, "reading some obscure soviet rocket manual that was all moldy and looked like it had been bought off of eBay.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 136. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
After being rejected to launch at the Vandenberg air force base, the SpaceX team decided instead to launch on a string of Pacific islands called Kwajalein, or Kwaj.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 142. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Almost exactly a year later, on March 15, 2007, the Falcon 1 launched again. This time, it flew for a couple of minutes, separated its first stage, and just as the engineers started to get excited, it began to wiggle. And then the wiggle became a shake, and the rocket crashed back down to earth.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Another concept that Musk has talked of, is something he is calling "The Boring Company". It is a drilling company with the goal of creating underground tunnels for multi-layer highways, as city populations increase and traffic gets worse.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 182. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Beyond the surroundings, Downey Jr. really wanted a peek inside Musk's psyche. The men walked, sat in Musk's office, and had lunch. Downey Jr. appreciated that Musk was not a foul-smelling, fidgety, coder whack job. What Downey Jr.picked up on instead were Musk's "accessible eccentricities" and the feeling that he was an unpretentious sort who could work alongside the people in the factory. Both Musk and Stark were the type of men, according to Downey Jr., who "had seized an idea to live by and something to dedicate themselves to" amd were not going to waste a moment.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 181. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Downey Jr. Had heard stories of a modern Howard Hughes who owned a complex about 10 miles away, by the name of Elon Musk. Instead of visualizing how things had been for Hughes, Downey Jr. thought he might be able to get a glimpse of the real thing by visiting Elon Musk at SpaceX. When he got there and took the tour, he said, "My mind is not easily blown, but this place and this guy were amazing."
https://qz.com/493152/elon-musks-politics-are-as-enigmatic-as-his-businesses/
Elon Musk has some very mixed political views. He considers himself to be half liberal, half conservative, in that he is socially liberal but fiscally conservative.
Gregersen, Erik. "Elon Musk." Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 15 Feb. 2017, www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk.
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. He is a multi-billionaire entrepreneur who has founded and co-founded a series of major companies, such as Tesla, SpaceX, Zip2, PayPal, SolarCity, Hyperloop, OpenAI, Neuralink, and The Boring Company.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 103. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Elon Musk's original idea for SpaceX was something called "Mars Oasis", which was a plan for sending up a greenhouse and landing it on mars, so the world could see if plants would grow on mars.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 170. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Former Tesla spokesman David Vespremi said, "We were working ourselves to a point of exhaustion. Then came this profound moment where we were reminded that building the car was not about getting an IPO or selling it to a bunch of rich dudes but because it might change the world.
Gregersen, Erik. "Elon Musk." Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 15 Feb. 2017, www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk.
In 1988, Musk moved to Canada to attend Queen's university in Ontario. He later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a bachelor's degree in physics and economics. He transferred again to Stanford, but left after only two days to found his first company, Zip2.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 165. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
In 2007, Tesla reached 260 employees and came near to bankruptcy while trying to produce for the unexpected amount of famous people wanting to get there hands on Tesla's first car, the Roadster.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 171. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
In August 2007, the Tesla board decided to demote Martin Eberhard, the original Co-founder of Tesla, from the position of CEO to president of technology, because of his lack of ability to assess and acknowledge key issues. Michael Marks, who used to own a massive electronic supplier Flextronics.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 145. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
In July 2006, Elon Musk built his first car for Tesla, the Roadster, and took made an announcement. "Until today," Musk said, "all electric cars have sucked."
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 116. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
In order to prevent getting ousted from SpaceX the same way that he did from Paypal, Elon Musk started by putting a $100 million investment in the company up front, a good 1/3 of his fortune at the time in 2002.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 136. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Kwaj was originally used during the Ronald Reagan "Star Wars" era, and is now commonly used by private rocket startups.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 174. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Later that year, Marks left the company, and was replaced by Ze'ev Drori. Drori had Silicon Valley experience making chips.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 145. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Many celebrities promised to buy the $90,000 car, and since Tesla was not authorized to sell the vehicle yet, they created a "club" that cost $90,000 to join but upon joining you got a free car.
https://qz.com/493152/elon-musks-politics-are-as-enigmatic-as-his-businesses/
Musk is considered a significant, but not top-tier in terms of lobbying and politics. He has donated large amount of money to politicians on either side.
Gregersen, Erik. "Elon Musk." Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 15 Feb. 2017, www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk.
Musk was bullied in during his childhood. At one point he was thrown down a set of stairs and beaten until he lost consciousness.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 177. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Musk would used to run daily google searches on Tesla and look for any negative news articles he could find, and tell the team to fix it.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Neuralink, an even more experimental concept, is Musk's take on a neurotechnology startup, that plans on researching the integration of the human mind and AI, for reasons like increasing memory, or a more direct link with computers.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 117. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Nevada Alexander Musk, Elon Musk's first child with his wife, Justine, died when he was only 10 months old. He died of sudden infant death syndrome.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 139. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
On March 24, 2006, SpaceX launched its first rocket, the Falcon 1, from Kwaj. It did not go so well. About 25 seconds in, it crashed back down to earth.
Hawkins, Andrew J. "Elon Musk Offers to Rebuild Puerto Rico's Power Grid Using Solar." The Verge, The Verge, 6 Oct. 2017, www.theverge.com/2017/10/6/16438054/elon-musk-puerto-rico-solar-power-tesla.
On October 5, 2017, when asked about rebuilding Puerto Rico's power grid using using independent solar and battery technology, he responded saying "The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too. Such a decision would be in the hands of the PR govt, PUC, any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of PR." The governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rosseló responded saying "Let's talk".
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
OpenAI, one of Musk's most recent concepts, is a research company for developing better, and safer, AI. Musk often expresses the dangers of a true AI, saying it could possibly end humanity.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 103. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Originally the people at the Mars Society, a group of scientists and astrophysicists who Elon Musk first met with about his Mars Oasis project, saw him as another billionaire interesting in funding a project and then losing his entire fortune on it. It wasn't until later that they saw his true potential.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
SolarCity is Musk's solar panel company, whose overall goal is to reduce global warming by switching to electric power. The soon-to-be company is opening what will triple the size of the current largest solar panel company in the United States.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
SpaceX is certainly Elon Musk's largest company. Originally created because Musk didn't like the price of ICBMs used for rockets, and discovered that the manufacturing cost was only 3% of the average market price. Now, it is the first private company to dock with the ISS, and made history by being the first to successfully land and reusing a rocket. The Dragon shuttle has resupplied the ISS 12 times with permits from NASA.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 170. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Steve Eberhard made some attempts to motive the team out of the financial crisis. One day, he brought in a picture of his young daughter. He asked the Tesla engineers why he did this. One of them guessed that it was because his daughter would be driving the car when she was old enough. He said, "No. We are building this because by the time she is old enough to drive she will know a car as something completely different to how we know it today, just like you don't think of a phone as a thing on a wall with a cord on it. It's this future that depends on you."
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 165. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Steve Eberhard, a co-founder of Tesla, was known for making quick decisions, and and never over analyzing a situation. Rarely did Tesla get hung up on projects during his time there.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 172. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Tensions built between Eberhard and Musk. After a few months, it became unbearable and Eberhard left the company altogether.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 169. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Tesla did a good job of keeping employee costs down. Instead of the proven guy who probably didn't want that hard for $120,000, they hired the kid fresh out of Stanford for $45,000
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Tesla is very famous for its luxury electric cars. Musk's dream is to create enough superchargers, electric car battery chargers, across the nation that it becomes a reality to be able to drive long distances and stop at a supercharger station to resupply, just the same as gas cars get fuel every so often.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 167. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Tesla partnered with an enthusiastic but not totally capable manufacturing partner, who promised a state of the art battery factory in Thailand. Instead of a factory, Tesla found a concrete slab with posts holding the roof. Thailand's humid conditions were not good for the batteries, and Tesla ended up spending nearly $75,000 on putting in drywall and an air conditioning system, and training the employee's how to work with the batteries.
O'Kane, Sean. "Elon Musk's Boring Company Wins Approval to Dig a Two-Mile Test Tunnel in California." The Verge, The Verge, 24 Aug. 2017, www.theverge.com/2017/8/24/16199410/elon-musk-the-boring-company-test-tunnel-hawthorne-california.
The Boring Company, Elon Musk's company for digging tunnels in hopes of multi-layer traffic, has been approved by the city of Hawthorne to build a short, 2 mile test tunnel in the city.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
The Hyperloop is a concept for rapidly travelling medium and long distances created by Elon Musk. It is a pod that shoots through a tube at speeds that can theoretically reach 750 mph, using a combination of air compressors and linear induction motors. Other companies have began working on this, most prominently Hyperloop One, a company that has been testing the hyperloop and hopes to make hyperloop tubes all over the world.
Jervis, Rick. "Could Puerto Rico Go Solar? Its Governor Said Talks with Elon Musk about That Went Well." USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 7 Oct. 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/10/07/puerto-rico-electric-grid-solar/743129001/.
The talks with Ricardo Rosseló reportedly went well, according to his Twitter account. Tesla is already sending Powerwalls for nighttime storage after a 25 minute phone call.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 169. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Tim Watkins was sent for Valor Equity, a Chicago based investment firm that specialized in fine-tuning manufacturing operations, to double check the product pricing of the Roadster. He came back with disastrous results. The Roadster would have to cost about $200,000 to make, while they had only been selling them for about $95,000.
Gregersen, Erik. "Elon Musk." Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 15 Feb. 2017, www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk.
When Musk was 12, he got into computers and created a BASIC-based game called Blastar, which he later sold to a computer magazine for $500.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 177. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
When he got back to the Hughes warehouse, Downey Jr. asked Favreau to put a Tesla Roadster in Tony Stark's office. It would symbolized that Stark was so cool and connected that he could get a Roadster before it even went on sale. On a deeper level, It showed somewhat of a bond between Stark and Musk.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 95. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
When on a vacation to South Africa for the first time in years, Musk came down with a serious case of Malaria. He was bedridden for 10 days, in which he lost 45 pounds. He says, "I can very close to dying. That's my lesson for taking a vacation: vacations will kill you."
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, page 181. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
While filming the movie Iron Man (2007), director Jon Favreau rented out a complex in Los Angeles that once belonged to Hughes Aircraft. The facility had a series of interlocking hangars and was used as the production office for the movie. The old hangar gave Robert Downey Jr., the actor for Tony Stark A.K.A. Iron Man, inspiration and a bit of nostalgia for how the Hangar had fallen into disrepair.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
X.com, an online payment service founded by Musk, later merged with a company called Confinity, and it was renamed to PayPal. In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.2 billion.
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Ecco, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017.
Zip2 was an internet map system designed for online news companies. It was started with Musk's brother, Kimbal, and was later sold to Compaq for $307 million, and was Musk's first leap to fortune.
