Elon Musk swore in Russian. And people are sure that he is wrong

Biography of Elon Musk

Elon (also erroneously used as Elon) Reeve Musk is a Canadian-American entrepreneur, innovator, engineer-inventor, business tycoon investing in grandiose innovative projects.
The founder and head of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, co-founder of SolarCity and PayPal, this technomessiah, as he is often called in the press, personally participated in the development of new technologies in alternative energy, the design of environmentally friendly electric vehicles and economical solar power plants.

Elon Musk is a genius ahead of his time

He was involved in the creation of superhuman-level artificial intelligence OpenAI, a conceptual high-speed (twice as fast as an airplane) Hyperloop transport system, and the design of spaceships designed to realize his main goal - the creation of a human colony on Mars.

The recognized genius of our time is characterized by such personal qualities as perseverance, well-developed critical thinking, accurate analysis of events and one’s own actions, high diligence and efficiency. It is reliably known that Musk devotes up to one hundred hours a week to work.

Elon Musk's net worth: $18.6 billion (as of 2020)

Forbes placed Musk in 21st place on the list of the most influential people in the world, and he was one of the youngest people in this ranking, behind only Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun and the inventor of the Uber service Travis Kalanick.

As of January 2020, Elon Musk's fortune was estimated at $37.2 billion (for comparison, at the beginning of 2020 it was $20.9 billion), making him the 31st richest person in the world.

Life path of Elon Musk

Elon Musk is often compared to the fictional hero Tony Stark from the movie Iron Man. Actor Robert Downey Jr. drew his image from him.

Elon Musk's childhood

The future genius was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria (South Africa). His mother May then worked as a model, and later became a famous nutritionist. Errol, Elon's father, worked as an engineer in a prestigious company.

Little Elon became the first-born in this family. Following him were born brother Kimbel and sister Tosca. However, despite the appearance of three children, the marriage of Elon’s father and mother turned out to be unhappy. When he was seven years old, his parents divorced.

Elon Musk grew up in a large family

Initially, all three children remained with May's mother, who moved from Pretoria to Durban. But two years after the divorce, nine-year-old Elon wanted to return to his father. A little later, his younger brother came to the same decision.

Now it seems strange that the athletic and physically developed man that Musk is now, during his school childhood could not find a common language with his peers because of their passion for sports and other entertainment. Disagreements with them often ended in fights, and as a result of one of them, Ilon’s nose was even broken.

Perhaps it was precisely this discrepancy of interests that instilled in the schoolboy Elon a love for books, in which he looked for an opportunity to escape from the real world. He especially loved the science fiction sagas "The Academy" by Isaac Asimov and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams.

In the 80s the inquisitive child prodigy became interested in the possibilities of computer technology and literally begged his father for his first computer. Then they just began to enter everyday life. Using a primitive PC, Elon independently mastered programming and, at the age of twelve, created the video game Blastar, which, after being sold to one of the magazines, brought him his first $500.

Elon's father was unfavorable towards his son's computer studies, considering such a hobby to be a teenager's whim. This led to the fact that Elon Musk, at the age of 17, decided to leave for America, which seemed to him a country of unlimited opportunities. Here, after a short search, he settled on the farm of one of his Canadian relatives.

The youth of Elon Musk

Elon Musk's teenage period begins with his admission to Queens University in Ontario. According to the young man, he chose this university because many girls studied there. Naturally, young Elon immediately became interested in one of them - his future wife Justine.

After graduation, he entered the master's program in physics and mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Here, Musk continues to explore issues related to space flight, computer startups, and alternative energy.

Elon Musk studied at the oldest university in the United States, the University of Pennsylvania.

After the University of Pennsylvania, young Musk planned to continue his scientific work and for this purpose came to Stanford University (California) to work on his doctoral dissertation. However, he suddenly changed his plans and just two days after arriving in San Francisco, he dropped out of school, going into business with his brother in the famous Silicon Valley. Musk felt that this was where he could participate in the development of high-tech projects that would make his childhood dreams come true.

Elon Musk's successes in business

Musk's first business was the creation of a digital analogue of the Yellow Pages directory on the Internet, called Zip2. And here, for the first time, Musk truly showed his talent as an assertive businessman who did not bow his head in the face of difficulties. But there were enough difficulties. The first sprouts of Internet advertising were just emerging then. Many businessmen did not understand why they needed their own websites. There was such a shortage of money that for the first three months the Musk brothers slept on mattresses right in the office.

At first, my father helped out by sending 28 thousand dollars. But after a short time, things started to improve and people began to buy the product. True, the shareholders of the Zip2 company were afraid that young Musk would not cope, and entrusted management to a certain Rich Sorkin. And soon the larger company Compac bought Zip2 for $307 million. Moreover, $22 million went to Elon Musk personally. It was 27-year-old Musk's first substantial capital, most of which he used for a new project.

Such an amazing startup was the creation of online banking based on the company X.com. For the first time on the Internet, a platform was created with the help of which, in a few clicks of a computer mouse, it was possible to manage money in bank accounts.

In just a few months, more than 200 thousand people used online banking services. True, later difficult negotiations began, and then disputes with new partners in the person of Max Levchin and Peter Thiel. They ended with Musk's removal from the post of director of the company. To fight for his place in the sun, Elon Musk was even forced to interrupt his honeymoon with Justine. But this did not help: Musk lost his position as director, turning into a simple, but the largest shareholder.

An online banking system called X.com, created by Elon Musk, has been renamed PayPal. In 2002, the world's largest online auction site, eBay, bought PayPal for $1.5 billion, of which the largest shareholder, Elon Musk, got $250 million.

The online banking system created by Elon Musk made it possible to manage capital in bank accounts in a few clicks of a computer mouse.

Modern projects of Elon Musk

While actively developing his first projects, Elon Musk managed to be interested in the development of space flights, which had fascinated him since childhood, and also track developments in the creation of electric vehicles.

Space projects

After selling the company to PayPal, Musk decided it was time to make his childhood dreams of space flight a reality. In 2002, he founded SpaceX. Musk's original idea was to fly to Mars using an old Russian launch vehicle. Negotiations with its seller dragged on and reached a dead end. Later, Elon Musk was even afraid that unscrupulous sellers might kill him. So this naive idea had to be abandoned.

Then Elon Musk began developing a project to create small launch vehicles to deliver space cargo into orbit. The main feature was the low cost of transportation, which was ensured by the repeated use of spacecraft returned to Earth. The first three rocket launches were unsuccessful. Musk's company was close to ruin, but suddenly luck began to accompany the brilliant businessman:

The flights of the last heavy spacecraft ended with a successful landing.
At the end of 2008, a global contract was signed between SpaceX and NASA in the amount of $1.5 billion, according to which Musk's company became the contractor for twelve cargo flights to the ISS.
As of 2020, most of Musk's space projects are progressing successfully.

Delivery of cargo to the ISS is already a completed stage for Elon. He is engaged in a more ambitious project - creating a rocket to fly people to Mars. Under an agreement with NASA, SpaceX is currently developing the design of the Dragon V2 spacecraft, which is scheduled to launch in 2024. Musk’s plans include the exploration of Mars, where he dreams of flying on his ship.

On May 11, 2020, SpaceX launched the most powerful modification of the Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket for the first time

Electric cars

Elon Musk’s idea to work on electric cars was prompted by his acquaintance with the engineer Strobel, who is improving the battery for an electric car, as well as with the founders of Tesla Motors, Eberhard and Tarpenning. The grandeur of the idea of transitioning to environmentally friendly electric cars captivated Elon Musk. He immediately believed in the project, investing $7 million in it and thereby becoming the company's largest shareholder.

The work to implement the brilliant idea initially encountered difficulties. The transition from experimental models to mass production was delayed, and it was on the verge of bankruptcy. The work to reduce the cost of the car was especially difficult. Investors were promised a sales price of one car of 85 thousand dollars, but practically it was impossible to achieve a cost price below 170 thousand dollars. All this happened against the backdrop of failed launches of the space project.

At the same time, Elon Musk suffered setbacks in his personal life. Even with five children, he left family matters in the background. Musk's first priority was work. Of course, his wife Justine did not like this situation. Nevertheless, it was Elon Musk who filed for divorce, but the process dragged on. The businessman did not want to make concessions to the mother of his five children, since he did not have enough money to develop projects.

This state of affairs led Musk to think about selling one of the companies. As a result, he invested his last money in Tesla and convinced investors not to withdraw their funds.

As a result, problems with the design of an electric car were overcome. The crisis ended with the creation of the successfully selling Tesla S model. The car has been produced since 2012 and is considered one of the best. In addition to selling electric vehicles, it also produces electric batteries.

Tesla S electric car is one of the best in the world

Other projects of Elon Musk

Elon Musk's interests, being at the peak of technological progress, are usually ahead of their time. Among his projects are:

Use of solar energy. His company, SolarCity, with $7 billion in assets, is America's largest solar energy provider.
Hyperloop. The project of a grandiose underground tunnel through which trains will travel at speeds of over 1 thousand km/hour.
Neuralink. Develops the creation of an environment connecting the human body with a computer. One application of the project is to develop mechanisms for treating epilepsy and other brain diseases.
The Borning Company. The company's goal is to overcome traffic jams by creating a system of underground tunnels under megacities through which electric cars will travel at speeds of more than 240 km/h.
OpenAl. Development of software packages for artificial intelligence that allow creating AI systems based on games (reinforcement learning technology).

Childhood and family

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, one of the three capitals of South Africa. He was the eldest of three children in the family of South African-born English engineer Errol Musk and Canadian-British model and nutrition expert Maye Musk.

Elon Musk's parents: engineer and model

Elon has a younger brother, Kimbel, born in 1972, and a sister, Tosca, born in 1974. Kimbel, although not as successful as his older brother, still made a million-dollar fortune in the restaurant business, and Maya became a film producer.

Elon Musk as a child with his brother and sister

After his parents' divorce in 1980, Elon and his brother and sister stayed with their father in a suburb of Pretoria. He rarely saw his mother. Errol had several houses, a farm with thoroughbred stallions and a yacht.

Little Elon (right) with his mother, brother and sister

The family traveled a lot: the trip could begin in Europe, then they flew to Hong Kong, visiting the States along the way. Since Elon’s father had a pilot’s license, he sometimes rented a plane when he flew somewhere for work and took his children with him. So, as a child, Elon visited the emerald mine - the head of the family helped equip the face. Already in adulthood, Elon also received a pilot’s license, but he simply does not have time for this hobby.

In his youth, Elon Musk (left) was a shy child

Elon learned to read early and spent most of his free time reading books. At the age of 3, he dumbfounded his father with the question: “Where does the world begin and where does it end?” The boy grew up as an introvert, avoided his peers and did not get along very well with people. At the private boys' school where he attended, he often had to endure bullying from his classmates. Once he was beaten until he lost consciousness and was hospitalized.

Elon Musk in childhood and now

At the age of 9, Elon received his first computer as a gift - a Commodore VIC-20. He independently studied the popular programming languages of those years and became interested in creating programs. At the age of 12, he himself wrote the shooter video game Blastar in BASIC, which he sold for $500 to PC & Office Technologies, which published the code in one of the issues. Game developed by 12-year-old Elon Musk

Education

In 1988, Musk graduated from school and entered the University of Pretoria, but due to political instability in South Africa, he moved to Canada just before his 18th birthday. Since his mother is a native of Canada, Elon also obtained citizenship of this country. Here began the strangest period of his life: Elon entered a bachelor's degree at Queen's University in Kingston (Ontario), while changing many jobs in different parts of Canada, and he had something to tell about each of them.

Elon Musk during his studies at the University of Canada

He first picked fruit and carried baskets of grain on his relatives' farm in Waldeck, then got a job as a lumberjack in Vancouver. He was paid mere pennies for cutting logs with a chainsaw. After quitting, he went to the labor exchange and asked to find a job with a better salary, and he got a job... as a boiler room cleaner at a sawmill. For $18 an hour (actually good money in 1989), he crawled around the floor in a suit made of heat-resistant but toxic material, scooping up trash in extremely high temperatures.

At this time, his younger brother also moved to Canada. Having united, Elon and Kimbel decided to make useful contacts. By hook or by crook, they found the phone numbers of successful entrepreneurs and called them, inviting them to lunch. One of those who agreed was the head of the Bank of Nova Scotia, Peter Nicholson. Impressed by the persistence of the young people, he met them personally and decided to take Elon, as the more gifted of the Musk brothers, under his wing. Elon worked at his bank for the whole summer, earning, however, less than in the boiler room - $14 an hour.

Elon Musk and his brother Kimbel are at the beginning of their path to great success

In 1992, Musk transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, located in the American state of Philadelphia. He studied simultaneously at the Faculty of Arts and Science and at the Wharton Business School at the university. Having stayed at the university a year longer than ordinary students, in May 1997 he received two bachelor's degrees at once: in physics and economics. While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk became friends with the future founder of TheFunded, Adeo Ressi. The friends rented a ten-bedroom house and turned it into an underground nightclub, which was very popular with students. While everyone was getting drunk, Musk remained sober to keep order. But in one night he could earn enough money to cover a month's rent for this gigantic mansion. He spent the rest to pay for college.

Musk got into graduate school at Stanford, but turned down his place after 2 days

In 1995, 24-year-old Elon moved to California, where he became a graduate student at the legendary Stanford University to obtain a doctorate in physics. But just 2 days later he changed his mind and decided to continue working on his developments. He had many ambitious ideas from the fields of IT, renewable energy and space exploration.

First business projects

In 1995, in partnership with his brother Kimbel and business coach Greg Kauri, Elon founded his first company, the Yellow Pages site Zip2, which specialized in developing maps and catalogs for online publications. His father offered him starting capital, $28 thousand, but Elon refused to take it. Musk worked from early morning until late at night and lived in a rented office to save on rent and invest all the money in the company.

Elon Musk before he became famous

His perseverance and tenacity paid off handsomely. The Internet was then experiencing a boom, and in 1999 the brothers sold their startup for $307 million in cash (and $34 million in securities) to the search engine AltaVista, which was later acquired by Compaq. Elon, who at that time owned only 7% of the company, earned $22 million from the sale.

1999: young Elon Musk became a dollar millionaire

Musk invested 12 million of this amount in the online bank X.com, believing that electronic payment systems were the future. In 2001, X merged with rival company Confinity. The new venture was named PayPal. As a majority shareholder (and taking advantage of post-merger boardroom conflict), Elon Musk took over as PayPal's CEO.

Elon Musk was one of the founders of PayPal

In 2002, against Musk's advice, the Board of Directors approved the sale of PayPal to trading giant eBay for $1.5 billion. After taxes, Musk received $180 million, giving him enough money to pursue his plans for solar energy and space.

Elon Musk on Cosmo.ru

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Creation of SpaceX

Back in 2001, Musk developed a project to create an experimental greenhouse on Mars, which would mark the beginning of a closed and independent ecosystem on the regolith, which in the future would help with the colonization of the Red Planet.
He hoped to restore public interest in the space industry, which had seriously declined after the collapse of the USSR and the end of the space race between the two superpowers. In October 2001, Musk traveled to Moscow with Adeo Ressi and space equipment engineer Jim Cantrell. The purpose of the trip was to purchase refurbished Dnepr intercontinental ballistic missiles, which he needed for experiments with delivering cargo into space. They met with aircraft designer Semyon Lavochkin and the management of Kosmotrans, the company that developed these Dneprs. However, the purchase fell through - they refused to sell missiles to Elon, considering him insufficiently experienced in this matter. The second attempt also failed - six months later, Musk tried to buy rockets again, and he was allowed to buy one for $8 million.

The history of SpaceX and the Falcon-1 rocket The price seemed unreasonable to Elon. He refused, and during the flight home the idea came to the inventor: he could found a company that would provide him with the same rockets, or even better. According to calculations, it turned out that the cost of one missile during production would be only 3% of the price asked at Kosmotrans. In addition, he intended to reduce the cost of each launch by 70% by using reusable media.

Inside SpaceX headquarters

In May 2002, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX for short, was launched. Musk invested $100 million in the enterprise, then attracted a number of large investments from the US Department of Defense agency DARPA, SpaceDev, Celestis, ATSB and others. The first two models of launch vehicles: the lightweight carrier Falcon-1 and the medium-heavy carrier Falcon-9 (“Falcon-1” and “Falcon-9”). The name is a reference to the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo's ship from Star Wars. The first aircraft developed by Musk's company was called Dragon.

In the photo: Falcon-9 launch vehicle

In 2006, NASA entered into a $1.6 billion contract with SpaceX to send 12 cargo shipments to the ISS. In September 2008, for the first time in history, a launch vehicle, the development and creation of which was financed from private sources, successfully delivered cargo into Earth orbit. It was Falcon-1. Elon put almost everything on the line - if the launch was unsuccessful, the company would most likely cease to exist. On June 4, 2010, Falcon-9 was successfully launched.

Falcon-9 from another angle

On May 25, 2012, Dragon, launched into space by a Falcon-9 rocket, docked with the ISS for the first time. In the same year, Musk’s company received its first commercial order: the launch of the Intelsat satellite using the Falcon Heavy rocket, which was still in development at that time.

Dragon, a new generation spacecraft

On December 22, 2020, Falcon 9 made its first vertical landing at the Cape Canaveral Space Center. Before this, the rocket fell into the Atlantic Ocean twice, but the third attempt was successful and opened a new milestone in the history of space exploration - reusing the carrier meant colossal savings. First successful landing of Falcon 9 (behind the scenes) In February 2020, SpaceX made another breakthrough: the Falcon Heavy rocket, designed to transport multi-ton cargo (in the case of delivering cargo into Earth orbit, the carrier could withstand more than 60 tons), launched a Tesla Roadster into space with an installed camera that records everything that happens outside the cabin. The significance of the Flacon Heavy launch for humanity The launch was successful, but during landing, the central of the three boosters was unable to slow down and crashed into the ocean. The two side boosters landed exactly at the designated location.

Other projects of Elon Musk

In July 2003, Musk invested in Tesla Motors, which had just been founded by inventors Martin Eberhard and Mark Trapenning and was positioned as a pioneer among manufacturers of mass-produced electric cars.

Musk's official salary at Tesla is one dollar per year.

Musk personally took part in the development of the Tesla Roadster electric sports car based on the English Lotus Elise. At the initiative of the inventor, the weight of the model was significantly minimized, the battery compartment was improved, and new design elements were introduced into the headlight design. For this work, Elon received the Global Green 2006 environmental award and found investors who invested $100 million in Tesla.

The same Tesla Roadster is now roaming space

Despite the difficulties in business development and miscalculations that forced Elon to fire some of his employees, the company avoided bankruptcy thanks to a 50 million investment from the German automobile corporation Daimler, as well as the provision of a preferential loan to Tesla at the initiative of the US Department of Energy. Presentation of Tesla Semi and Roadster 2.0. November 2020 The success of Tesla spurred the “electric segment” of the automobile market: every self-respecting automobile company began developing its own electric car or at least a hybrid. In 2010, Tesla became the first American automobile company in more than 50 years to go public (Ford did so in 1956).

The financial success of the enterprise was facilitated by the release of the premium S sedan. The billionaire provoked public interest in the development by participating in a debate with a New York Times correspondent. He said that in 20 years, more than 50% of cars coming off the assembly line will be equipped with an electric motor. As a result, 10.5 thousand Tesla S were sold in the first half of 2013 alone. The successful entrepreneur is also developing charging stations for electric vehicles, work on which is being carried out under the auspices of the SolarCity project, the founders of which were his cousins.

Elon Musk is working on the solar panels of the future

The company specializes in the installation of solar power plants for both production and home use. These include platforms for charging Tesla cars and home stations for converting solar energy. By the beginning of 2020, SolarCity's capitalization was estimated at $3 billion. Elon Musk conference In August 2013, Musk presented a plan to create a grandiose transport network called Hyperloop (“Hyperloop”). The project represented a completely new type of transport, which would be 2 times faster than an airplane, powered by solar energy and not tied to a specific schedule, but set off at short intervals, like subway trains.

Hyperloop Project (sketched by Elon Musk)

The Hyperloop was a closed elevated highway made of two tubes parallel to each other, with giant solar panels along the route. It was promised that the route would connect San Francisco and Los Angeles: the distance between the cities is 560 km. Musk promised that his invention would cover this route for 35 minutes, and estimated the cost of the project at $6 billion. How the Hyperloop works However, Musk did not intend to implement the Hyperloop himself (although SpaceX and Tesla subsequently jointly created a capsule that demonstrated a speed of 355 km/h). As a result, further development was undertaken by the company Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, which operates through volunteer engineers and crowdfunding, as well as Virgin Hyperloop One. The latter tested a model of a vacuum capsule in December 2017, which accelerated to 387 km/h.

The millionaire inventor has repeatedly called on society to control research in the field of artificial intelligence and neural networks. He is convinced that AI poses a threat to humanity, because sooner or later machines will gain too much power over people. However, in 2020, Elon founded the neurotechnology company Neuralink. It was planned that its employees would treat brain diseases (in the short term) using neural interfaces and “improve people” by creating a connection between the brain and the computer. Musk promised to create by 2027 the so-called “neural lace” - microimplants that improve cognitive abilities.

Why we know Elon Musk

There are at least three pillars on which Elon Musk's fame rests:

space flights (SpaceX company);
electric cars (Tesla company);
online banking (PayPal payment system and the eBay system that replaced it).

In recent years, another hobby of Elon Musk has become famous - Hyperloop, or an underground tunnel for high-speed trains.

It was not immediately that the grandiose projects of this strange billionaire received understanding and support. Many times, Elon Musk's companies were on the verge of bankruptcy. But thanks to Musk’s fierce determination, his intelligence as an engineer, the iron grip of a businessman, and luck, all difficulties were overcome.

Currently, most of the areas in which Musk's companies operate are developing successfully. The American billionaire's income continues to grow. In 2020, his net worth was estimated at $19.5 billion.

At the same time, the risk of bankruptcy remains quite high. Thus, in the first quarter of 2020, losses amounted to about $720 billion. But already in the second quarter, the growth in sales of Musk’s electric vehicles went up, which allowed Forbes experts to value his company at 500 million more.

And also Elon Musk's income growth is certainly associated with the latest successes of his company SpaceX. For example, the successful launch of the Falcon 9 heavy rocket on May 24, 2020 fully justified the hopes for the Starlink program to launch 12 thousand satellites into orbit by 2020 to cover the entire surface of the Earth with broadband Internet. This program alone provides for an investment of at least $10 billion.

SpaceX is successfully developing other space projects:

flight to Mars;
delivery of cargo to the International Space Station (ISS);
space tourism, etc.

At the beginning of March 2019, the Crew Dragon spacecraft successfully docked with the ISS
Despite the prospects of such directions for the progress of all mankind, there are people who reproach Musk for spending millions on satisfying personal futuristic hobbies, while children are starving in Africa . These reproaches are unfair. The entrepreneur does not forget about direct ways of charity:

Unlike many of his critics, back in 2001, Musk founded a charitable foundation, which over the 15 years of its existence donated about 15 million rubles. school where he studied in South Africa, as well as children's hospitals in Los Angeles and Seattle.
Musk constantly donates considerable sums to several American sports clubs, and also participates in providing grants to gifted people. With the help of his brother Kimbel, through the Big Green program, he organized “vertical farms” for children in urban slums, spending about 47 million of his own money.
Elon Musk’s donations to schools for gifted children and the creation at his own expense of the “School of Geniuses” are well known.

Elon Musk in the movies

Like many famous billionaires (just remember the appearance of Donald Trump in the movie “Home Alone”), Elon Musk sometimes appears in popular television projects. Even in those where they make fun of him.

Elon Musk appeared in “The Simpsons”
Thus, the founder of SpaceX appeared in the animated series “The Simpsons” (episode “The Musk Who Fell to Earth”) and “South Park” (episode “Handicar”), as well as in the trash action film “Machete Kills” with Danny Trejo.

Still from the film “Machete Kills”

He also played a cameo in the second part of Iron Man with Robert Downey Jr. (in fact, Elon is often called the prototype of the main character of the film, inventor Tony Stark). He also appeared as himself in the TV series “The Big Bang Theory” and his prequel “Childhood of Sheldon.” In one of the episodes of the latter, the story of the creation of the “reusable” Falcon carrier is amusingly played out. Elon Musk in “The Big Bang Theory” The businessman, who aims to usher in the era of affordable space tourism, owned a Czech-made Aero L-39 jet trainer. He then purchased a Dassault Falcon 900, which was used in 2005 during the filming of No Smoking Here. The millionaire not only produced this film, but also played a cameo role in it as a pilot who opens the door to the captain played by the famous Robert Duvall. Musk was also the owner of the Wet Nellie car-submarine (created on the basis of the Lotus Esprit from the film “The Spy Who Loved Me” about the British agent 007 James Bond).

Elon Musk and Barack Obama

Sister Ilona, by the way, is involved in cinematography - she owns the film company Musk Entertainment.

Literature and filmography about Elon Musk

There is an Elon Musk channel on Youtube in Russian, uniting his fans in neighboring countries. Over the past five years, this channel alone has published more than 200 documentaries and videos about Elon Musk with a duration of 1 minute or more. up to 2 hours 37 minutes This is the length of the recorded interview that Elon Musk gave to comedian Joe Rogan in September 2020.

Tens of thousands of articles and essays in all languages of the world are devoted to Musk’s projects, but so far there are only two serious books about him:

Eric M. Jackson. The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth. (Eric M. Jackson. "PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia and the Rest of Planet Earth.") - 2012, 350 pp. The book is only in English.
Ashley Vance. “Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the road to the future” - Moscow, Olimp-Business, 2020, 416 p. The book became a bestseller and was translated into Russian.

There are no feature films about Elon Musk yet, except for “Iron Man,” where he became the prototype of the main character.

Personal life of Elon Musk

The billionaire and philanthropist who donated $10 million to research ways to control artificial intelligence has been married twice.

Elon Musk and his wife Justine in their youth

He met his first wife, Justine Wilson, while studying at a Canadian university. She is a year older than Musk - maybe that’s why he didn’t make the right impression on her when they met, but was able to earn it later. After graduating from university, their paths diverged for a while, but in 2000 the couple got married.

Elon Musk has five sons

In 2002, a boy, Nevada Alexander Musk, was born into the family, who died of sudden infant death syndrome at 10 weeks. After this, Elon “withdrew into himself” for a while. In 2004, the couple tried to have children using IVF. As a result, twins Griffin and Damian were born. In 2006, Justine became a mother again - again through the IVF procedure. This time, triplets Xavier, Saxona and Kaya were born into Elon’s family.

Elon Musk spends 4 days a week with his children

Over time, family relationships began to deteriorate. The entrepreneur spent a lot of time at work and little time with his family. In 2008, Justine filed for divorce. The former spouses maintain a relationship and raise children together. The businessman got married for the second time in September 2010. His chosen one was the English actress Talulah Riley, with whom he began dating shortly after the divorce. It is this girl that the press attributes to the role of the “insidious beauty” who stole the businessman from the family. But their love story was not smooth sailing.

Elon Musk's second wife - Talulah Riley

A year and a half after the wedding, Musk filed for divorce from Tallulah. They got married again in the summer of 2013, giving the relationship a second chance. In December 2014, Elon divorced his wife again, and six months later he annulled his decision. Finally, in March 2020, the couple finally decided to separate completely “by mutual consent.”

For about a year, Elon dated actress Amber Heard, who had just gone through a difficult divorce from Johnny Depp. They separated in August 2020.

Elon Musk and Amber Heard dated for about a year

“Amber constantly lied to Elon. She said that she spent the night at home, although in fact she was partying at a club. When she went to Australia to film, she acted like she didn't have a boyfriend. But while shopping, she did not hesitate to use Elon’s credit card,” a source close to the billionaire claimed to Metro.

In May 2020, Musk appeared in public with his new girlfriend, 30-year-old singer Grimes (real name Claire Boucher). They attended the annual Met Gala together in New York. The couple met on the Internet: Musk wanted to tweet the phrase “Basilisk Rococo,” combining the name of the virtual reality thought experiment “Basilisk Roco” and the Rococo architectural style, but it turned out that Grimes had already used it in one of her videos. They started communicating, then users noticed Musk’s strange comments on Grimes’ Twitter (about the fact that comets are actually made of cocaine).

Elon Musk and Grimes

It looks like things are more than serious for the couple. In May 2020, Grimes gave birth to a child with Elon. The boy was given the unusual name X Æ A-12 (read “Ex Ash Hey-Twelve”). The idea was Grimes's, but the A-12 is a reference to Musk's favorite fighter aircraft. The X in the name of Elon's son has a standard algebraic meaning - an unknown variable. Æ is, according to the engineer, an abbreviation for Artificial Intelligence in the Elvish dialect. Elon Musk's work week goes something like this. On Monday, he wakes up in his mansion in Bel Air (an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood) and drives to SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne. He spends the night at his workplace, and on Tuesday he flies on a private jet to Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley, where Tesla's head office is located. On Thursday, Musk returns to Los Angeles and inspects SpaceX. At the same time, he communicates with his sons at least 4 times a week.

Elon Musk's house in Los Angeles

The entrepreneur became the founder of a charitable foundation named after him. He donates part of his fortune to eliminate the consequences of natural disasters (hurricane in Alabama, tsunami in the Japanese city of Soma).

Personal life of Elon Musk

The billionaire met his first wife, Justine Wilson, while still at university. They married in 2000 and had five sons (2004 - Griffin and Xavier, 2006 - Kai, Saxon and Damian). In 2008, the couple broke up: Elon Musk began dating actress Tallulah Riley. They were married from 2010 to 2013, then separated, but made another attempt in 2014-2016.

After this, Elon Musk began dating actress Amber Heard, Johnny Depp's ex-wife. They broke up in 2020 but then got back together.

In 2020, Elon Musk criticized his father because his adopted daughter Eva (from her stepmother’s previous marriage) gave birth to a child with him. Musk considered Eve his own sister.

Photo by Elon Musk: GettyImages

Elon Musk now

Elon Musk's main goal remains the creation of a human colony on Mars.
In a 2011 interview, he stated that the first settlers would travel to the Red Planet within the next two decades. By 2040, Musk predicts, 80 thousand people will live on Mars. Work continues on the BFR - Big Falcon Rocket - a launch vehicle and spacecraft with a payload of 150 tons. The BFR is expected to replace previous generations of Falcon and become the primary instrument for transporting cargo and people to Mars. On May 30, the historic launch of the Crew Dragon manned spacecraft took place.
The craft, as well as the accompanying gear and equipment, were created by Space X. 19 hours later, on May 31, Crew Dragon (also known as Dragon 2) docked with the ISS, delivering astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the station. Launch of Crew Dragon At the press conference on the occasion of the launch, Elon Musk did not miss the opportunity to poke fun at the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, who in 2014 said that without Russian help, the Americans would transport people to the MSK using trampolines. “The trampoline is working. A joke for our own people,” Elon said live. Elon Musk: the trampoline works The launch is called historic, as this is the first time that a spacecraft was launched by a private company. This opens up prospects for space tourism: 7 people can fit on board the Crew Dragon, and Space X plans the first tourist flight into space for 2021.