The Iron Man Elon Musk
Iron Man the embodiment of high tech technology and the characteristics of a metal. How does a man who is flesh and bones comes to define this catchy title. The iron will to push forward even when the going gets tough he makes the tough get going, difficult to comprehend as these properties are displayed extremely rarely but there is someone who is well known and displays these values so emphatically that even the great Marvel Studios used him to bring to life the fictitious character of Tony Stark to life. Yes you guessed right I am talking about Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is as human as anyone of the seven billion of us is on Earth but his iron will in pursuing the most difficult of technological things and bringing them to life and the most astounding thing is that he has done this in more than three different industries and brought them to success on a global scale. It is a physics bending gravity defying change and has brought a seismic shift in the industries century old industries are being changed and the changes are needed as we battle climate change, intra planetary challenges all being brought forward and putting the entire globe into focus because of the vision of one man.
28th June 1971 on this fateful day in Gauteng, South Africa, Elon Reeve Musk was born. Since he was a child he was different at age ten he got a computer and by the time he was twelve years old he had programmed a computer game eventually selling it for USD 500. He also had the rare habit of being an avid reader he went through books like children eat chocolate ice creams reading up to 10 hours a day gathering information on a gigantic level. He also showed his iron will by not changing his habits even after being bullied violently. These two characteristics of reading and walking on the road he wanted even in the face of all opposition are still prevalent today and make him the great industrialist he is today. His iron will was also shown when he decided he would go to the USA as he knew that there his destiny was knowing fully well how much life can be tough for an immigrant in the beginning.
Age 17 Queen’s University in Ontario Canada accepted him for an undergraduate program but in two years he got transferred to University of Pennsylvania finally arriving in the United States of America. In 1997 he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Arts and Sciences and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from its Wharton School of Business, he had to extend his studies for one year to finish the second bachelor’s degree. He got enrolled in Stanford’s PhD in applied physics and material sciences program but left after two days as the entrepreneurial fever had got over his brain.
Elon Musk’s mission is to bring seismic changes to Internet, Renewable Energy and Outer Space.
It’s rare for anyone to bring change even in one of these fields and the one who does is deemed extremely successful but Mr Musk has revolutionized all of them.
His first industry defining success was PayPal which revolutionized online money payment. PayPal came to life as merger between X.com which Musk founded and Confinity and the name PayPal came in 2001 but only after his ouster as CEO (tough luck) and when in 2002 eBay brought PayPal Musk got $165 million for his 11.7% stake in the company but rather than resting on his laurels he went ahead and put his money where his mouth his by starting a company in the most difficult field of all ,it is so difficult that it has coined the term “Rocket Science”.
In 2002 Mr Musk started SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp) with the dream of one day landing his craft on Mars. His stated dream is to die on Mars just not on impact. He showed tremendous will by first approaching Russian companies and the Russian government with the aim of buying an ICBM without the bomb to send satellites to space. He by his way has tremendously reduced the cost of sending satellites to space by successfully developing reusable rockets and making history on 22nd December 2015 by making his Falcon rocket land back at the launch pad. Today everyone says it’s possible but the road was not easy as his first three rocket launches failed and he put his last hard earned money into the launch of the fourth which if it had failed would have bankrupted him but it’s success and that too in 2008 when his other company Tesla was also facing extremely severe financial difficulties shows his determination which in the end brought him a contract from NASA just around Christmas time only a few hours before the company would have gone bankrupt.
He showed this amount of grit and determination in bringing seismic shift to the automobile industry an industry so competitive that since the early 1900’s no new company has come. His way has forced every car company to put massive money to develop electric cars and bring them to mass production at least a generation before they would have come. He started with the Roadster which came out in 2008 based on the chassis of Lotus Evora it had a 250 hp Electric Motor with a range of almost 250 miles on a single charge. It was a living example that electric cars can be beautiful, fast and have enough range to use as a daily driver. His grit was shown as the development got delayed several times and the cost of the car jumped to over $100,000 as the technology to make it possible proved to be impossible to make it below that price compounded with the worst financial crises since the great depression which bankrupted even the largest automakers and SpaceX also on the brink of collapse as it suffered it’s third straight launch failure he put his last money both into Tesla and SpaceX almost guaranteed both would fail but he couldn’t bear even though the last two years had been constant hell for him he poured money which energized the board of investors and they also put there money just because they were impressed by the will of the man which saved Tesla just hours before bankrupted and the world is grateful for it. Today his cars the Model S, Model X sell for a total of around 100,000 cars a year with the Model 3 just coming out the first affordable car priced at $35,000 and his aim of producing 500,000 cars which would definitely cause the end of the great Internal Combustion engine and rid the world of it’s addiction to oil. His vision is clearly seen by his putting up a large network of the Tesla Supercharger charging stations across the States that today it is possible to go from California to New York in a Tesla without the fear of running out of battery a huge achievement.
He also revolutionized the Solar Energy field as his company Solar City recently merged with Tesla is the largest provider of Solar Tiles in the USA thus reducing dependency of coal powered plants. He is also actively participating in Artificial Intelligence by founding OpenAI and helping the world overcome the bad effects which AI can bring. His vision of a fifth type of Transport known as Hyperloop is gathering steam and many different companies are building prototypes to bring this extremely fast mode of transport having speeds of over 700 MPH and very low energy consumption to life.
To conclude to become Iron Man from just a man, man has to go through a tremendous amount of obstacles similar to hell on earth and still come out having the same dream same determination to succeed and to push things in your style as the monstrous heat of the experience forges the man to become more than just a man he becomes the man (IRON MAN).