Elon Musk: The Architect of Tomorrow

Inside the inventor’s world-changing plans to inhabit outer space, revolutionize high-speed transportation, reinvent cars — and hopefully find love along the way

Rolling Stone
RollingStone

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Musk at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, this fall. Credit: Mark Seliger for Rolling Stone

By Neil Strauss

It’s mid-afternoon on a Friday at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, and three of Elon Musk’s children are gathered around him — one of his triplets, both of his twins.

Musk is wearing a gray T-shirt and sitting in a swivel chair at his desk, which is not in a private office behind a closed door, but in an accessible corner cubicle festooned with outer-space novelty items, photos of his rockets, and mementos from Tesla and his other companies.

Elon Musk photographed in Hawthorne, California, on October 5th. Mark Seliger for Rolling Stone

Most tellingly, there’s a framed poster of a shooting star with a caption underneath it that reads, “When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it’s really a meteor hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you’re pretty much hosed, no matter what you wish for. Unless it’s death by meteorite.” To most people, this would be mere dark humor, but in this setting, it’s…

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