What comes to mind when you read Elon Musk’s name on your screen? The billionaire? Tesla’s owner? The wealthy tycoon flying into space? Let’s stop guessing here, before we guess something too over the top.

The CMX Chat Community surely had many opinions over 2021. For the record, he has not yet gone to space. But it looks like he will soon, and he’ll go farther than Jeff did.

Contrary to what most think, Elon Musk is not a computer junkie who got famous overnight. It took years for him to reach where he is. Numerous sleepless nights and a non-extinguishable fire within to change the world brought him where he is today.

Who is Elon Musk?

Displaying an early talent for entrepreneurship and computers, Elon Musk created a video game at the mere age of 12, which he sold to a computer magazine. In 1988, he took off for the United States of America in search of higher education and better opportunities.

After securing a bachelor’s degree in economics and physics, Musk wondered if there was more to the world than just the plain science in textbooks. Unlike many, he did not have this spiritual moment for once only. He pondered over it continuously until he found his answer- there was definitely a lot more the world had yet to discover.

PayPal

He started with an online financial services company in 2002, currently known as PayPal. Back then, it was called X.com- an online website that allowed the transfer of money from one corner of the world to the other. PayPal was bought in an online auction in 2002 by eBay for $1.5 billion.

Tesla

So, where does Tesla come in? During his time as an entrepreneur and even before, he showed considerable interest in the possibility of electric cars. Therefore, in 2004, he established himself as one of the major funders of Tesla Motors, later renamed Tesla.

It is an electric car company founded by Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard, known worldwide for its excellent electrical vehicles. Now, it’s not only a company, but a brand, best described by Musk, Tesla’s chief executive officer:

“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead; other times, it will be behind. But a brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”

Following Elon Musk’s joining, Tesla launched its first car, the Roadster, an electric vehicle capable of traveling 345 miles (394 km) with a single charge. Several vehicles were introduced after this, including the Model S Sedan in 2012, acclaimed for its design and performance, Model X luxury SUV in 2015, and Model 3, a relatively cheaper vehicle that went into production in 2017.

The Elon Effect – Moving Entire Crypto Markets with a Tweet

It’s true. Elon Musk has a strong influence on so many aspects of our lives, all at the same time. For example, at the start of 2021, he was playing around with the crypto market, swaying them at his fingertips. 

You might’ve come across the ripples it made in mainstream news and social media when he tweeted about Dogecoin and sent its price up by almost 50%! And for a time, it seemed as if what people usually refer to as decentralized digital currency was centralized on one and one man alone. This was when Mr. Musk moved the BTC markets on command. 

Tesla will make some merch buyable with Doge & see how it goes

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2021

Lately, he tweeted again about making Tesla merch buyable with DOGE and sent its prices soaring by 43%. Although he does have a confessed loved for Dogecoin, Musk’s tweets have caused Bitcoin to rise in value too. When he tweeted that buyers can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin, the crypto’s price soared as high as $65,000 within just one month of this tweet. These are only but a few examples of how the Tesla and SpaceX founder is one of the biggest names in the crypto world. He is, undoubtedly, a leader of the new world that’s moved on from combustion engine, government only space programs, and fiat currency to electric vehicles, privately-owned space programs, and cryptocurrency.

Elon Musk’s Vegas Loop

Elon Musk has accomplished yet another achievement, the Vegas Loop. His Boring Company has officially signed a very interesting project- the building of an entire network of tunnels underneath the Las Vegas Strip. It will connect several places, including the city’s new football stadium, the Las Vegas Strip hotel-casinos, the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the McCarran International Airport. 

The Boring Company is perhaps the right choice for constructing something as fascinating as an underground tunnel transportation system, as it already operates the Convention Center Loop, or as Musk’s official website calls it, ‘Teslas in Tunnels,’ a smaller version of this system beneath the Las Vegas convention center. 

Project Details

The convention center Loop began operation in June 2021 and is composed of two 0.8-mile tunnels. It consists of a mix of 62 Tesla models 3 and X, all with human drivers, reaching top speeds of approximately 40 mph due to the tunnels’ short lengths. Each vehicle can hold up to five passengers.

The convention center tunnels are about 40 feet underground, allowing riders to travel across the center’s campus in 2 minutes, instead of an average 25-minutes walk. The Loop also debuted at the World of Concrete this year, costing $52.5 million with a capacity of 4,400 passengers per hour along with three stations.

However, in December 2020, Musk’s startup proposed an even larger city-wide expansion, which is set to connect other cities with Las Vegas in the near future as well, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and the Northeast corridor.

This system, approved by Clark Country on 20th October, involves 29 tunnel miles and 51 stations. The Las Vegas City Council has also pitched in their positive vote for this franchise agreement. The officials believe that the system will accommodate as many as 57,000 passengers per hour, and no taxpayer money will be spent building it. Only the passengers benefiting from it will have to pay when riding it.

Initially, the Boring Company planned to foot the entire bill for building the main tunnels, but later it asked the hotel-casinos and other businesses to cover the construction costs for their particular stations. As the Las Vegas Review-Journal says, each stop has to undergo its own permitting process.

The History Behind Musk’s Vegas Loop

The Boring Company’s efforts of building tunnels underneath the Las Vegas Strip are not new; they have been working for this for quite a few years now. During this time, Elon Musk’s views about this dream project of a tunnel-based transportation system improved further. Previously, he imagined using sleds to commute cars from the tunnels to the surface and back, along with pods that would give preference to pedestrians and cyclists. 

Apart from Elon Musk’s great and unique vision, what propelled this project was the city’s ever-growing traffic. As hoped by the Boring Company and the Las Vegas convention center representatives, the tunnel-based transportation system will ease the burden on the roads, allowing visitors to reach their destinations relatively quickly with less of the routine hassle. As an example, the Boring Company has put forward the trip to Mandalay Bay from the convention center; this usually takes 30 minutes. However, with the Loop vehicles, it will take a mere 3 minutes.

Steve Hill, LVCVA president and CEO, says:

“The Vegas Loop will be a game-changer for our visitors in moving them around our exciting destination quickly, conveniently and in an entertaining ‘Only Vegas’ way.”

The electrically-powered Teslas will travel through the interconnected tunnels directly, from one destination to another, without making any stops like the city subway. As envisioned by Musk, contemporary vehicles will reach speeds of up to 150 mph with autonomous driving. 

Furthermore, high-occupancy electric Teslas are in the planning phase that will entertain about 16 passengers, with standing and sitting room. Talking about ride fares, the Boring Company has quoted estimates that sit somewhere between the most public transit and the cost of a ride or taxi-hailing service.

Space X

In 2002, with the proceeds of his PayPal sales, Elon Musk achieved another milestone- he founded SpaceX, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation. With an investment of $100 million by Musk, it is an American aerospace establishment that redefines the concept of commercial spaceflight. SpaceX is the first private company to successfully send and return a spacecraft from Earth’s orbit and also launch a crewed spacecraft docked with the International Space Station (ISS).

Elon Musk hopes to revolutionize the aerospace industry with SpaceX by making spaceflight an affordable and attainable reality. The company began with the Falcon 1 rocket, a two-stage liquid fueled aircraft that allowed small satellites to be sent into orbit. Falcon 1 was relatively cheaper to build and operate than regular competitors’ spacecrafts, such as those manufactured by Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Adamant on delivering a high-quality space vehicle with features just as excellent as the others, Elon Musk and his team installed a SpaceX-developed Merlin Engine into the rocket, which significantly lowered the cost. Unlike other spacecrafts, which are suitable for one use only, SpaceX introduced reusable rockets.

With SpaceX, Elon Musk made several high-profile contracts with the U.S Air Force and NASA to design rockets for conducting military missions. He has also shared his plans about sending an astronaut to Mars with the effective collaboration of NASA by 2025.

Elon Musk’s Journey into Space

Elon Musk did not stop here; he was determined to take things to the next level. Cars travelling on the roads did not satisfy him; perhaps even the planes flying at 33,000 to 42,000 feet above ground level were not appealing enough. He firmly believed,

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

And this is when he laid down the plan that will be put down in history- sending one of his electric vehicles into space.

Some call it a publicized stunt, while others consider it a step forward into the future. One of his old Tesla Roadsters, seating a spacesuit-wearing dummy named ‘Starman,’ took off into space on 6th February 2018. The car is attached to a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful operational rocket, and has successfully reached space.

A website, WheelsRoadster, dedicated primarily to the space-car’s updates shows that it is 17.3 million miles from Mars and is moving away at a speed of 20289 mph. Starman is approximately 32.4 million miles from planet Earth, moving farther at a speed of 2062 mph.

According to a report, it is floating in space on an elliptical orbit, completing it in about 557 days. As of Thursday, February 25th 2021, WherelsRoadster showed the car has made two orbits around the Sun. Will the space vehicle come back? As far as we know, a dummy is out there with a red, fiery sportscar exploring our solar system while humans are on Earth merely imagining what it must feel like.

Starship – Going into the Details

At the time of launch, Starship will sit atop a rocket called Super Heavy. Both the vehicles will stand at the height of 394 feet (120 m) before embarking on the long journey. With its stainless steel and landing and nosecone fins, the spacecraft resembles the rocket-ships from the golden era of science fiction.

The vehicle’s rear is 160 feet (50 m) long, with six high-tech, efficient Raptor engines developed by SpaceX over the course of a decade. The combustion of the engine takes place in stages and is designed to cut down the amount of propellant wasted.

The fuel of choice for the astonishing vehicle is methane, with oxygen as its oxidizer. Many consider this to be an unusual choice for rocket engines; however, it can generate considerable thrust, further propelling the aircraft. Elon Musk believes that methane can be synthesized from the Martian subsurface water as well as atmospheric carbon dioxide using the Sabatier reaction, a chemical process.

The spacecraft’s front, sometimes referred to as the upper stage, is a vast payload compartment with the ability to haul great amounts of cargo and people from one destination to another in deep space. The payload area will also have about 40 cabins, each carrying five to six people. The journey will take 9 months each way.

Starship will be refueled for the return trip to Earth using the sources present on Mars; this would confer a great level of self-sufficiency, resulting in a cost-effective and feasible journey both ways.

The Rocket, called Super Heavy, is 230 feet (70 m) in length. It will be filled with 3,400 tons (6.8 million lbs.) of cryogenic (chilled) methalox and powered with around 32 Raptor engines (specification has changed several times). It will achieve greater than 70 Meganewtons (16 million lbs.) of maximum thrust and be capable of lifting at least 100 times of payload and as much as 150 tons to Earth orbit. These features will make Super Heavy more powerful than the massive Saturn V launcher used in the 1960s and 70s for the Apollo Moon missions.

As the combined Starship ascends from the launch pad, part of it will begin pitching over when towards the orbit. When the upper stage detaches in space, it will deploy its grid fins, potato waffle-like shaped steel structures, from the booster’s sides. Resultantly, Super Heavy will flip over and fall towards the launch pad on Earth, ready for use again. SpaceX may also catch the returning booster with an arm attached to the launch tower.

Neuralink

Several followers and technophiles believe that Elon Musk’s intelligence and creativity know no boundaries. Perhaps technology was not enough; Elon has also entered the medical field. And it’s not just a plain topical medicine or a bottle of anesthetic eye drops, he has come up with an entire human brain chip that will control autonomic functions.

Neuralink came into existence in 2016 under Elon Musk’s great vision. It plans to create human microchips for several paralytic-associated medicinal benefits. These chips can be planted in people’s minds, especially those with spinal cord injuries, quadriplegia (limbs’ paralysis), and other neurological disorders.

Apart from treating injuries and paralysis, the chips will also record and stimulate neuronal activity.  In an interview with Wall Street Journal Elon Musk revealed,

“Neuralink is working well in monkeys, and we’re actually doing just a lot of testing and just confirming that it’s very safe and reliable, and the Neuralink device can be removed safely.”

Upon further inquiry, he elaborated:

“We hope to have this in our first humans —which will be people that have severe spinal-cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics — next year, pending FDA approval.”

The implanting device’s standards exceed those of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Elon offered a time frame of the year 2021 for chip implantation and human testing by 2020. However, no significant advancements have yet surfaced.

The mogul’s fans may be slightly worried as a competitor, Synchron-a 20-person biotech firm, has also gained approval from the FDA for developing a similar device, which is in the works.

What’s Next for Elon Musk?

While Elon Musk’s dummy traverses the interstellar world, he is designing yet another space vehicle. A second-generation Roadster is on the way for launch. While the exact dates are unknown, some believe it will be unveiled in 2022.

This spacecraft is known as Starship, expected to be the world’s most powerful space vehicle with the capacity to carry in excess 100 metric tons to Earth orbit. Based on an extensive and detailed history of stellar engine development programs and launch vehicles, SpaceX plans to stun the aerospace world with this orbital-flight targeted vehicle.

Starship will make history by carrying over 100 people to the Red Planet. It is a fully reusable transport system scheduled to lift off for its first orbital test sometime in 2021. Apart from his personal goals, Elon Musk has taken this step due to the existential threats, such as asteroid strikes, that can wipe out the entire humanity. He has shared his dream of building sustainable cities on Mars, which is only possible if a large number of the human population settles there.

Elon Musk is well aware of the need for an extraordinary vehicle to do this job, a spacecraft that outdoes all previous vehicles. Therefore, he continues to design Starship as a combination of rocket and spacecraft that can safely ferry more than a 100 people at one time to Mars.

Preserving Human Consciousness

When Alibaba’s founder, China’s richest entrepreneur Jack Ma and Elon Musk had a sitting during the Shanghai World Artificial Intelligence Conference in 2019, Ma opposed Musk’s view of exploring space and going to Mars. Jack Ma presented an argument that humankind’s resources should be spent on preserving the Earth and making life better for people on the Earth rather than spending so much money just to go to Mars.

Musk defended his space exploration ventures with a statement that really rang a bell in many people’s minds. “Don’t take it for granted that consciousness will continue.”

He elaborated further that at some point in time, despite our best intentions to preserve our planet, something may happen to the Earth. It could be anything from an external force or internal fault that will simply make it inhabitable for humans. And thus it’s imperative for humans to expand into a multi-planetary species that can outlive a planet.

This may seem like a far-fetched idea, but Musk solidified his point further by saying that “It’s the first time in the 4.5 billion years old history of the Earth that it’s been possible to extend life beyond the Earth.” Now that’s something that makes it all the more interesting.

In the end, he made sure to address Ma’s argument about scarce resources by the end of his defense. That only 0.5% of the Earth’s GDP or humankind’s resources should be allocated to preserving consciousness. All else should be spent on making the Earth more livable and making life better for the inhabitants of the planet. And makes a lot of sense.

Musk’s Warnings About Artificial Intelligence

Elon Musk is no technology pessimist. But his views on Artificial Intelligence can oftentimes sound a bit too scary. His opinions have been consistent on AI ever since 2014 when he spoke at MIT and called AI the “biggest existential threat” and compared it to “summoning the demon.”

In the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, he pointed out that with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, human jobs may become redundant. He also added that professionals who know how to work with and create such AI technology will be the least affected group.

The world’s richest man has also said that autonomous machines may be more dangerous to us than North Korea with the dangers of unleashing ‘weapons of terror.’ It’s worth noting that Musk’s pessimism on AI is not just an anomaly from his normally technophilic outlook.

His thoughts actually stem from optimism. Optimism that we can make steady and sustainable progress that ensures the well-being of humans in the future.

Person of the Year Award

If you think only wealth is what got Elon Musk the Person of the Year Award, this particular section may be just for you. Apart from being the richest man in the world, Musk is also a creator, planner, and action-taker. He did not stop at basic IT developments. He took things further, or perhaps the farthest. Space cars, smart robots, advanced transportation, and latest medical treatments are all his niches.

His great vision and strategies have earned him the title of Person of the Year 2021 by Time magazine. The results of each of his projects, including world famous Tesla cars, the satellites in orbit, space exploration by Space X, and underground substations by his Boring Company in the USA prove why he deserves this prestigious award.

Elon Musk isn’t only interested in increasing his wealth, he also sells his fortunes for genuine causes from time to time. The stock market doesn’t tell his corporate earnings, but Musk decides if he wants the stock market to swoon or soar for the day.

According to Time Magazine, Elon Musk is a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman.”

Furthermore, Time’s editor-in-chief, Edward Felsenthal, said on Twitter:

“For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society’s most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is our 2021 Person of the Year.”

Elon also recently surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in financial statistics, becoming the world’s wealthiest person. Space X, the Boring Company, and numerous other projects are significant contributors to his ever growing net worth, which is currently $300 billion. You can expect anything and everything from a genius like Elon.

Elon Musk’s Future

No one can describe Musk’s future better than himself. He says, ‘As society becomes increasingly automated by robots and artificial intelligence systems, one of the ways forward for humanity will be to physically merge with machines.’ For those who are admirers of SpaceX’s owner, sorry to break it to you, but Elon Musk might love machines more than humans.

~cmx