Elon Musk: a Biography by Ashlee Vance The book outlines Musk's life from a tough childhood in South Africa to his being
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Elon Musk: a Biography by Ashlee Vance The book outlines Musk's life from a tough childhood in South Africa to his being one of world's most prominent entrepreneurs. The Book is an interesting and a valuable read. The author argues that Musk is an amalgam of legendary inventors and industrialists including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, and Steve Jobs, and he is right. From the beginning he showed a flair for innovative technologies and business opportunities like internet companies like Zip2 (city guide for business) and PayPal, though he was not the first one to introduce those innovative ideas. What characterize musk the most is his high motivation for hard work and high learning abilities to tackle successfully the technological issues on his table. Through his business career Musk has demonstrated a developed talent for recruiting brilliant employees for his companies though he not always knew the way to get along with them. Musk is a demanding employer but no less self demanding paying with his health and personal hardships in his private life. Musk has an altruistic personality and his main ventures are Tesla, SpaceX and SolarCity which are meant to change the world. Among his futuristic projects is the Hyperloop - a proposed mode of transportation which is a sealed tube through which a pod may travel free of air resistance or friction conveying people or objects at a high speed of 1,200 km/h. But his main objective, in order to ensure the human race survival from to come catastrophes (climatic, astronomic or manmade ), are his far reaching plans of Mars colonization and Terraforming what looks unrealistic to many but with Elon Musk who knows. Musk understands that the key for implementing his plans is drastically cost reduction. Thus in SpaceX in order to reduce space transportation costs he espouses successfully in house production of most components and using off-the-shelf products proving no less reliable than aviation or space grade components. Musk recognizes the power of a true private/public partnership and to his opinion SpaceX has only come this far by building upon the incredible achievements of NASA, having NASA as an anchor tenant for launch, and receiving expert advice and mentorship throughout the development process. Epilog: SpaceIL (Israeli organization) successfully launched its Lunar Lander, the first private Lander to the Moon, on 22 February 2019 on board of a Falcon 9 rocket manufactured by SpaceX. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance was published by Virgin Books, 2015. Book Rating: 4.5 STARS