This $44 billion operation put Kekius Maximus (his new pseudonym) at the center of the global digital agora. As if that wasn’t enough for this South African by birth, naturalized American in 2002, the year he launched into space, before becoming interested in Tesla electric cars., neuroscience and artificial intelligence or tunnel construction (The Boring Company)…
Objective Mars
In the summer of 2024, X became a pro-Trump propaganda machine and the social network would have lost 70% of its value. The sneers are legion: is the genius businessman just a crook? No more laughing with the election of the Republican, invested 47e President of the United States this January 20. This comeback sheds light on Musk’s motivations: the takeover of Twitter? A political project to support and bring to the White House the best ally of its industrial activities. Tesla’s stock rose 15% the day after the election of Trump, who now supports the objective of a manned mission to the red planet.
The scattering of the Musk UFO’s activities confuses the issue, but the coherence of the whole is precisely on the side of Mars. Obviously, there is the Starship megarocket. Its purpose will be to transport humans to “planet B”. The thousands of satellites in Earth’s orbit give Starlink network subscribers access to the web from space; tomorrow, the same device will be able to equip Mars to make it a communicating planet.
With Tesla, Musk promises the advent of autonomous cars: it will also be an efficient means of transport in an extraterrestrial environment. The electric vehicle maker makes the Optimus humanoid robot; For its part, the Neuralink chip is intended to be implanted in brains to control machines and computers through thought. Converge the two, there’s a workforce compatible with the hostile conditions of Mars. Its atmosphere is devoid of oxygen and its surface is constantly bombarded with cosmic radiation: you will have to live in caves to protect yourself from it. The Boring Company’s tunnel boring machine will dig them…
Musk is a cuckoo
Science fiction? For now. But Musk is moving forward in leaps and bounds. On October 13, he pulled off a masterstroke when, in an unprecedented maneuver, SpaceX recovered the first stage of Starship. Seeing it captured on landing by the “wands” of the launch tower is astonishing. A decisive step towards the reuse of this heavy launcher, which will make it possible to launch more vehicles more quickly, for much less cost, so that the Martian scenario can occur.
With such advances, Elon Musk has become the embodiment of the brilliant scientist for the general public. False image: on the contrary, he is the one who breaks the traditional scientific method. No publication in these specialized journals (Science, Nature, The Lancet…) whose peer-reviewed articles punctuate the research, but videos posted on X to reveal what he really wants to say about his advances. Musk is not a scientist, but the chief engineer, passionate about technical problems. To his teams who want to restrict his ideas, he asks: “Is there a law of physics stopping me?” »
This is the first principle muskien: if it’s not impossible, it’s possible. Nothing scientifically prevents us from going to Mars – in fact, we are already sending robots there – so the human species will be able to land there. Brilliant inventor? Rather, he is one of those who takes up the ideas of others with extraordinary energy. Take Tesla: the company was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who approached Musk for funding. So seduced by their project, he managed to eject them in order to become CEO of the manufacturer in 2008. Musk is a cuckoo, the bird that makes its nest in that of others.
A world nourished by science fiction
This is one of the paradoxes of the character: the omnipresent Elon Musk has long seemed out of place. In South Africa, he grew up with his brother Kimbal and his sister Tosca in a wealthy but broken family. The parents separate and Elon chooses to live with his father Errol. Traumatic experience: “He ruined my life”Musk explained to his biographer Ashlee Vance. His brother Kimbal bluntly says that his father was a follower of “psychological and emotional torture”. A violent character, the product of a society marked by apartheid, Errol Musk is known for having killed three burglars in cold blood…
-The family reference figure is rather held by the maternal grandfather, Joshua Norman Haldeman. A Canadian who banned at home “swearing, tobacco and Coca-Cola” and railed against the “decline of morality”. Like his grandson, he was allergic to bureaucracy: fed up with the administration, he decided in 1950, overnight, to leave Canada to settle in South Africa, where he had never set foot. There he gives free rein to his passion for aviation. On board his single-engine aircraft, Haldeman makes formidable journeys. “He was the first to connect South Africa to Australia”says Elon Musk, who considers that his great “risk tolerance” comes from this ancestry.
Elon’s difficult childhood also stems from his relationship problems. The boy lives in his bubble and his parents fear for a while that he will be deaf. The school summons his father: “Elon is retarded. » In fact, he has Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, according to his 2021 testimony on the show Saturday Night Live. The little one takes refuge in his world nourished by science fiction. Of Star Wars in the cycle Fondation from Isaac Asimov through the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxyhe builds an inner universe full of rockets and space conquests. A programmatic roadmap.
Clean up the bureaucracy
There is also the founding love at first sight for microcomputers. At the age of 10, he was given a Comodore VIC 20. At the age of 12, he created the video game Blastar, the code of which was published by the magazine PC and Office Technology (reward of 500 dollars). This fascination with tech pushed him to emigrate to North America at the age of 17. In the United States, with Kimbal, he launched into the world of start-ups in the 1990s, as they are not yet called. Convinced of the potential of the Internet, they founded Zip2, a service combining cartography and online directories. The company was purchased by Compaq, netting Musk $22 million.
He then invested in X. com, a pioneer in online banking, which merged with Confinity to create PayPal. The platform revolutionized digital finance before being bought by eBay, allowing Musk, this time, to receive $250 million. Building on this success, he founded SpaceX in 2002. It was the beginning of his empire, now mixed with artificial intelligence, a key area for decades to come. With xAI, he intends to surpass OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.
And now ? The question is whether his “bromance” with Trump will last. Are these two stratospheric egos compatible? In The Apprenticethe reality TV show having made him familiar to Americans, the now president belched « You’re fired » : will this be the fate of his new advisor? Musk’s activities also risk hindering Trump’s foreign policy: half of Tesla cars are manufactured in China…
But the team could hold. Musk, who considers himself constrained by standards, promises to clean out the bureaucracy like Hercules the Augean stables, including the federal aeronautics regulatory agency which prevents him from firing as many rockets as he would like . At the head of the Doge, the Department of Government Effectiveness, he will be able to issue rules as he sees fit, with Trump’s blessing. Musk the Martian will soon be in his house. It will not be white, but red.
