Elonsome: An Essential Musk Essay

Adjective: Elonsome
 /Ee-lawn-sum/
Meaning: The feeling of being highly impressed by Elon Musk and his contribution to the world.

I have been reading quite a lot about the Space-X and Tesla founder, Elon Musk off late. Unlike most people-entrepreneurs-innovators, Musk’s work and his style of making things work has just left me in awe. Perhaps, I’m not even the right person to comment on his contribution to humanity in technical details. However, I began to wonder and slowly obsess over his ability and willingness to contribute towards the betterment of this world.

Of course, he may not be the first person (hopefully not the last either) to do so, but what triggered me after reading his biography written by Ashlee Vance and a series of detailed articles written by Tim Urban on WaitButWhy.com, were these things:

Utilise Superpowers (Human Abilities): After reading about Musk, either extensively or just a brush up on his personal background, you just know that his childhood hadn’t been a pleasant one. Thus, he spent most of his time reading books. He neither socialised nor discussed those subjects with his classmates. Yes, perhaps that would’ve been pre-premature at that point. But, since Musk has been gifted with a photographic memory, he often dwelled in the trance of subjects he read about- mostly Sci-Fi comics and Rocket Science and fantasised about space travel and exploring other planets.

Now, here comes my first trigger point, most of us dream about the impossible as kids but drop the idea of it as we grow up- that’s number one. Secondly, people tend to form opinions based on what they read and watch, but the discussion ends with a futile conclusion or those ideas just get buried with the opinion. However, Musk strived to achieve the impossible and he has literally set himself as a living example of ‘How To Live Your Dreams’ by founding Space X.

 Envision, Determine and Resource: It’s natural to dream of creating the impossible at a very young age. Some may even take steps towards accomplishing their goal. But halfway through, people may lose their patience, due to these factors- lack of determination, miscalculation, realising nobody wants to buy their idea. While reading about Musk’s work, however unsure I am about the first two, I certainly know that he has been through the third one ample of times.

Starting a venture like X.com (PayPal) must’ve sounded ludicrous then, but Musk knew that the budding stage of the internet would become a neo-age revolution.  Similarly, Musk didn’t give up on the idea building rockets and sending mice in space even after being ridiculed by the Russians for such an idea- when he went to pitch it to them to seek funding. Musk considers all the realistic factors even while trying to achieve the impossible. He wanted to lower the costs of building spaceships as he wants to minimise the use and wastage of fuel by introducing Tesla and Solar City. He involved people with the same ambition in his project- e.g. He involved members of the Mars Society when he planned to build rockets. All of this really tells us about how he loves to channel his resources. Although he must’ve despised facing failure- three consecutive unsuccessful rocket launches would’ve put his reputation before NASA at stake, but after the fourth launch, NASA considered his offer to let them have his rockets. Space X then accomplished 20 successful launches after that launch. Determination can really take you to the skies. Well, quite literally.

Management and Conceptual Clarity:  Musk was thoroughly immersed in books as a child, which played a major role in shaping his ambitions. Musk even completed reading the Encyclopedia Britannica in its entirety at just age nine. If a person is even aware of this fact in the slightest, must know that he ought to know a lot about the industries he’s dealing with. Some of the people who’ve worked with Musk first-hand have claimed that he is a very difficult person to tackle. This is a fair warning that you just don’t go unprepared to meet him, nor does he entertain people with futile fanboy agenda- a smile and a firm yet gentle handshake does that for him. However, another thing that really left me awestruck was his honesty and transparency about the things he does. He’s known to NOT sugarcoat his opinions on things- his personal views are the same as expressed publicly.

I have heard of innovators inventing new things, capitalists doing their things, environmentalists expressing their concern about the melting glaciers and ozone tearing apart, but to see a single man devote his life for all of these and utilise all of his capabilities for accomplishing what he believes in is extremely rare.

I wrote this article to remind myself why I started fanboying, obsessing over Musk in the first place. There’s plenty spoken about the real-life ‘Iron Man’ on the internet, I hope this too finds its way to him and people even remotely related to him.

Oh, and here’s Mr. Musk after all of his accomplishments-