Elon Musk’s vision and his way to get us on Mars
- Kamila Niemotko
- Apr 3, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 1, 2023
Unquestionably every single one of us has heard the name Elon Musk at least once in our lifetimes. He is mostly known for being the richest man under the Sun, however, we all should know his goals and dreams that can happen in the future. In the skin of a multi-billionaire, workaholic and in the eyes of public opinion problematic man, there is still a kid that from the very beginning has dreamt about visiting and living on Mars.
Promising childhood
Many people might have different opinions on Elon Musk, but the one thing we have to agree on, his childhood indicated that the man is very bright and undoubtedly a visionary that will change our future on this planet. To the surprise of many, Elon Musk is from South Africa. He has Canadian roots, however, his Canadian mother was raised in South Africa. His father owned 50% of a Zambian emerald mine. Taking these aspects into consideration, Elon was raised in a relatively wealthy family. Many people described him as an awkward and shy boy who developed a passion for computing and video games. The very first sign that his passion would allow him to achieve something in the future was that he taught himself "how to program from the VIC-20 user manual” at the age of ten. By the age of 12, Elon Musk had designed and sold his game to a magazine. Later on, as a young adult, Elon flew to Canada to pursue his dreams. Working at a farm and lumber mill he placed an application to a university. Having struggled to pay his tuition fees, he was selling his projects to companies - which was the beginning of his amazing career.
Launching a business comes before launching a rocket
We all know that the fame and money for your huge and world-changing company do not appear out of anywhere. This also applies to Elon’s history. His very first initiative was a company named Zip2 which was founded by Elon Musk himself and his brother Kimbal Musk. This company’s mission was focused on providing „online city guide software to the newspaper”. It was his very first initiative that later on led him to his present achievements. The company has been sold to a major corporation in 1999, four years after its establishment.
The next company was X.com which later merged with an online bank Confinity to form a new and now well-known and profitable PayPal platform. Confinity bank was a major competition to Elon’s service. PayPal is still widely used by users from all over the world and undoubtedly, this platform makes any kind of payment easier and is accepted by most online businesses.
And after many companies left behind, Elon Musk has found his path to follow. Rest is just history.
His path leads on... MARS
In the early 2000s, Elon got involved in a non-profit organization named „The Mars Society” that fights for future human Mars exploration and colonization. He was mainly involved in discussing funding plans for a possible future establishment of a growth chamber for plants on the Red Planet. He was meeting a lot of prospective collaborators and traveled all over the world. With two other engineers, Elon decided to visit Moscow to buy intercontinental ballistic missiles that „could send the greenhouse payloads into space”. What held him back the most was that he was relatively inexperienced in the space field so many of his travels ended up being just a waste of time. Having hit the wall, Elon decided to risk it all which could’ve possibly led to his bankruptcy. However, the story has a different ending. What could possibly help him after hitting the wall? Well, after establishing his previous companies, considering that he held most of the shares in PayPal - he did have a huge net worth at that. time. He decided to invest $100 million of his own money to found the spacecraft manufacturer and launcher company SpaceX which is also called „Space Exploration Technologies Crop.”. He became. The corporation’s CEO and. Chief Engineer at the same time. His company spent 4 years building a rocket Falcon 1. This was his first design and I do think we all know it couldn’t be so perfect. The rocket failed to reach Earth's orbit and ended up falling into the ocean. Seeing Elon’s motivation, Falcon 1 was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program founded by NASA. He did not give up on Falcon 1 and decided to invest almost every penny he had left and launched 2 more rockets which also failed. At that moment, Elon’s life and his companies were threatened to go bankrupt by the end of the year. Elon to pursue his dreams had to sell his house and live with his coworkers. He sacrificed his wealth. Moreover, after selling his home, he did borrow money from his friends so he could still work on his rockets and SpaceX. He had one last shot, and he took the ball and ran with it. In 2008, the rocket funded by borrowed money was successfully launched into orbit. The same year, SpaceX received $1.6 billion in Commercial Resupply Services, which allowed Elon to pursue his dreams and later docking the Dragon vehicle with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft. In 2020, when the whole world was watching, SpaceX (in association with NASA) launched its very first crewed flight and Elon’s company became the first private corporation to send astronauts into orbit and later safely dock the spacecraft with the ISS. Elon has achieved reaching the ISS, now as we all know, his target is the Red Planet.
Alternative for our planet?
Elon undoubtedly is very confident about reaching his goal. He perceives the opportunity to live on Mars as a „future is now” mindset. Developing new places to live for humanity is beyond essential as our planet is slowly being destroyed by global warming. Setting up new places for the plants and later us - people - will have huge advantages in the future. The first rocket (yet without people) is set to be launched at the end of 2024, so yes without a question, the future is now.
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