I have written about Elon Musk a number of times in the past year. He is an entrepreneur and business man who made his money selling Paypal to Ebay. Today he has three companies that I know of. Tesla which is making a promising electric car, SolarCity which is making solar panels, and SpaceX, which is trying to revolutionize the space launch business. This last one is the most fascinating to me.
It has been said that to make a million dollars in the rocket business, start with a billion. 🙂 Seriously though, it’s a difficult thing to launch something into space. Most countries have never done it and most of the time it is done by governments. His first two companies have gone public, netting him I’m sure a quite tidy sum. SpaceX is still private though. There has been a lot of speculation in financial circles about when they might do an IPO and take the company public. Elon himself though sent a tweet last week that squashed that idea.
So what does that mean? It means that Elon is passing up a lot of money right now… because he’s going to Mars.
The reason he founded SpaceX is because he wants humanity to go to Mars and colonize it. You can’t do that economically with the current way of making rockets so he started his own company to do it himself. Talk about a self starter! It also means his is going to be beating up his competitors because they actually want to make money. He doesn’t care about that as long as he can achieve his goal. This means he is playing a different sort of game than the established players in space launch.
Think about the sort of world we live in where this sort of dream is actually taken seriously. It’s amazing to realize the possibilities all around us. Technology is empowering the creative people of our world to reshape it in ways not possible only 20 years ago. The sorts of tools available to us is only going to increase in power and scope. This is what the purpose of learning should be; to unlock and develop the creative potential in each of us to it’s maximum extent. That’s what I’m going to teach my son how to do.
As for me, I’ll keep developing my creative abilities on this blog and watch the show SpaceX puts on. 🙂
Education Stormfront 
I continue to love this Blog… especially all the updates of the latest technology. SpaceX is quite a concept! I am taking an online class right now called called Literacy and the Internet. It is an elective class for the reading endorsement program I am in. As a teacher, I can not wait to try using more of the internet and related technology, for my lessons. As many of us once old school folks have noticed, most students much prefer to learn with a keyboard and a screen anyway. Thanks for all your excellent posts that keep me on my feet as a teacher in this current fast changing technological world.
By: Liza on June 27, 2013
at 2:53 pm