Whether you find him admirable or unpleasant, Elon Musk is turning one.
SpaceX, the company he founded in 2002, blasted two American astronauts to the International Space Station in late May and brought them safely home in a historic splashdown Sunday, heralding a new age of private-sector space travel. Tesla Inc., his electric-car maker, recently celebrated its fourth straight quarter of profit and may soon join the S&P 500 Index. This year’s share rally has made the California company the world’s most valuable automaker, with a market value of roughly $267 billion as of Friday’s close.
And then Musk himself.The 49-year-old South African immigrant, who is a Los Angeles-based celebrity and silicon Valley CEO, is now the tenth richest user in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Elon Musk at the release of Crew Dragon on May 30.
Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images
While the CEOs of the big corporations of the fourth generation – Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc.and Google Inc.- they were ridiculed as “cyber-barons” on a Congressional grid last week on antitrust issues, Musk benefited from a style.segment remedy in the Sunday New York Times.
It’s a remarkable change since the dark days of 2018, when Tesla struggled to boost production of the Model 3 sedan, many executives resigned and Musk sued the US Securities and Exchange Commission.But it’s not the first time For his notorious tweet.
Since then, he hasn’t had fun with everyone. Musk criticized for downplaying the coronavirus pandemic, tweeted in early March that “the coronavirus panic is stupid” and then predicted that the United States would likely have “about 0 new cases” until the end of April.In California, where Tesla’s expanding automaker employs about 10,000 workers, Musk challenged public fitness officials in Alameda County until the plant was delayed and reopened early, challenging anyone to close it.
However, in a year when much of the country is cowering or moving away from growing viral infections and widespread economic anxiety, Musk is bubbling and expanding.Tesla, which has 55,000 workers worldwide, is hiring and building a new car plant in Austin, Texas, for Musk on Friday that Tesla’s could grow to 65,000 by the end of the year.
“We are full of admiration” for the entire Tesla team, said James Anderson of Scottish money manager Baille Gifford, Tesla’s second-largest shareholder after Musk himself, in an email. “What they are doing is a central but rare gentile in a dark world.”
Baillie Gifford declined to comment on SpaceX’s good fortune, in which she is also an investor.Musk’s small-owned company, which is raising $1 billion in funds, is among the most valuable venture capital companies in the United States.
Tesla rose 2.7 percent to $1,469.37 at 10:18 a.m. on Monday in New York. Inventory had tripled this year as of July 31, while the top 3 U.S. automakers had fallen by more than 25%.
SpaceX, formerly Space Exploration Technologies Corp., is known for launching the reusable Falcon nine rocket for consumers that come with advertising satellite operators, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Armed Forces. The successful flight of astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley marks the first time SpaceX has transported humans, a massive evidence of a company founded for the purpose of colonizing Mars.
“Welcome back to planet Earth and thank you for flying with SpaceX,” Mission Control said, after dragon capsule astronauts crashed in the Gulf of Mexico. Congratulations from President Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama, as well as competition such as Blue Origin and Boeing Co., came on Twitter.
SpaceX takes NASA astronauts home on historic flight
Now that the “Demo-1” verification flight is over, SpaceX can initiate operational trips for NASA. The Crew-1 project is scheduled for the end of September.
SpaceX is also testing Starship, the next-generation rocket that will take humans to the Moon and then to Mars. It will also launch its own area Internet service called Starlink. And later this month, Musk promises to give a “progress update” on Neuralink, its brain-machine interface start-up.
“If you need the user who is going to replace the world, you’ll have roughness,” said Wolf Ventures’ managing spouse Gene Munster about Musk in an interview on Sunday. “In the end, your good luck speaks for itself. And even though he feels that everything has been combined for him this year, he has been laying the groundwork for ten years.”