CNBC has an update on Elon Musk’s pursuit of making Tesla Motors a private company once again. Morgan Stanley is telling its clients Elon Musk’s stake in SpaceX may be leveraged as a source of funding for his plan to take Tesla private…. “Elon Musk’s desire to potentially take Tesla private may require large amounts of new equity capital. We see scope for SpaceX to play a potentially crucial role […]
Elon Musk (Credit: SpaceX)
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Elon Musk has a new pay package with Tesla Motors that could net him $55 billion over the next decade if the company reaches a series of extremely ambitious targets, according to press reports. If he doesn’t reach those goals in 10 years, he could end up with nothing.
That might seem like a crazy plan even for Musk, who is known for taking great risks. But, it makes sense when you consider the billionaire’s ultimate long-term goal: to develop a transportation system to facilitate the establishment of human colonies on Mars.
Musk has said he is dedicating his personal wealth to that objective. And although his net worth is estimated at $21 billion, actual profits from his various businesses have been elusive.
Elon Musk (Credit: SpaceX)
The Huffington Post has an interesting story about how “green guru” Elon Musk is getting pummeled online for his increasingly close ties to President Donald Trump.
First, President Trump, whom he opposed during the presidential campaign, named him to his Strategic and Policy Forum and his manufacturing council. Then Musk broke with the environmental community and endorsed Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil, for secretary of state. Progressives were incensed by what they viewed as Musk’s betrayal. “What did they promise you in the golden room?” one tweeted to Musk.
Next, Musk defended Trump’s controversial travel ban that targets Muslims, sending out a retweet that said “after reading the language of [Trump’s executive] order, it looks far less bad than portrayed by left.” This prompted an even more intense response from progressives. One group, Americablog, went so far as to create an online petition demanding Musk end his association with Trump. “Enough is enough,” the group declared. “Tell Elon Musk to stop defending Trump’s racism — it’s time to dump Trump.”
A conservative political action committee (PAC) headed by Laura Ingraham has specifically targeted Elon Musk and his three companies with a website titled Stop Elon From Failing Again. Billed as “The One Stop Database on Stopping Elon Musk,” the website is a compilation of critical news stories about Musk, SpaceX, SolarCity and Telsa Motors. A major criticism is that the companies have received billions in government subsidies and tax credits. […]
Elon Musk (Credit: SpaceX)
Later today, Elon Musk will stand on a stage at the International Astronautic Congress in Mexico and reveal his plans for sending humans to Mars and making humanity a multi-planet species.
His talk will be webcast on Tuesday, Sept. 27 beginning at 2:30 pm EDT. To access the webcast, please click here or connect on one of these websites: IAF website, IAC 2016 website and AEM website. Musk will hold a press conference afterward; it’s not known whether it will be webcast.
The description of the talk on the conference website gives us a hint about what lies ahead.
SpaceX Founder, CEO, and Lead Designer Elon Musk will discuss the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars. The technical presentation will focus on potential architectures for sustaining humans on the Red Planet that industry, government and the scientific community can collaborate on in the years ahead.
There are three questions that loom on the eve of the speech: What exactly is he going to propose? Who will pay for it? And how will he convince people it’s worth doing? A bit of parsing of the above description gives us some clues.
(more…)
Elon Musk has knocked down speculation that he will eventually merge SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity into one large company. “There’s not a strong rationale to combine SpaceX and Tesla,” Musk said, unlike his previous merger — apparently, “there is (rationale) for Tesla and SolarCity” to combine…. “(The relationship) is really quite tenuous for SpaceX and Tesla,” Musk said. “it’s not enough to merge into one entity.” SolarCity has accepted an […]
Hollywood uber-producer — and male bad-hair day model — Brian Grazer and Ron “Apollo 13” Howard are planning an eight-hour mini-series on Elon Musk. Learn more
Forbes has published its annual list of the planet’s billionaires. A small but growing number of them are either directly supporting major space projects or doing so through the companies that they run. FORBES RANK NAME AGE 2015 NET WORTH (BILLIONS) SOURCE(S) OF WEALTH SPACE INVESTMENT(S) 15 Jeff Bezos 51 $34.8 Amazon.com Blue Origin 16 Mark Zuckerberg 30 $33.4 Facebook Global satellite network 19 Larry Page 41 $29.7 Google SpaceX, […]
