Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX on December 1, 2020 – HANNIBAL HANSCHKE / POOL / AFP
- With the success of SpaceX, we only talk about Elon Musk, a real object of media fascination.
- Billionaire touches everything, the entrepreneur is one of the main players of the future.
- Luc Mary, who wrote the biography Elon Musk, the man who invented our future, returns to this atypical character who confided to be suffering from Asperger’s syndrome a few days ago.
His name is associated with the conquest of space, the luxury electric car, the augmented man, and even recently with virtual currencies… Elon Musk is building a future in the image he has of the world of tomorrow. Ambitious, visionary, the billionaire entrepreneur has been touching everything in the media for several months, whether it’s about SpaceX, NeuraLink brain implants, his passion for blockchains …
Invited this Saturday evening of Saturday Night Live, he revealed to have Asperger’s syndrome (AS). Back on the extraordinary journey of one of the richest men in the world with Luc Mary, author of Elon Musk, the man who invented our future (L’Archipel editions), published this Thursday.
Why did you want to write about Elon Musk?
I wrote biographies on Hannibal, the Romanovs… These characters are long dead. They have nothing to do with Elon Musk, but it turns out that one of my great passions is the conquest of space. I have written several books on this subject, in particular 100 preconceived ideas, untruths and unusual facts about the conquest of space (The Archipelago). What interested me about Elon Musk was SpaceX. For me, he was the man who awakened the dream of space, which had broken down since the fall of the Soviet Union. He gave hope to humanity. He knows that humans are doomed to become a multiplanetary species in the more or less long term.
What surprised you about writing about this character?
He never gives up. He believes in his dreams. Moreover, in a recent interview, he said about the conquest of Mars: “A group of people will probably die at the beginning”. For him, failure – the word is weak – is part of the conquest of space. The accident is part of the epic. However, the American space shuttle suffered two accidents and this is what sanctioned its end. Ditto for the Concorde. From 2011 to 2020, it was the Soyuz spacecraft that transported astronauts and cosmonauts to the International Space Station. For ten years the Americans were dependent on the Russians. And on May 30, 2020, for the first time in the history of the conquest of space, a spacecraft manufactured by a private company, SpaceX, made a successful manned flight from Earth to the ISS. Obviously, it’s no big deal to go on the ISS, but the fact that it’s a private manned flight is. His great ambition is Mars.
Why do you compare Elon Musk to Howard Hughes rather than Steve Jobs, for example?
Howard Hughes was an entrepreneur who died in 1976. He was one of the richest and most influential men in the United States. He was at the same time inventor, aviator, aircraft manufacturer, film director and businessman. He was charismatic and versatile like Elon Musk. To me, Elon Musk is more of a Walt Disney from space. We are talking about space again thanks to him. And we are talking about space again because it has put man at the center of space. He rehabilitated manned flight. The public does not remember the men who traveled to the ISS, they remember the men who went to the moon. Rather, it would be a cross between Walt Disney and Wernher von Braun, the father of V2 rockets. He was a former Nazi, but he was also an aeronautical genius.
How to explain Elon Musk’s aura?
In the past, it was said that everything he did was impossible, starting with the European Space Agency (ESA). When she heard about Elon Musk’s plans in 2005, about reusing launchers, she laughed at him. And finally, he represents the small versus the big. The success of private enterprise relative to the bulk of national industry. Tesla rammed the pawn at Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, no one saw a future in Tesla. He succeeded where we saw him fail. This is what pleases the public. At first, no one gave him the slightest chance. He is not a gifted graduate, he has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a bachelor’s degree in physics. He works 20 hours a day and he never gives up.
What fascinates you about him?
It modernizes the space. The astronauts’ suits were designed by a Hollywood costume designer. They look like combinations of comics, Blake and Mortimer. It awakened our desire to explore the future. Before him, the door to the future had closed. Its eclecticism fascinates me. He believes in the future of man in space. He’s a sort of solar system globetrotter. Not only does he want to conquer space, but he wants to go further. They will also send men around Jupiter. A trip to Mars is six months, a trip to Jupiter, which is surrounded by a procession of satellites, it is five years to go with our current means. Elon Musk knows full well that he won’t see space tourism on Mars in his lifetime, but he wants to be buried on Mars.
If you had to describe the future muskian, what would he look like?
It’s a future that reconciles technology with the environment. A future that is both ecological and technological. Without plane, without train. The future of rail depends on the absence of rail [le projet Hyperloop est un train à grande vitesse qui ne nécessite pas de rails]. I think that the future described by Elon Musk is more in line with the wishes of the ecologists, than the future seen by Total, for example.
How does Elon Musk stand out from Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, or Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon?
He is always put in competition with Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, but money is not the engine of his life. He doesn’t care if he has a million dollars or 200 million dollars, he wants the money to make his “tech toys”. It’s the same species: men who believe in their dreams. It is true that Jeff Bezos is interested in space, with Blue Origin, but for a short time. Elon Musk has been interested in it since he was a teenager. And he’s had it all in his life. At school, he was the pain-reliever of his comrades. He was sent to the hospital because he was rushed down a flight of stairs. He left the country in 1988, at the age of 18, to escape military service. In Canada and the United States, he did odd jobs. He worked in a sawmill, he was a lumberjack, a farmer… He did not ride gold all his life. On the other hand, rockets and science fiction comics have always fascinated him.
What’s your future with Elon Musk?
If he picks up Mars, I wrote a second volume. We have to wonder what the world would be like without Elon Musk: we wouldn’t be talking about space. It would miss a dream dimension. NASA chose SpaceX to send the next American astronauts to the moon. The interest of the Moon is to serve as a springboard for the future colonization of the planets of the solar system because the weightlessness is six times lower than on Earth. The interest of the Moon is to go further. It’s part of the history of human exploration. Humans are thirsty to discover worlds that could save us. On the Moon, there is helium-3 that cannot be found on Earth. And if we harness this energy, we could definitely get rid of oil. Without Elon Musk the Earth might be lost.