Elon Musk, the boss and founder of Tesla, SpaceX and previously PayPal. Possibly the world’s most interesting man. Source: AP
HE WANTS to stop the world from being overrun by robots, desperately wants to take a trip to Mars and wants to change how we get from A to B. Elon Musk could well just be the world’s most interesting man.
At the weekend, Musk shared his latest crazy but could maybe work idea at a private event in Seattle.
The eccentric billionaire wants to build a network of 4000 satellites that he claims will be able to provide high-speed internet access to anyone, anywhere on Earth. This is for the sole purpose of generating revenue to finance the extremely costly trip to Mars.
“One day I will visit Mars,” theSeattle Times reported Musk saying to the audience of 400 guests.
Musk’s satellite project will be run out of his SpaceX company which he founded in 2002 with “the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”
MORE: The craziest things eccentric billionaire Elon Musk has said
MORE: Elon Musk donated $10m to ensure robots don’t eventually murder you
Since its inception, Musk and SpaceX have flown nearly 50 missions and hold the contracts to resupply the International Space Station. Just last week, the company even tried landing a rocket on a giant autonomous floating landing pad in the middle of the ocean. So Musk’s seemingly outlandish plans for a worldwide internet network could actually happen.
The ‘real life Tony Stark’ also announced last week his plans to build a test track for his environmentally friendly super high-speed train Hyperloop.
Will be building a Hyperloop test track for companies and student teams to test out their pods. Most likely in Texas.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2015 Hyperloop was one of Musk’s craziest but greatest ideas which he announced in 2013, but disappointed the world by saying he was simply too busy to build it. The train system would enable people to travel between cities at nearly 1300km/h. The best part of it all was that it worked by using a frictionless air pocket system, similar to how an air hockey table works, and draws all its power from the sun.
Imagine being able to travel from Sydney to Melbourne by train in around 40 minutes. Source: ThinkStock
That’s not even all of the crazy things he has announced this year. Announcing on New Year’s Day that Tesla, another of his companies is working on an electric car charger that comes out from the wall and connects to owners’ cars “like a solid metal snake.”
Btw, we are actually working on a charger that automatically moves out from the wall & connects like a solid metal snake. For realz.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2014 Oh and he also donated $10 million to help make sure that artificially intelligent robots don’t kill us all.
Funding research on artificial intelligence safety. It's all fun & games until someone loses an I http://t.co/t1aGnrTU21
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2015 All of this has happened in just the first three weeks of 2015. This is on top of a big 2014 where he created the world’s first genuine electric supercar, announced new rocket designs and proposed plans for the world’s biggest lithium-ion battery production facility. 2015 is going to be a massive year for the world’s most interesting man.