ELON MUSK by Ashlee Vance

I read this book at the recommendation of my husband. He was excited about Tesla and the future of electric cars. After all, he owns an electric vehicle (no, it’s not a Tesla), so he was enthusiastic about this subject. 

Whenever I heard the name of Elon Musk’s name, in my mind it was always linked with Tesla and electric cars. This book, however, has convinced me otherwise.
It was unusual for me to learn that Elon Musk intends to send people to Mars and that since he was young, he dreamed that Mars was going to be populated by humans.
“I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future.
If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multiplanetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet then I think that would be really good.”

By now, his company SpaceX “has been testing reusable rockets that can carry payloads to space and land back on Earth, on their launchpads, with precision.”

The passion for space seems to come from reading a lot of comic books: “In the comics, it always seems like they are trying to save the world.”
And he was a voracious reader. When he did not have any more books to read from the library, he started reading Encyclopedia Britannica: “You don’t know what you don’t know. You realize there are all these things out there.”

I can’t help but think of how much his childhood is responsible for his success.
His father was a strict man and while Elon didn’t reveal anything about the years he spent living with his father, he “clearly experienced something awful and profound”. This is the reason why none of his five children were ever allowed to meet their paternal grandfather.
Also, in school, tougher boys resented the fact that he was so knowledgeable and bullied him.

Therefore,  Elon is questioning whether or not he is bringing up his five boys in a way that is not spoiling them to the point where they will become somebody in life; educated in private schools and toured around the world with private jets.

“What do I do? Create artificial adversity? How do you do that? The biggest battle I have is restricting their video game time because they want to play all the time. The rule is they have to read more than they play video games. They also can’t play completely stupid video games.”

Kindle, 2016