If serial entrepreneur Elon Musk has his way, sending a payload—and eventually, people— into space will be handled commercially, more like UPS than “the Right Stuff.” (At least if you leave out the part about settling Mars.) Oh, and the rest of us here on earth solar power will be able to tap affordable Theand drive fast, efficient, Next,cool-looking electric cars. NBY ROBERText STRAUSS Thing 56 NOV | DEC 2008 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE PHOTO BY ETHAN PINES THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE NOV | DEC 2008 57 he way Adeo Ressi C’94 tells it, at a fraction of NASA’s costs, he hopes— (his mother was born in Canada). He “all this space stuff” started to more easily send payloads, and eventu- completed the journey by applying to with a somewhat whispered- ally people, to the moon and beyond. Penn as a transfer student, arriving on T out-loud daydreaming session Musk, who has invested a reported $100 campus in his sophomore year to study coming back to New York City after some million in the company since founding it economics and physics. time on the beach on Long Island. in 2002, is both chief executive officer And also to have a bit of fun and make a “The wife and the girlfriend were sleep- and chief technology officer. In late little cash on the side with his buddy Ressi. ing when I blurted out, ‘Hey, let’s do September, after a series of failed efforts “We were both transfer students and space,’” Ressi recalls. “Elon and I imme- that would have tested the resolve of they stuck us in these giant dorms and we diately thought it was the stupidest idea many an entrepreneur (though appar- just wanted to get out,” recalls Ressi, who we could think of. But then, somehow, it ently not Musk’s), the company success- transferred to Penn from Carnegie Mellon seemed just right. It really fits what he fully launched one of its rockets into University. So they found each other and is—looking for the challenge that is just orbit around the Earth—the first private- rented a house off-campus. “But then we beyond what everyone else is thinking.” ly developed rocket to manage this feat. weren’t connected to the fraternity scene, Shortly before that driving trip Ressi Musk is also involved in two other ini- and we weren’t new students either. We and his one-time Penn housemate, Elon tiatives with major environmental impli- had to meet people, so we decided to have Musk W’95, took, Musk’s second Internet cations—as chairman of Tesla Motors, a parties, but since we also didn’t have startup company—originally called X. company that has designed and will money, we decided to make it a business.” com but by then merged with another aggressively market an electric sports- They hired bouncers and even cleaning company and known as PayPal—had been car capable of traveling more than 200 crews, charged enough to always have a sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. This was miles on a single charge while going little left over to spend, and realized they after his first, Zip2.com, had sold for from 0 to 60 mph in under four seconds, had gotten the entrepreneurial bug. $305 million in 1999 [“From Zip to X,” and as a major investor in SolarCity, “They do that sort of thing all the time Nov|Dec 1999]. Fabulously wealthy and which has started bringing cheaper now, but back when we did it, everyone barely into his 30s, Musk was actively in solar energy to homeowners and other thought it was clever and business-like,” search of that fabled “next, next thing.” individual customers in California. says Ressi, himself the veteran of sev- “I had always been interested in space, It all started, Musk says, when he was eral startups—most recently as the from the time I was a kid looking at the just a kid who dreamed the American founding member of TheFunded.com, a stars in South Africa,” says Musk. “It dream—albeit from Pretoria, South Africa, website where entrepreneurs can bite wasn’t that much of a stretch, at least where he grew up middle-class, the son the hands that feed them (or decline to) to me, that I would try something to get of an engineer and a dietician. Musk by rating and otherwise commenting on us there, cheaply and with a sense of was a tinkerer as a kid, and even devel- venture-capital firms. “I think Elon was environmental soundness.” oped and sold a computer game, “Blast careful to do everything right then, and Not even your average thinking-out- Star,” when he was 12. His biggest dreams, has not wavered from that same sort of of-the-box Silicon Valley entrepreneur though, were about space and about attention to detail now.” would necessarily connect going to Mars coming to America. After Penn, Musk went to Stanford in or the moon with an environmental imper- “I have to admit I might have been a 1995, intending to earn a graduate degree ative, but that is how Musk’s mind oper- bit too fascinated about America, but it in high-energy physics. Within a month, ates, say his friends and business asso- really did seem everything was possible in the midst of the Silicon Valley startup ciates. It is not that he is exceptionally there and, at the time, not so possible frenzy, he decided his time would be bet- moral or righteous, but when he is gripped in South Africa,” where the system of ter spent working on a software idea— by an idea—obsession might be a better apartheid was still in place, says Musk. one designed to help news organizations word—he makes it important and won’t “And I did have this thing about space. provide content online. So he dropped back away from accomplishing it. In a I still believe this: If we continue upon out and started what became Zip2, which December 2007 article naming him its the Apollo program and get to Mars and was bought four years later by Compaq’s “Entrepreneur of the Year,” Inc. maga- beyond, that will seem far more impor- Alta Vista division. zine noted that Musk, in contrast to many tant in historical context than anything At the same time, Musk was developing entrepreneurs who build their companies else we do today. The day multiplane- the software for his next venture, which he on incremental improvements, “has tary species come about, things like called X.com. With more and more people distinguished himself by attempting the Soviet Union will be forgotten or becoming comfortable on the Internet, things that most people who care about merely remembered by arcane historical Musk saw that they would want to pay their avoiding personal bankruptcy would scholars. Things like the invasion of bills from their home computers, and com- not even consider.” Iraq won’t even be a footnote.” panies would certainly welcome a good Space Exploration Technologies—the After graduating from high school, clearinghouse type of program. result of that seminal discussion with Musk left South Africa—in part to avoid The programmer in Musk is never alone, Ressi—certainly fills that bill. SpaceX, as army service there—and came about as though. He is always being joined by the the company is generally known, is in the close as he could to the U.S., enrolling business guy. Musk was looking for syn- business of developing launch vehicles— at Queen’s College in Kingston, Ontario ergies for his new system and found it in 58 NOV | DEC 2008 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE On its fourth try, in September SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket successfully launched from the company’s test site in the South Pacific and reached Earth orbit after about nine-and-a-half minutes in flight. Confinity, a company primarily designed minerals, and a tremendous amount of wanted to know not just what was fantas- to beam money between Palm Pilots. water in permafrost. If you could raise tic, but where he could make a difference. Part of Confinity, though, was a product the temperature on Mars about 30 or 40 “He first came to talk to me about Mars, somewhat like Musk’s at X.com, and it degrees Celsius, it would be under water. but in the end, he is building a rocket,” was called PayPal. Confinity and X.com The basic point is, there is enough water Friedman adds. “One could say he scaled merged in 2000, and in 2002 the combined in permafrost. On the moon, water is back his ambition, but he has not scaled company, by then known as PayPal, Inc., almost completely absent. Also gravity it back at all. He still wants to go to Mars, was bought by eBay for $1.5 billion. Musk on Mars is closer to that on Earth.” but unlike many, he has decided to make owned nearly 12 percent of the PayPal That business guy in Musk, though, a business out of it. shares at the sale, so while he did not have, always tempers the visionary. The people “To the extent that he can spark an say, Bill Gates’ kind of money, he had he found who were most interested in the interest in other people, he is doing it. clearly jumped from the ranks of the Mars idea were a bit too dreamy, and he He has that old NASA we-can-do-it atti- merely very wealthy into the I-can-do- wanted something that could produce tude.