Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance | Summary & Analysis

g that crossed his path

three major goals in life were to make humans space colonizers,

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future is a biography by Ashlee Vance. Musk originally refused to cooperate with Vance’s biography. This was no surprise, as he was known for being extremely controlling of everything written about him and his companies. Vance already had plenty of inside sources, but he wanted Musk’s input. Musk demanded to be allowed to vet the book and add his version where he did not agree. Vance refused. However, he managed to get Musk to listen to his journalistic and personal reasons for not allowing pre-approval of the book. To his surprise, Musk agreed to cooperate and allowed free access to his staff, friends, and family.
Musk’s three major goals in life were to make humans space colonizers, to build ecologically sound and beautiful cars, and to power the world with safe, free solar energy. By 2012, his Space X, Tesla Motors, and SolarCity companies were all racking up success after success in each of his goal areas.
Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. At the age of twelve, he invented and wrote code for a video game called Blastar. At fourteen, suffering an identity crisis, he studied religion and philosophy, but his most profound inspiration came from Douglas Adams’ whimsical the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Like Adams, he concluded that people needed to find out how to ask the right questions before they could get to the right answers.
In the atmosphere of South Africa’s Apartheid, the ideal man was tough and athletic, so the nerdy Musk was a bullied outsider in his early school years. He plotted to escape to America as fast as he could to pursue his tech dreams. Musk spent his childhood reading everything that crossed his path and entering it into his photographic memory.