Elon Musk, a South African internet entrepreneur made $300M on Zip2 and followed it up with $1.5B on PayPal.
His third company, set up in June this year, is SpaceX. He has done a clean sheet design start on a new vehicle aimed at cutting costs by two thirds. Falcon is targeted for launch by the end of 2003. Once operational, the two stage lox/kerosene Falcon will become the upper stages of a three stage heavy lifter.
He’s out to eat Boeing, Arianespace and Lockheed’s lunch.
Your heads-up set me off finding out about this guy, partly because I live in SA) and also because he echoes fictional entrepreneur J K Lee in the novel Voyage by Stephen Baxter.
Lee’s goal was in fact a manned expedition to Mars, and he essentially came in with the lowest tender, based on a slingshot idea that would help cut fuel costs to the bare bones (his operation was bare-bones in every respect).
Imagine my surprise when I discovered a manned Mars landing appears to be Musk’s big thing too and he has already proposed developing a cheap lander ($20m of his own money). (www.space-frontier.org/Projects/Spacefaring/1-9%20Elon%20Musk.htm).
I wonder if the low-earth orbit SpaceX rocket is not perhaps either a spinoff from the work he’s been doing on a cost-effective Mars expedition (pretty typical of his entrepreneurial approach, which is the antithesis of the corporate bureacratic structure), or at least a step along the way. I also wonder if he hasn’t perhaps read Baxter’s movel …
He is South African by birth, but apparently left at the age of 17.
Thanks for a fascinating diversion.
I wonder why this wasn’t thought up by an EU engineer in Brussels?
Kevin
South Africa seems to be turning out quite a few exceptional people in the aerospace entrepreneurial segment. There’s also Shuttleworth who also made money in IT and besides going to the ISS also is looking at commercial ventures; and a bit closer to earth is of course Thunder City, the Premier place on earth for fast jet lovers.
Indeed, my first thought was, take that, Mark Shuttleworth … who has become quite a bore on the subject of his great adventure round here.
As for Thunder City, I assume you must have visited it. I cannot be tempted into one of those monsters. I can’t afford it either.
No, never been there. I just drool over the photos in Aeroplane and Flypast and wish I had the wherewithall to get an hour in one of those supersonic mothers.