{"id":100417,"date":"2017-01-06T10:38:03","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T15:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=100417"},"modified":"2017-01-06T06:38:59","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T11:38:59","slug":"elon-musk-is-the-madman-we-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2017\/01\/elon-musk-is-the-madman-we-need\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Is the Madman We Need"},"content":{"rendered":"
January 6, 2017<\/div>
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By WallStreetDaily.com<\/u><\/a> \"Elon<\/p>\n

We love to hate him, and we hate to love him. But the South Africa-born Canadian-American engineer\/entrepreneur\/impresario is a man fit for our times.<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

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In the recent National Geographic Channel six-part docudrama MARS<\/em>, Olivier Martinez played the \u201cElon Musk\u201d role.<\/p>\n

The French actor also famously played the guy who shacked up with Richard Gere\u2019s wife in the Academy Award-nominated 2002 erotic thriller Unfaithful<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Such a role may have prepared him to play the tech lothario. In real life, Musk married striking actress Talulah Riley \u2014 most recently of the hit HBO sci-fi\/western thriller Westworld<\/em> \u2014 twice.<\/p>\n

And so it goes for the superstar CEO and product architect of electric car\/energy storage powerhouse Tesla Motors Inc.<\/strong> (TSLA), a nerd\/prodigy turned handsome entrepreneur who even lived the clich\u00e9 of being bullied and beaten up as a youngster.<\/p>

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This curious amalgam \u2014 part Dr. Strangelove, part Dr. Emmett Brown, part Norville Barnes, part Warren Beatty \u2014 embodies the spirit of \u201cbe the change you wish to see in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

(No, that\u2019s not a direct Gandhi quote. The Mahatma actually said: \u201cIf we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him\u2026 We need not wait to see what others do.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Despite the multiple failures of Musk\u2019s main venture, Tesla, to meet official production guidance, raw growth remains impressive.<\/p>\n

For example, on Tuesday, Tesla announced fourth-quarter vehicle deliveries of 22,200, bringing 2016 deliveries to 76,230. That\u2019s nearly 4,000 below the bottom of the company\u2019s full-year guidance range of 80,000\u201390,000 vehicles.<\/p>\n

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This curious amalgam \u2014 part Dr. Strangelove, part Dr. Emmett Brown, part Norville Barnes, part Warren Beatty \u2014 embodies the spirit of \u201cbe the change you wish to see in the world.\u201d<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Only once during the past four years has Tesla met or exceeded its targets \u2014 in 2013, when it delivered 22,442, versus guidance of 20,000.<\/p>\n

So yeah, another miss\u2026 but, oh yeah deliveries were up 50.5% year over year in 2016.<\/p>\n

In tandem with ever-higher targets and the asymptotic approach of them \u2014 more important, even \u2014 is Musk\u2019s messianic pursuit of making Earth a better place to live\u2026 up to and until we can leave this planet and colonize the cosmos, namely Mars.<\/p>\n

Interpreted by many observers as a move of desperation, Musk\u2019s June 2016 decision to merge another of his companies, SolarCity, into Tesla is indeed an apotheosis: Clean energy comes together, electric cars and sun-fed high-capacity storage batteries combining supply chains and sharing the same storefronts.<\/p>\n

Musk is also CEO and chief technology officer of SpaceX, which is getting back to the launchpad on Sunday after a five-month layoff following the September 1, 2016, explosion of its Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n

SpaceX\u2019s and Musk\u2019s grand ambition is to put men and women on Mars.<\/p>\n

In the interim, he and his company would like to more than double the number of Earth-orbiting satellites in order \u201cto create a global internet hotspot 200 times faster than today\u2019s average connection speed,\u201d writes Vanessa Bates Ramirez at SingularityHub.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, NASA\u2019s Langley Research Center continues to explore ways of making the Red Planet habitable for humanity.<\/p>\n

The space agency\u2019s latest concept is basically an inflatable igloo that solves multiple Martian residential problems:<\/p>\n

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The \u201cMars Ice Home\u201d is a large inflatable torus, a shape similar to an inner tube, which is surrounded by a shell of water ice. The Mars Ice Home design has several advantages that make it an appealing concept. It is lightweight and can be transported and deployed with simple robotics, then filled with water before the crew arrives. It incorporates materials extracted from Mars, and because water in the Ice Home could potentially be converted to rocket fuel for the Mars Ascent Vehicle, the structure itself doubles as a storage tank that can be refilled for the next crew.<\/p>\n

Another critical benefit is that water, a hydrogen-rich material, is an excellent shielding material for galactic cosmic rays<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 and many areas of Mars have abundant water ice just below the surface<\/strong><\/a>. Galactic cosmic rays are one of the biggest risks of long stays on Mars. This high-energy radiation can pass right through the skin, damaging cells or DNA along the way that can mean an increased risk for cancer later in life or, at its worst, acute radiation sickness.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Musk\u2019s Earth-bound projects have already benefitted from government help in the form of subsidies and tax breaks for \u201cgreen\u201d projects.<\/p>\n

His Martian exploit will also be done in partnership with tax-supported government entities, including NASA.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s undeniably the most prominent independent force driving us skyward, though his lofty ambitions aren\u2019t without peer or competitor.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFor me to be excited and inspired about the future, it\u2019s got to be the first option. It\u2019s got to be: We\u2019re going to be a spacefaring civilization.\u201d<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Of course, Google and Facebook have their own plans to \u201cwrap the Earth in internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

China recently launched its biggest-ever rocket, part of the Middle Kingdom\u2019s effort to do stuff like establish space stations and put spy satellites in geostationary orbit.<\/p>\n

The LM-5 will also power a lunar soil return mission and the launch of a Martian rover within the next several years.<\/p>\n

Over the long term, the Chinese may even undertake a manned lunar mission.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s private space industry is also in on the commercial satellite and space tourism games.<\/p>\n

In an interview aired during one of the \u201cdocu-\u201d segments of MARS<\/em>, Musk said, \u201cThe future of humanity is fundamentally going to bifurcate along one of two directions: Either we\u2019re going to become a multiplanet species and a spacefaring civilization, or we\u2019re going be stuck on one planet until some eventual extinction event.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order for me to be excited and inspired about the future, it\u2019s got to be the first option. It\u2019s got to be: We\u2019re going to be a spacefaring civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he said when he detailed the lynchpin of his grandiose Martian plan on September 27, 2016, SpaceX\u2019s Interplanetary Transport System, Musk merely wants to \u201cmake Mars seem possible in our lifetimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about raising expectations.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n

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Old Things New<\/h2>\n

For Doug Jones, making \u201cOld Things New\u201d is a daily endeavor.<\/p>\n

At his blog Logarithmic History<\/strong><\/a>, Doug, an anthropologist at the University of Utah, explores \u201cthe history of the universe \u2014 from the Big Bang to the end of the year \u2014 day by day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s Doug to explain Logarithmic History:<\/p>\n

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Compressing the history of the universe into one year is not a new idea: Both Carl Sagan<\/strong><\/a> and Neil de Grasse Tyson<\/strong><\/a> did it, and you can get a\u00a02015\u00a0Cosmic Calendar<\/strong><\/a> that shows the same idea. What\u2019s different about the version here? The earlier work uses a linear<\/em> scale, dividing the age of the universe by the number of days in a year, so that every calendar day covers a constant 37.8 million years in the history of the universe. This is useful for dramatizing just how long \u201cbillions and billions\u201d of years really is. But it means that most of the events that people are most interested in \u2014 including all of the evolution of biological and cultural complexity \u2014 happen late in the year. The Earth forms in early September. Dinosaurs go extinct on December 30, and all of human evolution and human history happen late on December 31.<\/p>\n

At Logarithmic History, by contrast, I use a logarithmic<\/em> scale. Other<\/strong><\/a> folks<\/a><\/strong> have proposed putting the history of the universe on a logarithmic scale; here I map that scale onto the course of one year. If you\u2019re a bit hazy about logarithms, all you have to know is that each day of the year covers a shorter period in the history of the universe than the preceding day (5.46% shorter<\/strong><\/a>). January 1 begins with the Big Bang and covers a full 751 million years. January 2 covers the next 711 million years, and so on. Succeeding days cover shorter and shorter succeeding intervals in the history of the universe. At this rate, a given calendar date covers only a 10th as much time as a date 41 days earlier.<\/p>\n

On this logarithmic scale, Earth is formed on January 20, trilobites arise toward\u00a0the end of February, and dinosaurs meet their doom on April 6. The middle of the year finds Homo erectus<\/em> giving way to early versions\u00a0of Neanderthals and\u00a0Homo sapiens<\/em>. October begins with King David and ends with Columbus. By December 7, we reach the year of the Beatles\u2019 first LP<\/strong><\/a> (1963). December 31 covers just one year, 2016; calendar time and history-of-the-universe time finally coincide at midnight.<\/p>\n

Many of the world\u2019s religions follow a yearly calendar of sacred days; many nations have their annual holidays. Logarithmic History is a chance to celebrate, over the course of a year, our species\u2019 discovery of the deep history of the universe.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On Wednesday, I read about exactly why we are stardust<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Smart Investing,<\/p>\n

David Dittman<\/p>\n

Editorial Director, Wall Street Daily<\/i><\/p>\n

The post Elon Musk Is the Madman We Need<\/a> appeared first on Wall Street Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By WallStreetDaily.com We love to hate him, and we hate to love him. But the South Africa-born Canadian-American engineer\/entrepreneur\/impresario is a man fit for our times. In the recent National Geographic Channel six-part docudrama MARS, Olivier Martinez played the \u201cElon Musk\u201d role. The French actor also famously played the guy who shacked up with Richard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100417"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100425,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100417\/revisions\/100425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}