The name Elon Musk is now known throughout the world as the leading figure in space travel and electric cars. He became the richest person this year and as of now the title often changes between him and Jeff Bezos with no clear winner. Alongside his popularity, fame, and fortune, the names of his two companies in these fields -which are SpaceX and Tesla respectively- have become almost synonymous with the names of the scientific fields themselves. This immense and almost sudden rise of him and his companies has made him be received as a genius pioneer by a large group of people. But also, as expected, many others are sceptical against Elon Musk. This scepticism does not rise from the proportion of his fortune or the past successes of his companies, but rather stems from the supposed fakeness of his persona. This persona whether real or not can quite easily be seen, as Musk has a pretty active social media presence and he loves to be a guest in talk-shows or podcasts. In most of these occurrences, he tries to give a down-to-earth impression as he wants to separate himself from other billionaires with his pop culture knowledge and nerdiness. He wants people to believe he is just a witty hard-working nerd who paved his way through success with his own hands and nails instead of being portrayed as a shrewd businessman which is how most of the billionaires are always seen as. Some people genuinely believe in this persona but as mentioned some people label him as a capitalist thief who hides behind this mask only to increase his influence on society for personal profit. Most frankly, the truth lies in a combination of these arguments because as by themselves, they just manage to cover a portion of the greyness of Elon Musk’s character. (1)

 

Firstly, let us dissect the reasoning behind Elon Musk’s consideration as a genius pioneer. The dissection will show the truths and falsehoods behind this positive appearance he acquired. So, is Elon Musk a genius pioneer? Truthfully, Musk took a great deal of risk when he jumped into the electric vehicle and rocket sectors and risks are a major point of pioneering. The electric vehicle industry by itself was seen as a dead-end industry at the time. On the other hand, the rocket industry and especially its launching aspect, was mostly governmental at the time of SpaceX’s start. However, he was definitely not the first private manufacturer in both of these sectors.  Modern electric car models were produced and sold or leased since the mid-1990s by many car companies such as Honda, Nissan, Chevrolet, Ford, and Toyota, but all of these productions sold very poorly and none of them was able to make past 320 km in one charge. (2) Considering the charging time of these vehicles this was a major flaw against long-distance travel. Tesla’s 2008 Roadster solved this problem with its lithium-ion battery and became the best-selling electric car at the time.

 

Tesla’s improvements on electric vehicles as a whole is definitely a success, but the real mark on his acknowledgement as a genius pioneer comes from the development of the reusable launch system in rockets. The idea was tried before by NASA but it was failed and then scrapped out. SpaceX’s success cut the average cost of space shuttle launches from 450 million dollars for Soyuz rockets to a mere 50 million dollars for Falcon 9. (3) These innovations are surely a form of pioneering and it is said that Musk tries to take part in every technical decision the companies make which may contribute to his label as a genius. These combined with his already mentioned social and online fame alongside his persona as a humble, hard-working nerd made the people coin him as a genius pioneer who takes his steps for the betterment of the human civilization instead of just economic profit. However, it should not be forgotten that SpaceX and Tesla’s major successes cannot be just associated with Elon Musk alone, as there are whole teams of workers, engineers, and scientists behind every little step. These teams of engineers and scientists are incredibly vital to the pioneering aspect of these two companies, yet these people are most of the time shadowed behind Musk’s immense fame and popularity which results in him earning all the credits for successes. The populace needs to understand the difference between companies and their CEO. He is the lead designer in SpaceX and the product architect in Tesla, so of course he is very important, but his acclamation of all the credits is just a social engineering fallacy for fame.         

 

Below is a picture from SpaceX’s February 2018 Falcon Heavy Rocket launch which had a Tesla Roadster as the cargo. The act itself is an example of Elon Musk’s desire of combining ingenuity with extravagant stunts to create a shock effect on global media. The event was talked about for many weeks around the world which greatly furthered Musk’s fame and popularity as it was his plan.