Valleywag
Next Establishment
Posts Tagged “
elon musk
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Privateers rocket to space fifty years after communists
Sure, Leonid Brezhnev's particular flavor of state capitalism and political repression was no pleasure to live under. But consider this, free-market apologists: Those wily Soviets and their evil regulated markets out-innovated us in the space department to claim first-mover status. It wasn't for another fifty years that private capital finally caught up in the form of Elon Musk's SpaceX, on the company's fourth flight. And the rocket didn't even deploy a satellite — much less a satellite with a lovable monkey inside. [Wired]
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Next Establishment
Barely legal billionaires insist there's tons more money to be made
21-year-old billionaires in the making? To tell the truth, the youngest Forbes has come up with in the past decade was Elon Musk at 27. That was back in 1998, with only $22 million. Musk's face is more lined, but he still isn't a billionaire, even after cashing out from PayPal's sale to eBay. Forbes at least has some standards — only reason I can imagine Zuckerberg isn't in the piece is because his share of Facebook's valuation is still mostly theoretical. As for Bebo's Michael and Xochi Birch? They're back to their birthday announcement and e-card concern BirthdayAlarm.com, not content with a cabin in the hills at all. (Photo by Ryan Anson/Bloomberg News/Landov)
venture capital
Peter Thiel funds Elon Musk's sputtering rocketships
Peter Thiel fought viciously with Elon Musk in the early part of this decade; after they merged their companies to form with PayPal, they wrestled for control, with Thiel emerging victorious as the CEO who led the company through an IPO and a $1.5 billion sale to eBay. At the time, Musk was the richer, having sold a forgotten company to another forgotten company for an unforgettable $220 million. The two have long since made up — and a lucky thing for Musk, who now finds himself a supplicant to Thiel. Thiel's venture capital firm, the Founders Fund, has agreed to invest $20 million in Musk's faltering SpaceX, a rocket-ship startup whose latest vehicle crashed into the Pacific Ocean rather than soaring into the beyond. More »
spacex
Elon Musk's latest failed rocket launch sends Scotty's remains into Pacific, not space
On Omelek Island in the Pacific Ocean, 2,500 miles from Hawaii, a rocket carrying the ashen remains of Star Trek actor James “Scotty” Doohan and 207 other people was poised to rocket to the heavenes Saturday. Footing the bill: Elon Musk of PayPal and Tesla Motors fame. Instead, the tech entrepreneur, now dabbling in aeronautics, tried and failed to launch a rocket into orbit for the third time on Saturday. The Falcon 1 owned by Musk's private space exploration company, SpaceX, left the ground and stayed off it for 2 minutes and 20 seconds before second- and third-stage rockets failed to ignite. The whole thing, including Scotty's ashes, plunged back to earth. Musk, promising to "never give up," called the failure "a big disappointment." Aye, the haggis is in the fire for sure. All of this reminds us of a definition of "founder": "to fill with water and sink."
mine is faster
Moffett Field becoming a country club airport for Valley ultra-rich
The Google Party Plane isn't the only aircraft using Nasa's Moffett Field to shuttle tech execs in and out of the Valley. An eagle-eyed plane spotter caught Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk's Dassault Falcon taking a round trip between Moffett and Orange County's Van Nuys airport this week. "It must be nice," says the tipster, implying a breathy sigh. My question is, as one of the few people with a Tesla Roadster in his garage, why didn't Musk drive that to the Southland instead of burning gallons of jet fuel? Oh, right, that's well outside the roadster's range.
cleantech
Arnold Schwarzenegger shows up to Tesla dealership opening
A coterie of B-list celebritards including Jenny McCarthy and Darryl Hannah, as well as California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, showed up to an opening party for the new Tesla Motors dealership on Santa Monica Boulevard in Westwood last week. Why LA and not the Valley? "Because it's Hollywood and glamorous, this is the flagship store," Tesla client services manager Jeremy Snyder told the AP. The next dealership will be built in San Carlos, home of Tesla Motors. The $2 million showroom is based on an Apple retail outlet, according to CEO Elon Musk. While the 400-strong waiting list, including the Governator, means you can't actually drive away in a new Tesla roadster until 2009 at the earliest, you can at least ogle the floor models and maybe convince one of the Tesla employees on hand to let you take one for a test drive. Better you behind the wheel than Musk — his driving record's not so clean. (Photo by AP/Mark J. Terrill)
the sum of all human knowledge
While Wikipedia burns, Jimmy Wales and women in bikinis save "world on fire"
We were right: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales really did skip off to Richard Branson's Caribbean getaway in early March, even as a scandal unfolded over his governance of the world's most comprehensive list of gay animals. The powwow on Necker Island, which included Google's Larry Page, Tesla Motors chairman Elon Musk, former British prime minister Tony Blair, and VC Vinod Khosla, discussed global warming. Branson asked: "Is the world on fire?" More »
clips
Elon Musk's Tesla caught on video smoking Scoble and Calacanis
Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined egoblogger Robert Scoble and Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis for dinner last night. After, the trio took to the streets of Santa Monica for a little street racing. Scoble and Musk in a Tesla. Calacanis in a Corvette convertible. "The Tesla smoked the 'vette," Scoble reports on his blog. Jalopnik editor Ray Wert tells us this mostly speaks to Calacanis's inability to drive. Both Calacanis and Scoble took video, of course, and both streams are embedded below. More »
ipo
