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vl11 Contents

16. Fathers and Sons: Los Angeles, 2002 702

17. RewingUp: SpaceX,2002 106

18. Musks Rules for Rocket-Building: SpaceX,2002-2003 111

19. Mr. Musk Goes to Washington: SpaceX,2002-2003 118

20. Founders: Tesla,2003-2004 724

27. The Roadster: Tesla,20a4-2006 731

22. Kwaj: SpaceX,2005-2006 1,44

23. Two Strikes: Kzoaj,2006-2007 749

24. The SWATTeam: 7bs1a,2006-2008 155

25. Takine the Wheel: Tesla,2007-2008 1.62

26. Divorce:2008 168

2i. Talulah:2008 1,72

18. Strike Three: K.eaj, August 3, 2008 1,75

29. On the Brink: Tesla and SpaceX,2008 778

30. The Fourth Launch: Kzuaj, August-September 2008 782

31. Saving Tesla: Decentber 2008 190

32. The Model S: Tbsla,2009 t95

33. Private Space: SpaceX,2009-2010 203

34. Falcon 9 Littoffi Cape Canaoeral,2)17 209

35. MarryingTalulah: September2)l) 273

36. X{anuf'acruring: 7bs1a,2010-2013 21,7

37. Musk and Bezos: SparcX,2013-2014 223

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 Contelts

60. Solar Surge: Sumnte'r 2021 369 82. The Takeover: Tu)ittd,',

61. Nights Out: Surunter 2021 .t/() 83. The Three Musketeers:

62. Inspiration4: SpaceX, September 2021 382 84. Content Moderation: 7

63. Raptor Shake-up: SpaceX,2021 387 85. Halloween: Ttoitter, Od

64. Optimus Is Born: Tbsla, August 2021 393 86. Blue Checks: Twitta,Ir

65. Neuralink: 2017-2020 398 87. All In: Twittr, Ndnrt

66. \rision Only: 'fesla, Jannary 2021 401 88. Hardcore: Tuittn, Noa

67. Money:2021-2022 408 89. Miracles: Neuralinl, No

68. I-ather of the Year:2021 472 90. The Thitter Files: Tioir

69. Politics: 2020-2022 417 91. Rabbit Holes: Tipitt, l

70. Ukraine:2022 428 92. Christrnas Capers: Da
71. Bill Gates'.2022 435 93. AI for Cars: Tkl4 2CI21

7 2 . Actw e I nve s tor :'1. *-n^ i t e r, J a n u ary -Ap r i t 2 02 2 140 94. Alfor Fhrman*: XlI, )

73. "I made an offer": Tuitter, A?ril 2022 450 95. The Starship LauocL,l

74. Hot and Cold: Roitter, April-June 2022 459 Acknowledgments

75. Father's Dav Jurue 2022 466

Sources

76. Starbase Shake-up: SpaceX, 2022 474

Notes
77. Optimus Prime: Tesla, 2021-2022 482
Index
78. Uncert airty: Tzui t tea July-S ep temb er 2 0 2 2 488
Photo Credits
79. Optimus Unveiled: Tesla, September 2022 495

80. Robota-xr: Tbsla, 2022 501

8l-. "Let that sink id': Ttuitter, October 26-27, 2022 506
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A few months later, he asked

loshua and Winnilred Haldeman sponded, "Tomorrow."
Elon Muslis attraction to risk was a family trait. In that regard, he They had four children,ind
took after his maternal grandfather;Joshua Haldeman, a daredevil ad- n 7948. One day on a trip he
venrurer with strongly held opinions who was raised on a farm on the engine Luscombe airplane sitti
barren plains of central Canada. He studied chiropractic techniques but he convinced the farmer to
in Iowa, then returned to his hometown near Moose Jaw; where he impetuous, since Haldeman dic
broke in horses and gave chiropractic adjustments in exchange for one to fly him home and teach
food and lodging. The family came to be kno
He was eventually able to buy his own farm, but he lost it during s described by a chiropractic
the depression of the 1930s. For the next few years, he worked as a narkable figure in the histon
cowboy, rodeo performer, and construction hand. His one constant
was a love for adventure. He married and divorced, traveled as a hobo
on freight trains, and was a stowaway on an oceangoing ship.
The loss of his farm instilled in him a populism, and he became
active in a movement known as the Social Credit Party, which ad-
vocated giving citizens free credit notes they could use like currency.
The movement had a conservative fundamentalist streak tinged with
anti-Semitism. Its first leader in Canada decried a "perversion of
cultural ideals" because "a disproportionate number of Jews occupy
positions of control." Haldeman rose to become chair of the party's
national council.
Ife also enlisted in a movement called Technocracy, which be-
lieved that government should be run by technocrats rather than
politicians.It was temporarily outlawed in Canada because of its op-
position to the country's entry into \Alorld War II. Haldeman defied
the ban by taking out a newspaper ad supporting the movement.
At one point he wanted to learn ballroom dancing,lvhich is how
he met Winnifred Fletcher, whose adventurous streak was equal
to his" As a sixteen-y'ear-o1d, she got a job at the Moose Jaw Times
Herald,but she dreamed of being a dancer and actress. So she iit out
b-v train to Chicago ancJ then New \brk Citv. Upon her return, she
opened a dance school in Moose Jaw, which is where Haldeman
shor,ved up for lessons. When he asked her to dinner, she replied, "I
dont date my ciients." So he qr.rit the class and asked her out again.
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72 ELON MUSK 1-

first place in the twelve-thousand-mile Cape Town-to-Algiers motor -1:,e Pretoria Nett;s for ) Ia:. :
rally and became the first to fly a single-engine plane from Africa to -adline "Reaction again.r ::-. -
Australia. "They had to remove the back seats to put in gas tanks," Like the Haldemans. I-.. '
Maye later recalled. ,-::-:na Golden Eagle , '.r'h':: .
Joshua Haldeman's risk-taking eventually caught up with him. j:e he had buik in th: : -,
He was killed rvhen a person he was teaching to fly hit a power 1ine, inq to sell the plare. .- -r
causing the plane to flip and crash. His grandson Elon was three at l,::inanian-Italian en::-: ... :
the time. "He knew that real adventures involve risk," he says. "Risk . -;-. and instead oi tal-:--: . - .

energized him." ' :. ithe ent.rald. rr ---: -

Haldeman imprinted that spirit onto one of his twin girls, Elons -. ,: ru-ned in Zaml-'.i,l.
mother, Maye. "I know that I can take a risk as long as I'm prepared," ./:r:rhi.r then h.ri i : -- .

she says. As a young student, she did well in science and math. She - .-rctioninq buree,l:::,- , :
was also strikingly good-looking. TaIl and blue-eyed, with high ' ---::-j it. r-ou'.r", ..- '' : .

cheekbones and sculpted chin, she began working zt age fifteen as a --: :ik. er enth::.- .- ..'.
model, doing department store runway shows on Saturday mornings. .- . :l't:r..-::.:-:. '- .

Around that time, she met a boy in her neighborhood who was - '.- .-ri:r-r -:c B-'-.:.. - .. -.
also strikingly good-looking, albeit in a smooth and caddish way. . ,. . .:-.:f:ll'':--'-:. :.-' -

l:-
-. '.'.:- :-:'. :: . - - |

- -:---i :'. .:--: :-..1.-:. .-..

Errol Musk t L i- -
-T-
Errol Musk was an adventurer and wheeler-dealer, always on the
lookout for the next opportuniry. His mother, Cora, was from En- --.- ..--:--. ---:-'. .

g1and, where she finished school at forrteen, worked at a factory - i :.

making skins for fighter-bombers, then took a refugee ship to South

Africa. There she met Walter Musk, a cryptographer and military
intelligence officer who worked in Egypt on schemes to fool the
Germans by deploying fake weapons and searchlights. After the war,
",
he did little other than sit silently in an armchair, drink, and use his -j
crlptologv skills on crossword puzzles. So Cora left him, went back
to England with their tvvo sons, bought a Buick, and then returned to
Pretoria. "She was the strongest person I ever met," Errol says.
Errol earned a degree in engineering and'vvorked on building ho-
tels, shopping centers, and factories. On the side, he liked restoring
old cars and planes. He also dabbled in politics, defeating an Afri-
kaner member of the pro-apartheid National Party to become one
of the few English-speaking memtrers of the Pretoria Ciry Council.
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74 ELON MUSK

When 1\laye graduated from college, she moved to Cape Town

to give talks about nutrition. E,rrol came to visit, brought an engage-
ment ring, and proposed. He promised he rvould change his war.s and
be faithful once they were married. Maye had.iust broken off a rela-
tionship with another unfaithful bovfriend, gained a 1ot of weight, A Mind (

and begun to fear that she would never get rnarried, so she agreed.
The night of the wedding, Errol and N,Ia1,e took an inexpensive Pretr-trt
flight to Europe for their honeymoon. In France, he bought copies
of Playboy, rvhich was banned in South Africa, and lay on the small
hotel bed looking at them, much to IVIal,g's annoyance. Their fights
turned bitter. When they got back to Pretoria, she thought of try-
ing to get out of the marriage. But she soon became nauseated frorn
morning sickness. She had become pregnant on the second night of
their honeymoon, in the town of Nice. "It was clear that rnarrying
hirn had been a mistake," she recal1s, "but now it was impossible to
rtndo."
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Lonely and determined

At 7:30 on the morning of June 28,7977, Nlaye Nlusk gave birth to
an eight-pound, eight-ounce boy with a very large head.
At first she and Errol were going to name him Nice, after the
town in France where he was conceived. History may have been dif-
ferent, or at least amused, if the boy had to go through life with the
name Nice N1usk. Instead, in the hope of making the Haldemans
huppy, Errol agreed that the boy would have names from that side
of the family: E1on, after N{aye's grandfather J. Elon Haldeman, and
Reeve, the maiden name of Mz),e's maternal grandmother.
Errol liked the name Elon because it was biblical, and he later
claimed that he had been prescient. As a child, he says, he heard
about a science fiction book by the rocket scientist Wernher von
Braun called Project Mars, which describes a colony on the planet run
by an executive known as "the Elon."
Elon cried a lot, ate a lot, and slept little. At one point N{aye de-
cided to just let him cry until he fell asleep, but she changed her rnind
after neighbors calied the police. His moods switched rapidly; when
he wasn't crying, his mother says, he was really sweet.
Over the next two years, Maye had two more children, Kimbal
and Tosca. She didnt coddle them. They rvere allowed to roam freely.
There was no nanny, just a housekeeper who paid little attention
when Elon began experimenting with rockets and explosives. He says
he's surprised he made it through childhood with all of his fingers
intact.
When he was three, his mother decided that because he was so
intellectually curious he should be in nursery school.
-Ihe
principal
tried to dissuade her, pointing out that being younger than anyone
else in the class w-ould pre sent social challenges. Thev sho,lld r,vait an-
other year. "I can't do that," 1\{a1.e said. "He needs someone besides
me to talk to. I really have this genius child." She prevailed.
It was a mistake. Elon had no friends, and by the time he was in
second grade he r.vas tuning out. "The teacher would come up to me
and yell at me, but I would not really see or hear her," he says. His
parents got called in to see the principal, who told them, "We have
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1B ELON MUSK A Mina

as the party was ending. When his mother saw him coming down affect a persoris socid skillE r
the road, she freaked out. Fearing he would be punished ag;ain, he and self-regulation. "He vras n(
climbed a maple tree and refused to corne dou.n. Kimbal remernbers mother says, "but he salrs he ha
standing beneath the tree and staring at his older brother in awe. "He The condition was exacerbated
has this fierce determination that blows 1rcur mind and was some- he would later feel bullied or
times fiightening, and stil1is." Gracias says, the PTSD ftom I
When he r,vas eight, he focused his determination on getting a sJ6tem, the part of the brain tha
rnotorcycle. Yes, at age eight. He would stand next to his father's As a result, he was bad at 1
chair and make his case, over and over. When his father picked up literally when they said som€tri
a newspaper and ordered him to be quiet, Elon lvould continue to ing books that I began to leam
stand there. "It just was extraordinary to .rvatch," Kimbal says. "He they really meant.' He had a I
would stand there silentl1,, then resume his argument, then stand si- precise, such as engineering ftr
lent."This happened er.ery evening for weeks. His father finaLly caved I.ike all psychological tnitE
and got Elon a blue-and-gold 50cc Yamaha. ized- He could be very emdfo,
Elon also had a tendenc), to be spacey and wander off on his orvn, and he felt acutely the anxietr
oblir4ous to what others were doing. On a family trip to Liverpool to ddnt have the emotionel recq
see some of their relatives when he was eight, his parents left him and and warmth and a desire to bc
his brother in a park ro play by themselves. It was not in his nature cmpathy. Or, t9 put it in less tc(
to stay put, so he started wandering the streets. "Some kid found me
crving and took me to his mom, who gave me milk arrd biscuits and
calied the poiice," he recal1s. When he was reunited with his parents The divorce
at the police station, he was unaware that anything lvas amiss.
"It was insane to leave me and my brother alone in a park at that
age," he says, "but my parents weren't overprotective like parents are
today." Years later, I watched him at a s.,1ar roof construction site
with his two-year-old boy, known as X. It was 10 p.m., and there
were forklifts and other moving equipment lit by two spotlights that
cast big shadows. Musk put X on the ground so the boy could ex-
plore on his own, which he did without fear. As he poked around
amid the wires and cables,l\{usk glanced at him occasionally, but re-
frained from intervening. Finailf,after X started to climb on a mo\r-
ing spotlight, Musk walked over and picked him up. X squirmed and
squealed, unhappy about being restrained.

Musk would later talk about-even joke about-having Asperger's,

a common name for a form of autism-spectrum disorder that can
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