Archive for Sci Fi Inspiration

Elon Musk: Technological Empire

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By now, most Americans know who Elon Musk is. It is extremely difficult to miss the luxurious design of one of his Tesla vehicles drive by you or to not be intrigued about his realistic idea for commercializing space travel. Elon Musk, with a net worth of $12.9 billion, is one of the most successful businessmen that lives today and his story of success is one that very few people are aware of.

His parents always had aspirations of their son from the time that he was very young. They noticed he was a tinkerer so they bought him his first computer when he was nine. It came with an astounding five kilobytes of storage and with this computer, Musk made a simple video game called “Blastar.” It was a simpler version of the game “Space Invaders” but was nonetheless an impressive code, especially when you remember it was created by a nine year old. When he was twelve, Musk sold the game for $500 ($1,200 today).

After dropping out of graduate school, Musk and his brother had an idea for an online-type of yellow page directory similar to that of Google and Yelp today. He saw that the internet was going to be the future and wanted to develop the technology and make a living from it. This idea for the directory was groundbreaking in the 90s and was quickly purchased by the company Compaq for $307 million from the two innovative minds. Using his newfound profit, Elon saw the potential that the internet held and decided to create an online banking business. Being in a cutthroat market for online banking, he and another company, Confinity, merged and became what is known today as PayPal. This company was soon sold to eBay for $1.2 billion to handle the online transactions for the online mega-store.

In 2002, Musk founded one of his famous companies, SpaceX, with the mission to make humanity a multi-planetary species. While he was in the development stage, he started his most famous company, Tesla, in 2004. Although Musk is aided largely in his efforts through federal subsidies and investments, Musk funds a large amount of his massive companies himself. Since their conception in 2002 and 2004, Musk has continually invested his own money into his own businesses. By doing so, he is the one making the decisions that lead to the success of the company. If the company loses money, he loses his fortune. This keeps him motivated.

How Tesla and SpaceX have already merged - Business Insider

Although each of these companies has had numerous drawbacks–SpaceX couldn’t get their rockets into orbit until they practically ran out of money blowing them up and Tesla continues to lose money–Elon’s exceptional leadership has and continues to lead these companies to the top of their markets. With estimated combined company values of over $24.3 billion, there is no doubt that with these great companies comes great leadership, something that Elon Musk continues to illustrate through his dedication and hard work.

 

Sources:

www.theverge.com/2015/6/9/8752333/elon-musk-blastar-pc-game

www.gobankingrates.com/making-money/business/how-much-is-tesla-worth

www.waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html

www.moneymorning.com/2018/02/12/how-much-is-spacex-worth/

Roadster Image: https://is.gd/6GjSnC

From One Thing To The Next

Elon Musk is one of the most influential entrepreneurs of not only now, but of all time. He has been working on countless ways to make the world we win in a better place. Elon Musk doesn’t always just fix problems, but he also makes people realize how the world really should be. The first way he did that was through PayPal. PayPal was his innovative way to help people purchase products safely, securely, and quickly. This product has changed the way people are able to purchase what they want with confidence because of their ability to make sure the money only gets paid if the person paying, gets what they actually wanted.

Another innovative idea he developed was Tesla. Tesla is a car company focused on making cars that are run off batteries and from electric motors. This has changed the world of how cars work. The batteries used to make the cars have also changed the though of how powerful batteries can be and how useful they are. Mr. Musk wants to continue to work on making housing panels that allow ones house to be powered by solar energy, and make more clean, reusable energy for everyday use.

Another one of Elan’s innovations is his SpaceX company. This company is working with NASA to help get astronauts back into space. America is currently a country that cannot send astronauts into space, but Musk is working to change that. He has created new rockets that will allow up to seven astronauts to go into space. His design is based off the Apollo mission designs from when humans first went to the moon.

In the end, Elon Musk has truly changed the world by his ability to be an entrepreneur. He has made life better for humans, and will also continue to change the world by his future innovations.

Helen Greiner: Inventor of the First Robotic Vacuum

Helen Greiner is the c0-founder of iRobot, which she helped to start as a result of her interest in robots. Greiner’s enthusiasm for these intriguing machines came from her fondness for R2-D2 in Star Wars and her desire to create something between a robot and a computer, similar to the one that her dad would bring home from work (shown below).

The idea, in Greiner’s mind, was to create something that would, more or less, have a mind of its own. iRobot’s first  success was a talking doll. After that, the company started working on a vacuum cleaner with SC Johnson Professional. The vacuum was a human sized robot that ran by itself, but the engineers understood that it would potentially be too dangerous at its current size. As a result they focused on building a smaller vacuum that would be more efficient. During this time, iRobot also aided in creating robots that would detect and defuse bombs, building contracts with the military for hundreds of millions of dollars. Since then, iRobot has engaged in other advancements in the robot industry, such as drones. Ms. Greiner helped start CyPhy Works, a drone specific company. CyPhy Works builds drones mostly for military and industrial use.  One example is the testing Greiner did with UPS for delivering packages. It was very successful.

Learn more: https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/06/flux-robot-queen-helen-greiner-on-robots-drones-and-the-self-aware-roomba/

Respawn

On March 1, 2010 Activision reported the firing of two senior employees to the Security and Exchange Commission. One of these employees was Jason West the Infinity Ward president, game director, co-CCO, and CTO. The other was Vince Zampella the CEO and co-founder of Infinity Ward.

They were dismissed and replaced by Activision, the same company who helped fund their own company Infinity Ward during the golden days of their Call of Duty franchise.

-Jason West on left and Vince Zampella on right

On April 12, 2010, the Los Angeles Times wrote an article about West and Zampella’s new ambitious venture. They were forming a new game developing studio called Respawn Entertainment.

West and Zampella got funding from Electronic Arts (EA) while keeping all intellectual property. After hearing about West and Zampella leaving and starting a new project, a bunch of their old employees from Infinity Ward left to join thier LLC, Respawn.

In June 2013, they debuted Titanfall their new and revolutionary take on first person shooters. The game was released on March 11, 2014 only for xbox. By October 5th of 2015 IGN reported that Titanfall’s sales passed 10 million globally (awesome for a game only on xbox). Recently they have been even more successful with their multi-platform sequel, Titanfall 2.

-Respawn developing team

Official site: http://www.respawn.com/

Los Angeles Times article on Respawn: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/12/entertainment/la-et-ct-callofduty12-2010apr12

IGN article on 1o million in Titanfall sales: http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/10/05/titanfall-sales-pass-10-million-globally

 

SpaceX

Private space exploration technology corporations are rising fast and are getting closer to commercializing space flight. SpaceX, currently the most successful company in the field, is an American manufacturer with the highest ambitions. They have plans for helping the human race in colonizing the solar system. There first crazy objective is to safely transport humans to mars in hopes of colonization.

SpaceX was founded in June of 2002 by the same entrepreneur who founded Tesla and PayPal, Elon Musk.

On April 8th 2016 the falcon 9 successfully launched and landed. This was a huge step in the right direction, successfully landing with propulsion methods will prove useful for landing on any and all sorts of surfaces within the solar system. A new age of space exploration is almost in reach.

See Musk’s plans in more detail here

Palmer Luckey

If you’re familiar with the gaming world then you should know that most of the time you are using some type of controller and you are looking at some type of screen as you play. Well the 21-year-old video game fan, Palmer Luckey, plans on changing the way games are played in a new and interesting way. He is managing to do so with his invention called the Oculus rift.

Luckey is working on perfecting his invention with the company he founded called Oculus VR. Now as I have stated before the usual gaming equipment are controllers and televisions. With Luckeys Oculus Rift he plans to immerse players into a virtual reality. The Oculus Rift itself is a virtual reality headset that displays the game being played directly in front of your eyes. Now what else is cool about this headset is that with every movement you make with your head it affects the way you see the game. For example, say that you physically rotate your head as if you were looking to the right and then left; the headset will monitor these movements and translate them into the game.

Luckey has already received endorsements from big name gaming companies such as Valve and id Software and has raised over $91 million dollars in funding for the Oculus Rift. With all this attention and funding who knows what the future of gaming has in store for this innovative and cool product the Oculus Rift.