Giant defence contractors close to the Pentagon and NASA, America's space agency, have long dominated the business of launching satellites. Taking on Detroit hardly counts as easy-except if you compare it with conquering space. The first few have been pre-sold, but the concept will be properly tested only when they start rolling off the production line in August. In July Tesla unveiled its first model: a sports car which is faster than a Ferrari, more environmentally friendly than a Toyota Prius and can travel 250 miles after charging overnight through an ordinary household socket. Many consumers associate electric cars with golf carts and fear they will have only limited range the motor industry refused to make them after a failed effort in the 1990s.
The first bet was Tesla Motors, an electric-car company that is the first new American automobile firm in decades.
Rather than retire comfortably, he says he “doubled down” his proceeds into his two other passions: clean energy and space. He struck gold when he sold PayPal, the online payments firm, to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. He arrived at Stanford University intending to do a doctorate on batteries for electric cars, but dropped out to jump on the internet bandwagon. Though he is only 35, Mr Musk has already made surprising progress toward the three modest goals he set for himself when at college: to transform the internet, make a breakthrough in clean energy and propel mankind towards inter-planetary travel. Mr Musk founded Space X five years ago and designed much of the rocket himself. Although the second stage failed to reach its intended orbit, the Falcon can claim to be the first rocket designed, developed and financed by the private sector that is anywhere near carrying a payload into space. On March 20th the Falcon, a two-stage rocket owned by Mr Musk's Space Exploration Technologies (Space X), lifted off from the Marshall Islands and climbed to an altitude of some 200 miles.
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