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Time magazine has named Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as Person of the Year for his tremendous 12-month accomplishments where he competed for the crown of the richest person in the world and made his Twitter account a must-read while moving the needle on climate. change, cryptocurrencies, space exploration, and universal broadband.
In April, NASA awarded an exclusive contract to Musk’s SpaceX rocket company to launch U.S. astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 – a step ahead of Musk Boeing’s old-fashioned rocket company and one step closer to its stated goal. to make humans a multi-planet species.
In May, Musk hosted Saturday Night Live, announcing that he has a TV show to laugh at himself and that he has Asperger Syndrome, a mild form of autism, as a platform for publicity.
In October, Musk’s growing wealth received another turbo charge after the Hertz car rental company announced plans to buy 100,000 Tesla for its customers. The news raised the rise in Tesla shares and the rise of the electric vehicle company valuation before $ 1 trillion.
While electric vehicles accounted for just 0.43 percent of all vehicles operating in the U.S. in the first half of this year, Tesla accounted for about two-thirds of that market, according to Experian Automotive.
Not all of these milestones calmed Musk’s quirky (and sometimes expensive) behavior. He regularly shares humorous memes with his 65 million followers on Twitter. Last month, Tesla shares took a hit after Musk was asked in a Twitter poll whether he should sell his Tesla shares, which totals nearly $ 11 billion, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
He has also used Twitter as a platform to help cryptocurrencies move further in the stream. In February, Musk announced that Tesla had bought $ 1.5 billion in Bitcoin and announced plans to start accepting it as a payment. He also praised Dogecoin, a meme that helped turn the old-fashioned cryptocurrency into a sought-after digital asset.
But it also showed the limits of its crypto-boosterism, tweeting in May that Tesla would stop accepting payments in Bitcoin and citing concerns about the cryptocurrency’s carbon footprint.
Not just dollars and memes
Bitcoin’s head-to-head gave more credibility to Musk’s major goals of reducing climate change.
Tesla Cybertruck on display in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in New York City, USA [File: Jeenah Moon/Reuters]“If 800,000 Tesla gas-powered cars had been sold in the last year, they would have emitted more than 40 million metric tons of CO₂ in their lifetime, the equivalent of Finland’s annual emissions,” Time magazine wrote. Musk’s profile.
But reducing emissions is just one part of humanity’s great vision. Musk also wants people to start colonizing Mars.
“The goal in general has been to turn life into multiple planets and turn humanity into a space civilization,” Musk told Timer.
When asked about Tim’s time to send people to Mars and return to Earth on the Red Planet, Musk replied, “I’ll be surprised if we don’t land on Mars in five years.”
On Earth, Musk is working to close the digital divide with Starlink, a broadband satellite service that has launched nearly 2,000 satellites so far. It expects 42,000 more to be launched around the world and to provide Internet service to rural communities.
Musk is also in talks with the Brazilian government to see how Starlink’s satellites can help combat Amazon deforestation and forest fires. And it is taking steps to provide internet services to rural India.
The Musk Crew Dragon capsule arrives before the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches before launching a NASA commercial crew mission at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. [File: Joe Skipper/Reuters]But things aren’t all star-studded for the millionaire. Some former employees have accused his companies of promoting sexual harassment, poor working conditions and an environment dominated by racism. Earlier this year, a federal jury ordered Tesla to pay more than $ 137 million to a former African-American employee at an EV producers’ factory in Freemont, California, who said Tesla had turned a blind eye to racial abuse.
Tesla has been fined for violations. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating the safety of Tesla’s Autopilot software after a complaint involved it in an accident.
Musk’s touch of Midas and the spread of net worth have also put him at the forefront of inequality and put the government in the debate over whether to force the rich to pay more taxes.
“The push for greater government involvement and expropriation of assets is driven by a bunch of politicians who are really saying that the control of private individuals should be government-controlled. They’re basically saying they want control of assets,” Musk told Time in an interview. .
Born in Pretoria, South Africa, Musk went to the United States to attend Stanford University as a doctoral student, but dropped out. He created the Internet mapping service Zip2 and PayPal e-payment, which were later sold to Compaq and eBay, respectively.
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