Elon Musk: tech dreamer reaching for sun, moon and stars

Yahoo – AFP, Glenn Chapman, March 5, 2017

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has an estimated current net worth of $13.4 billion from
interests in transport, payments and space technology (AFP Photo/Karim SAHIB)

San Francisco (AFP) - Sending tourists for a trip around the moon is the latest big idea launched by Elon Musk, a Silicon Valley star known for turning his passions into visionary enterprises.

Musk has become one of the United States' best-known innovators. He was a founder of payments company PayPal, electric carmaker Tesla Motors and SpaceX, maker and launcher of rockets and spacecraft.

SpaceX recently announced that two private citizens have paid money to be sent around the Moon in what would mark the farthest humans have ever traveled to deep space since the 1970s.

In a sector where entrepreneurs often speak of "moonshots," Musk is one of the biggest dreamers.

The 45-year-old South Africa-born entrepreneur has channeled a dot-com fortune into a series of ambitious ventures.

Besides being the head of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk is the chairman of SolarCity, a solar panel installer recently bought by Tesla.

He also operates his own foundation focusing on education, clean energy and child health.

And he drafted a paper detailing the feasibility of an ultra-fast "Hyperloop" rail transport system that would transport people at near supersonic speeds, then made it freely available to enterprises willing to pursue the project.

The SpaceX plan to fly tourists around the Moon in 2018 (AFP Photo/AFP)

'Doesn't sit around'

"He is a visionary who has some key passions which he pursues with vigor," Jackdaw Research chief analyst Jan Dawson said of Musk.

"He doesn't sit around and wait for people to do something about them; he goes out and does it himself."

Musk's penchant for rocketing after his passions may appear to spread him thin, but he has built a record of success.

Musk appears strong on painting big ideas in broad strokes and then enlisting people skilled at tending to the nuts-and-bolts work needed to follow through, say observers.

"He doesn't seem to be able to focus," analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group said.

"He just likes coming up with the ideas and is good at picking other people who can deal with the plumbing -- that is why he is able to do a lot of stuff."

And while some may wonder whether hubris or realism reigns in Musk's moves, his businesses have gained value, with the jury still out on the wisdom of the Tesla acquisition of SolarCity.

"He can certainly sell his ideas," Enderle said.

"The fact his businesses have held together so long indicates he is not a con man."

Visionary or mad scientist? Elon Musk's Tesla aims to conquer the car market
in the oil-rich Middle East with electric vehicles (AFP Photo/Karim SAHIB)

Fighting against evil

Musk more than a year ago took part in creating a nonprofit research company devoted to developing artificial intelligence that will help people and not hurt them.

Musk found himself in the middle of a technology world controversy by holding firm that AI could turn on humanity and be its ruin instead of a salvation.

Technology giants including Google, Apple and Microsoft have been investing in making machines smarter, contending the goal is to improve lives.

"If we create some digital super-intelligence that exceeds us in every way by a lot, it is very important that it be benign," Musk said at a conference in California.

He reasoned that even a benign situation with ultra-intelligent AI would put people so far beneath the machine they would be "like a house cat."

"I don't love the idea of being a house cat," Musk said, envisioning the creation of neural lacing that magnifies people's brain power by linking them directly to computing capabilities.

Elon Musk's SpaceX venture carries cargo to the International Space Station and  has
 plans to send two private passengers on a trip around the Moon (AFP Photo/
BRUCE WEAVER)

Living in a game

Some of his ideas have prompted questions about whether Musk is a visionary or mad scientist. He has raised eyebrows with a theory that the world as it is known may be a computer simulation.

"I've had so many simulation discussions it's crazy," Musk said while fielding a question on the topic at the conference.

He maintained that "the odds that we are in base reality is one in billions."

Musk lives in Los Angeles and holds US, Canadian and South African citizenship.

He moved to Canada in his late teens and then to the United States, earning bachelor's degrees in physics and business from the University of Pennsylvania.

After graduating, Musk abandoned plans to pursue further studies at Stanford University and started Zip2, a company that made online publishing software for the media industry.

He banked his first millions before the age of 30 when he sold Zip2 to US computer maker Compaq for more than $300 million in 1999.

Musk's next company, X.com, eventually merged with PayPal, the online payments firm bought by Internet auction giant eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

Forbes estimates Musk's current net worth at $13.4 billion.

Elon Musk has become one of America's best-known innovators - turning his passions into visionary enterprises https://t.co/4gVkOp0sTp pic.twitter.com/WLx2kuE2U0

— AFP news agency (@AFP) March 5, 2017

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Musk diving into minds while reaching for Mars

Metro aims to break new ground in car-mad Qatar

Yahoo – AFP, David Harding, March 9, 2017

Construction site of a new metro line in Qatar's capital Doha (AFP Photo/
Karim Jaafar)

Doha (AFP) - Qatar's metro, once completed, will run hundreds of kilometres across ultra-modern Doha, along the coast and into its expanding suburbs. But whether car-mad Qataris will actually use it remains an open question.

Driverless three-car trains are to serve 100 stations, easing into gleaming newly-built destinations with names such as Ras Bu Fontas, Al-Shaqab and Legtaifiya.

Now the main task for those behind the approximately $18-billion project -- in a country where car is king -- is to ensure it draws enough passengers to justify the huge outlay.

"We are not a culture that is used to the metro, not like Europe," said Khaled Al-Thani, a civil engineer with Qatar Rail, the state-owned company responsible for the metro.

"This is all new for us."

The Doha Metro is a massive venture even by the standards of the energy-rich Gulf desert emirate where infrastructure mega-projects are commonplace.

Officials at Qatar Rail are cagey about terming it the world's biggest ongoing engineering project, preferring to call it one of the largest.

Since ground was broken in the summer of 2013, a workforce of 41,000 has been digging, tunnelling and building. Large tracts of land in Doha have been set aside for a network of tunnels and stations.

Tunnel boring world record

Qatar even set a world record for using 21 tunnel boring machines at the same time in November 2015, the highest number ever recorded.

Ninety percent of the metro will run underground when operational. The station designs have been approved by the emir himself, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

Qatar's metro, once completed, will run hundreds of kilometres across ultra-modern 

Doha, along the coast and into its expanding suburbs (AFP Photo/Karim Jaafar)

Qatar Rail says its target is to have completed 70 percent of the network by the end of 2017, with the opening due in late 2019 or early 2020.

"With metros in other developed countries, when they develop a metro they introduce a new line, but for us in Qatar, we're introducing a whole network system," said Khaled Al-Thani.

Probably the most symbolic part of the Doha Metro will be a station around 20 kilometres north of the capital.

Lusail, the final stop on the Red Line, will serve the $45-billion city emerging from the desert that will be the venue of football's 2022 World Cup final.

"We are actualising a vision," said Abdulla Abdul Aziz al-Subai, managing director of Qatar Rail.

Gridlocked Doha

The company has begun holding special classes for Doha residents to make them aware of the metro and to encourage them to use it.

"I'm very confident that the metro will be a hit," said Thani on an upbeat note.

"It takes me approximately one hour every day to go to work. So, with the metro you have a safe and dependable transportation to reach from point A to point B."

The target is to remove 190,000 cars a day off Doha's heavily congested roads.

A report from the Qatar Mobility Innovations Centre (QMIC) found that commuters spent an average of 109 hours in traffic on the country's roads in 2016.

That was an increase of seven hours over the previous year and equivalent to around $1.5 billion in losses for the Qatari economy, according to QMIC calculations.

Many question whether Qataris will swap their beloved cars for public transport, and say foreign workers -- as in Dubai -- are more likely to fill the carriages.

The country's population could rise to 3.6 million by 2031, from 2.6 million today, and Qatar Rail wants 1.65 million people at year to be using the metro by that time.

"To change this culture, it will take time," said Abdulla Alsayed Zahran, a manager with Qatar Rail.