‘Visionary’ Elon Musk is back in his prime, and we should be excited

It’s fair to say Elon Musk is having a pretty good month. On Thursday, Tesla stock had its best day in more than 11 years, adding $US150 billion ($227 billion) to its market value and $26 billion to Musk’s personal wealth after reporting stronger-than-expected earnings.

The result puts Tesla shares positive for the year and caps off an action-packed month for Musk in which I was reminded of the old futurist Elon, the visionary who motivated me to study physics and whose ambitions to colonise Mars inspired a wonder for science and technology to a generation.

If we are to judge a man by his actions, and not his words, Musk is surely deserving of a Nobel Prize.Credit: AP

For me, it was last week’s Starship launch that restored my faith in humanity and Elon Musk, as we saw the first successful recapture of a Starship booster, when an object the size of a 23-storey building was plucked from midair by a pair of giant metal chopsticks.

It was a truly awe-inspiring feat that brought a tear to my eye, given my government can’t even build a basic high-speed rail line.

It is hard to understate the sheer brilliance of SpaceX, which has truly refined the phrase “rocket science”. Since 2015, SpaceX has made more than 300 successful launches of various rockets. Starship, which marked its fifth launch last week, is the largest and most powerful rocket ever to fly.

SpaceX’s reusable rocket technology is set to revolutionise the economics of space travel and make SpaceX the second most valuable start-up ever created.

Despite the benefits Musk’s success may bring to our lives, detractors rejoice in SpaceX’s launch failures or mock his Cybertruck design.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley forecast that SpaceX’s revenues could triple to $63 billion by 2030 – more than double what NASA receives from the United States government.

By no means can Musk take all the credit. He has the help of a 13,000-strong team at SpaceX, but his ability to marshal resources and create “efficient” businesses makes him the secret envy of many a CEO.

“Elon is singular in his understanding of engineering and construction and large systems and marshalling resources; it’s just unbelievable,” said Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, in a recent interview in which he praised Musk for setting up a supercomputer in 19 days as a “superhuman” effort.

Projections suggest SpaceX will achieve a staggering 99 per cent cost reduction from NASA’s Space Shuttle era, potentially lowering costs of reaching low Earth orbit to $100 per kg, compared to NASA’s $65,000 per kg during the Space Shuttle program.

If we judge a man by his actions and not his words, Musk is surely deserving of a Nobel Prize. He has founded not one, but four companies that have forever changed the future of our species.

The creation of Tesla brought electric vehicles to the masses and has been integral to our fight against climate change. His Neuralink implant allows quadriplegics to perform mind control, while Starlink satellites provide affordable internet access from Argentina to Zimbabwe. He is one of the co-founders of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Despite the benefits Musk’s success may bring to our lives, detractors rejoice in SpaceX’s launch failures, mock his Cybertruck design, or complain that he dreams bigger than he can deliver.

It can’t be described in any other terms than Musk derangement syndrome – the people who refuse to see good in what he does, purely because of his politics. If you’re not impressed with Optimus robots that can serve drinks, even if they are remote-controlled, I challenge you to build something better.

While many of his opinions are controversial (to say the least), his bark has largely been worse than his bite and his positive impacts far eclipse the right-wing, anti “woke” hyperbole spouted online.

Before this week’s $150 billion earnings boost, Drew Dickson of Albert Bridge Capital estimates that Tesla’s auto business may only be worth between $70 and $100 billion, meaning the remaining $650 billion of its market capitalisation is largely based on investor optimism about its as-yet-unproven technologies.

Except for Trump Media ($DJT), never has there been a company whose performance has been so closely tied to sentiment towards a single individual as Tesla is to Musk. Indeed, Tesla’s title as the most valuable “car” company reflects the market’s attempt to try to value Musk’s ambitions from what is possible. It appears sentiment is turning.

”We [entrepreneurs] are all impostors who must deploy a fiction that captures the imagination and attracts capital to pull the future forward and turn rhyme into reason,” writes entrepreneur Scott Galloway in a recent blog post. “No business I have started, at the moment of inception, made any sense, until it did. Or didn’t. The only way to predict the future is to make it”.

Musk’s real talent is turning blue-sky ideas into commercial realities, and to obsess over his political views and personal flaws is to miss the point. Like most visionaries, he is prone to overpromising and underdelivering.

SpaceX’s mega-booster returns to the launch pad to be captured during a test flight in Boca Chica, Texas, on Sunday (Monday AEDT)Credit: Anadolu via Getty Images

Yes, he is a bit “weird”, but I would argue it’s unlikely that he would have accomplished so much without being that way. Eccentrics such as Musk have an impact because of their faults, not despite them, and the world is a better place with him in it.

As John Stuart Mill once said, “That so few choose to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time.” Or to paraphrase Mr Miyagi, “Man who catch [rocket] with chopstick accomplish anything.”

The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.