Erik Nordeus - The Engineer

“Would you VPPA? [variable polarity plasma arc – a welding method].”

“Naaaaaah, I’d probably go to soft plasma [another welding method].”

“You always get misplaced diameters with that.”

“What if the heat shield attached to the Dragon’s base…”

(A slight pause)

“We’ll take it to the von Braun!” 49

Maye Musk’s twin sister, Kaye Haldeman, found a husband in South Africa and changed her surname to Rive after their marriage. They had four children: Russel, Peter, Lyndon, and Almeda. The siblings grew up in Pretoria in a house close to Nelson Mandela’s home.

After Mandela passed away in 2013, Lyndon recalled that Mandela was one of his greatest role models. “With time, people can overcome their own prejudices,” he said. “With dedication, progress can happen, even if it takes decades. It is possible to fight hard for change while also seeing the humanity in your opponents. Mandela kept his dignity through decades of inhumane treatment, and never let the way he was treated affect the way he treated others.” 427

During Lyndon’s final year in high school, he began selling cosmetics while learning everything about marketing, sales, and logistics. This knowledge would in the future be helpful. He was also a swimmer for South Africa’s national underwater hockey team. 102“It’s a sport that you play underwater, mask, fins, one-handed stick, and lead puck,” Lyndon said. “On the bottom of the pool, go down, hold your breath. Before you run out of air, you give the puck to your buddy and go up for air.” 237

After Elon and his brother Kimbal founded Zip2, they recruited their cousin Russel to work with them. Peter studied at the same university as Elon had studied at: Queen’s University in Canada. He was also an ultimate frisbee player. It’s a relative unknown sport similar to rugby, but you are not allowed to run with the frisbee. 102

In 1998, and with their cousin Elon as an investor, Lyndon and Russel founded the data-center software company Everdream. 51Their customers included companies like FedEx, UPS, and a number of airliners. Everdream was the same company that helped Elon to save his empire when his cousins sold it.

Elon expects the same results from his cousins and treats them in the same way as he would treat everyone else. Lyndon, who already drove a Tesla Roadster, wanted to buy a Model S. He asked Elon if he could skip the waiting list. Elon told Lyndon to visit the website and order one like everyone else. Lyndon had to wait for Model S number 808. 109

By 2004, Everdream was, after some troublesome years, on the right track, so Lyndon teamed up with Peter and they began to wonder what they would do next. The same year, they attended Burning Man together with Elon. 102

Beginning on the last Monday in August and ending on the first Monday in September, Burning Man is a weeklong festival. The festival is not like one of those music festivals – it’s more of an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance. “The great difference between us and the consumer marketplace, however, is that we have inverted the essential nature of the capitalist system,” the founder of the festival, Larry Harvey, said. “We may be like Disneyland, but we are like Disneyland turned inside out. Because at the heart and center of this thing you will not find a commodity to be consumed.” 100

One night in 1986, at Baker Beach in San Francisco, Harvey torched an eight feet [2.4 m] high wooden stick figure in front of only a few people. Four years later, the number of visitors had grown so much the festival had to move to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. The tradition to burn a wooden figure continued, thus the name of the festival. 110Because of the ever growing interest – 120 000 people wanted to buy tickets to the 2012 edition of the festival – the number of participants had to be limited to around 50 000.

The festival’s camp is called Black Rock City and looks like a half-eaten donut if you fly over the area. The donut itself is divided into two main parts: one quieter and one louder. Cellphones used to be banned from the camp, but it’s today acceptable to use them as long as the call is not made in a public space.

No soft sand dunes can be found in the Black Rock Desert, so the ground is drivable. The British ThrustSSC jet-propelled car set the world speed record on land in the same desert. Equipped with two engines from the F-4 Phantom II jet fighter, the car rushed through the desert with a top speed of 763 mph [1228 km/h]. Before Burning Man begins, but with a slower speed than the ThrustSSC, several of the visitors drive through the desert in their own special mutant vehicles and art cars. These vehicles look like something from an art exhibition. But they are not always driving, one team sailed through the desert in a wind wagon.

The story behind the wind wagon began in 1853. Before the railroad through the American wilderness was finished, Thomas Smith had an idea to replace the slow horse-drawn wagons that transported people and freight. His idea consisted of wind-powered wagons that would sail across the continent. Smith began by constructing a smaller prototype and proved it was possible to sail to a town 300 miles [480 km] away. 99

Smith was now ready to construct a larger prototype and he invited the company’s investors to the maiden trip. The brisk wind on the day blew the wind wagon to speeds of 22 mph [35 km/h]. The ball bearing and the shock absorber had not yet been invented, so while smoke appeared from the wheels, the wagon began to shake until the steering mechanism failed. The scared passengers lost faith in their investment and escaped from the wagon, breaking arms and legs. Like the captain of Titanic , Edward Smith, his precursor remained on his wind wagon until the end when it finally broke down. He had to limp home. 99

The modern version of the wind wagon didn’t break down. “It’s a boyhood dream building something that has never existed,” one of the creators said. “I want to honor those who tried what no one else has tried or like no one else has thought. It is only the most insane and most dedicated who go out with their big crazy ships.” 101

Elon has attended Burning Man at least nine times. With him, he brought his electric rocket art car and he has also attended the festival dressed like Darth Vader from the Star Wars movies. 358To have somewhere to live, he rented eight recreational vehicles with trailers and staff. 110

During the five-hour drive to the festival, Elon and his cousins began to discuss how they could change the world. Maybe Elon talked about how he would power his electric cars without fossil fuels. He had earlier tried to buy solar panels for his mansion in Bel Air, but realized it was impossible to find a good supplier. “These were very, very mom and pop shops,” Elon said. “There was no organization I could turn to, to get good installation, professionally done, and feel they would still be around in a few years. None of them have put any serious effort into honing the whole process – you know, squeezing out excess parts and labor – and then they have no economies of scale as far as buying panels en masse or establishing best practices.” 71,104

When Elon and his cousins arrived to the festival, Peter and Lyndon were convinced to start a company within the solar power industry. “I thought that it was an area that needed people like them [his cousins], who are really good entrepreneurs, because solar wasn’t doing well as an industry,” Elon said. 104

Our attempts to harness the Sun has a long history. More than 2000 years ago, it was said that the Greek scientist, Archimedes of Syracuse, had invented a powerful weapon. He used the reflective properties of bronze shields to focus sunlight to set fire to wooden ships from the Roman Empire during the Siege of Syracuse. No proof of the weapon exists today, but the Greek navy recreated the experiment in 1973. From a distance of 164 feet [50 m] they managed to set fire to a wooden boat. 422