Elon Musk - founder of Tesla, SpaceX and a whole bunch of other companies.
There doesnt seem to be a week that goes by these days without him making the news.
Usually its because one of his companies is doing something big or innovotive but sometimes
- its because Elons eccentric side has been revealed.
If you want to create the empire that hes done, you have to have a big imagination like
his - and perhaps be a little bit crazy, in a good way.
My name is Danny Burke and this is the Top 10 Crazy Things Elon Musk Has Done.
Starting off at number 10 we have Making Flamethrowers.
Elon founded the Boring Company in 2016 as a personal hobby to solve traffic problems
by digging big holes for traffic to use.
As part of his funding for the company, he sold boring company hats and said that if
they sell out - he would start selling flamethrowers.
The hats sold out and so came the flamethrowers.
They are priced at $500 each and shoot real fire.
Within a few hours they had made 3.5 million dollars.
So yeah, if you wanna get rich guys, just sell flamethrowers.
Don't know why I didnt think of that …
At number 9 now we have Paid For College By Partying.
It sounds crazy but Elon Musk found away to make ends meet at while he was studying at
college - he would throw parties.
He lived with one other person in a 10 bedroom house so they had a lot of room for house
parties.
Elon would charge guests $5 each to get in.
Elon wouldnt even drink at the parties, he would stay sober for the whole night so that
he could keep an eye on everything.
He ran it like a business and it made him some decent money.
No hangover the next day too!
Moving on to number 8 we have the Hyperloop.
At the moment, humans have 4 modes of long distance travel: plane, trains, automobiles
and boats.
Elon has come up with a crazy sounding 5th one: the Hyperloop.
The company is planning to involve passangers in a pod being shot through sealed tubes at
600 mph.
The designers claim it would be immune to weather and would never crash.
It would take you 6 hours to drive from LA to San Francisco.
The first Hyperloop is being planned for that route and will make that journey just 30 minutes.
Imagine that.
At number 7 now we have Blastar.
In 1984, at the age of 12, Elon coded a game called Blastar and got 500 dollars for it
when its code was published in a South African Magazine.
Thats the equivalent of 1,200 dollars.
In 2015, a Google engineer found the code and remade in HTML5 so that everyone can play
it.
Thats right.
If you go to blastar-1984.appspot.com - you can play the game that Elon created when he
was 12 years old …
Moving on to number 6 we have the Caffeine Boost.
Elon once said that when he was busy starting up his companies, he had so much work that
he had to stay away.
So, he consumed a lot of caffeine.
Every day he would drink 6 cans of coke and several cups of coffee without fail.
Thats a lot.
My eye is starting to twitch just thinking about that …
Next up at number 5 we have Saying AI Could Destroy.
This one depends on your views on AI - some people think Elon is wrong but others totally
agree.
Hes warned that at the current rate of progress, Artificial Intelligence could become more
powerful than humans and even lead to our own extinction.
In an interview with Vanity Fair he clarified that he doesnt think this will come in the
form of terminator style robots, but rather a computer algorithm.
If we give too much power to programmes that dictate the way the world is run, what happens
when something goes wrong?
Will it be too late?
Moving on to number 4 we have Proposing To Nuke Mars.
In 2015, Elon Musk appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and when the topic of
Mars came up - Elon proposed that we should nuke it.
He didnt mean just for fun - his idea is that by dropping nukes over the north and south
poles of Mars to create pockets of intense nuclear fusion that would warm Mars up and
turn frozen CO2 there into gas.
This could create a basic atmosphere to help turn Mars into a more Earth like planet for
humans to live on …
At number 3 we have Own James Bonds Car.
As a kid in South Africa, Elon Musk was fascinated by the cool cars in James Bond movies.
One of his favourites was the Lotus Esprit submarine car.
It featured in The Spy Who Loved Me and would transform into a submarine when it hit the
water.
In 2013, the car from the movie went up for auction and Elon bought it for 866 thousand
dollars.
He said he was disappointed it didnt actually turn into a submarine like the movie but that
hes going to upgrade it himself to make it do that.
Like you do.
Coming in at number 2 we have Inspired Iron Man.
Elon didnt actively do this one - he did it by just being himself.
In 2007, Iron Man actor Robert Downey Jr visited the SpaceX headquarters for a tour.
He said that as Elon showed him round, he observed some of his -accessible eccentricities-
… thats a fancy way of saying he liked his moves.
When Downey Jr came to play Iron Man, he admitted he used some of Elons characteristics as inspiration.
Elon even got a came in Iron Man 2 so I guess theyre even!
And finally at number 1 we have Sending A Car Into Space.
This might not only be the craziest thing Elon has done, it might be one of the craziest
things anyone has done.
When Space X did their first full test launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, they needed a
weight to make all the calculations work.
Normally there would be cargo or astronauts, but not this time.
So, Elon thought it would be a good idea to send one of his Tesla Roadsters up there.
Strapped into the passenger seat was a crash test dummy called Starman.
The car and its driver will shoot past Mars and then continue to orbit the sun for potentially
billions of years if its not interrupted.
Whats more likely though is that it will be salvaged and put in a museum when space travel
becomes normal for humans.
And if it does, Im sure well have Elon Musk to thank for that at least a bit.
Which fact did you find the most interesting?
Do you want any more Elon Musk videos?
Is Elon Musk watching this?
Almost certainly not.
In he meantime guys, Im Danny Burke, thanks as always for watching and Ill see you all
in the next video.