Elon Musk: Sci-Fi News

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and other larger-than-life tech companies, appears to be an avid reader as well. Elon Musk admitted “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is on his reading list of books that inspired him and said in an interview at an MIT symposium in 2014, that the book was Heinlein’s best work.

“In terms of sci-fi books, I think Isaac Asimov is really great. I like the Foundation series, probably one of the all-time best. Robert Heinlein, obviously. I like The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and I like “Stranger in a Strange Land”, although it kind of goes off the rails at the end,” Elon Musk said. No doubt the messiness of Heinlein’s religious message didn’t resonate with Elon.

Clearly Musk had obtained some considerable inspiration from sci-fi. Crazy bigger than life schemes, like using his boring company to dig tunnels through which his rockets will reach anywhere on Earth, litter his creative landscape. Some argue Musk is also the biggest private space travel company a la DD Harriman, the land barron in Heinlein’s “The Man Who Sold the Moon”. Clearly Elon musk wants to make commercial space travel affordable. Musk read Heinlein and Assimov as a kid and now is just following a script. As stated when he first started to stick those  SpaceX landings: “Rockets landing on their tails, as God and Heinlein intended”