Preface
The history ofThe Engineer - Follow Elon Musk on a
journey from South Africa to Marsbegan in 2006 when I
read a book about peak oil. The idea behind peak oil is
that the world sooner or later will run out of oil because
oil is a finite resource. Most books written on the subject
are within the doomsday category. The book I read argued
that when there’s no more oil we would be forced to return
to a 19th century society. Horses would be the main mode
of transportation because the alternatives, such as electric
cars, wouldn’t make a difference because they weren’t good
enough.
Peak oil terrified me. The first night I had nightmares
about how the world would look like without any vehicles.
How would we deliver food? How would we build houses?
How would we transport injured people? I watched every
day how the price of oil climbed to record levels. But when
the 2008 credit crisis hit the world, the price of oil decreased
from $150 per barrel, and nightmares about derivatives
replaced my nightmares about peak oil.
Fast forward to late 2012. One dark autumn night I
watched a video on YouTube where the entrepreneur Kevin
Rose interviewed a guy called Elon Musk. I had never heard
of him or his companies before. At the end of the interview,
Elon mentioned that he worked with the Hyperloop - a
fifth mode of transportation, where the other modes are