the times | Wednesday February 16 2022 7
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Unity takes off at an airstrip outside
the town of Truth or Consequences in
New Mexico, attached to a “mother”
aircraft. At 13km it is released to ignite
its rocket motor, before climbing to the
edge of space at about 53 miles above
sea level. The spaceship flies at three
times the speed of sound.
Previously, the highest altitude
achieved in commercial travel was the
11.4-mile cruising altitude of Concorde.
Branson reached the edge of space in
the spaceship in July. He said: “I have
dreamt of this moment since I was a kid,
but honestly nothing can prepare you
for the view of Earth from space. The
whole thing was just magical.”
His quest to send tourists into space
began in 2004, but it has been hit by
delays and tragedy. Three workers were
killed in a rocket motor test in Califor-
nia inn 2007. In 2014 the Enterprise air-
craft broke apart on a test flight, killing
a pilot and seriously injuring another.income, and he’d avoid the gains tax he
would have to pay if he sold the stock.”
Tesla was founded in 2003 by Martin
Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning,
American engineers. Musk, a co-
founder of PayPal, led a round of invest-
ment in February 2004, with $6.5 mil-
lion of his own money out of a total
fundraising of $7.5 million.
With a stock market value of more
than $905 billion, the electric carmaker
is now bigger than General Motors,
Ford and Fiat Chrysler, the Big Three of
American carmaking, as well as Japan’s
Toyota.
Musk also started SpaceX, the aero-
space manufacturer and space trans-
portation services company based in
Hawthorne, California, in 2002, with
the goal of reducing rocket launch costs
to enable the colonisation of Mars.Elon Musk became America’s second biggest donor behind Melinda French Gates, below, and her former husband, BillThe world’s biggest philanthropists
All donated 20 per cent
or more of their fortune
in direct donations:Warren Buffett
The chairman and chief
executive of the
conglomerate Berkshire
Hathaway donated
$4.1 billion worth of his
stock in the company in
June. His total lifetime
giving was $44 billion.
In a statement, Buffett
noted that the value of
the shares he had
already given awaywould have increased to
$100 billion.George Soros
The premier currency
speculator bet against
the British pound in
1992, earning $1 billion.
Soros was estimated to
have given $34.8 billion,
having started donating
money in 1979. He gave
scholarships and built
the Open Society
Foundation, with more
than 20 national and
regional foundations.Bill & Melinda Gates
In 2021 the 50 biggest
US donors pledged
$28 billion to charity, but
more than half came
from Bill and Melinda
Gates. Bill, the founder
of Microsoft, and the
philanthropist Melinda
usually gave through
their joint foundation.
Melinda, who is now
divorced from Bill, has
said she will no longer
make most donations
through the foundation.
Source: ForbesMICHELE TANTUSSI/REUTERSElon Musk donated nearly $6 billion
worth of Tesla shares to charity last
year, making him America’s biggest
philanthropist after Bill Gates and his
ex-wife Melinda French Gates.
Musk gave a total of 5,044,000 shares
in the world’s most valuable carmaker
to unnamed charities over a ten-day
period in November, according to a
filing with America's financial regula-
tor.
The names of the organisations that
received the stock, which was given
away in five transactions, were not
revealed in the filing to the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The donations were worth about
$5.7 billion (£4.2 billion) at the time they
were made, but are now valued at
$4.4 billion after a decline in the share
price of the electric car company.
Earlier last year Musk had tweeted
that if the UN World Food Pro-
gramme (WFP) could explain
how $6 billion “will solve world
hunger” he would “sell Tesla
stock right now and do it”.
David Beasley, director of the
World Food Programme, res-
ponded to Musk at the time
by posting a link to a
1,000-word executive
summary on how the
UN would distribute
the money. This includ-
ed using it for meals and
vouchers to feed more
than 40 million people
across 43 countries
that are “on the brink
of famine”.
Beasley said in a
statement that the
Musk hands
charities $6bn
windfall with
share giveaway
Robert Miller organisation had not received anything
from Musk yet. “Whether WFP re-
ceives any of this money is yet to be
seen, but I am excited to hear that Elon
is engaged, ” he said.
The donation made Musk, 48, Amer-
ica’s second biggest donor last year,
data from the Chronicle of Philanthro-
py shows. It was still dwarfed, however,
by the $15 billion that Gates, 66, and
French Gates, 57, gave to their charit-
able foundation in July.
Musk’s donation coincided with him
selling $16.4 billion worth of shares
after polling Twitter users about selling
10 per cent of his stake in Tesla in early
November.
He said on Twitter that he would pay
more than $11 billion in taxes in 2021
due to him exercising stock options that
were set to expire.
Tesla did not respond to a request for
comment yesterday. The story was
first reported by The Wall Street
Journal.
Analysts said there would be
a tax benefit for Musk potent-
ially giving away Tesla stock,
since shares donated to char-
ity are not subject to capital
gains tax, as they would be
if sold.
Bob Lord, an asso-
ciate fellow at the Insti-
tute for Policy Studies
who studies tax policy,
said: “His tax benefit
would be huge. He’d
save between 40 per
cent and 50 per cent
of the $5.7 billion in
tax, depending on
whether he could
take the deduction
against his California
Only a year ago Elon Musk was pro-
claiming his company Neuralink had
created technology allowing monkeys
to play video games with their minds.
Now, however, Neuralink is defend-
ing itself against accusations of animal
cruelty after 15 out of
23 test monkeys were
said to have died or
been put down.
The startup found-
ed by Musk in 2017,
which aims to create
technology that will
allow people to con-
trol computers with
their mind, insisted it
works with animals in
the “most humane
and ethical way poss-
ible”.
It said in a blog post:
“Our central mission
is to design an animal
Virgin Galactic space flight
tickets on sale for £331,
Ben Clatworthy
Transport CorrespondentAnimal abuse claims over brain chips
care program prioritising the needs of
the animals, rather than the typical
strategy of building for human conve-
nience alone,”
The Physicians Committee for Re-
sponsible Medicine (PCRM), which ad-
vocates against animal testing, has filed
a legal complaint against California
University. It alleges violations of the
Animal Welfare Act
“related to invasive
and deadly brain ex-
periments conducted
on 23 monkeys”.
At the start of Neu-
ralink’s research in
2017, the company
worked with the Cali-
fornia National Pri-
mate Research Center
in Davis as a place to
house the animalsand conduct its experiments. In April
last year Neuralink released a video
showing a monkey playing basic video
games using its thoughts, thanks to a
wireless chip in the animal’s brain.
However, the PCRM said that 15 of
the 23 Macaque monkeys in the initial
experiments had either died or been
put down by 2020. It said that monkeys
were “caged alone, had steel posts
screwed to their skulls, suffered facial
trauma, seizures following brain im-
plants, and recurring infections”.
UC Davis said it had “thoroughly re-
viewed and approved” the protocols of
its research for Neuralink.
It added: “Animal research is strictly
regulated, and UC Davis follows all ap-
plicable laws and regulations.”
Neuralink said that two monkeys
were put down “at planned end dates to
gather important histological data”.
Another six were put down on the med-
ical advice of the veterinary team at UC
Davis. It added that the research centre
was “staffed with caretakers who are
passionate about animal wellbeing”.Tom Knowles
Technology Correspondent
If you have cash to burn and long to
soar to the edge of space, today is the
day to dust off your cheque book —
tickets for the first Virgin Galactic tour-
ist flights are going on sale.
The price? £331,000 for a 90-minute
trip that includes “several minutes of
out-of-seat weightlessness” and
breath-taking views of Earth.
Richard Branson’s space exploration
company intends to launch the first
passenger flights after its SpaceShip-
Two Unity aircraft has completed two
more test flights.
“We plan to have our first 1,000 cus-
tomers on board at the start of commer-
cial service later this year,” Michael
Colglazier, Virgin Galactic’s chief
executive, said. The company’s share
price jumped 30.1 per cent after the
announcement.“ a p o r 2 wfo
m
in
hMonkeys used for
Neuralink’s research
had a wireless chip
put in their brain