Elon Musk: World’s Richest Man and Entrepreneur Paragon

There are two key points not to be missed when it comes to introducing Elon Musk.

Firstly, he is the world’s richest man.

Secondly, he is the entrepreneur paragon of the world.

Whether it is showing off under the catalyst of wealth or struggling with synonyms for hard work, there seems to be a subtle connection with one element, private jets.

Top Flyer Musk

Private jets are the most expensive item on the rich list and the fastest drug for boss efficiency.

Elon Musk, who has mastered the first principles, is the world’s number one player in private aviation.

The known data shows that in 2018, Musk had already become the richest person who flies privately in the world, flying 250 times in 365 days, covering a total distance of 240,000 kilometers.

Among them are many extreme or even bizarre records, such as flying a one-way transfer route of 32 kilometers within Los Angeles and overtaking China’s civil aviation over the Pacific Ocean before the Shanghai factory started.

Even Tom Mueller, SpaceX’s CTO and employee number 001, once said that Musk’s first private jet had only six seats, but as long as someone was willing to sit in the toilet during the flight, it could accommodate seven people. In the end, “we always had seven people on one plane.”

Although no specific data have been revealed in recent years, considering that Musk needs to take care of more and more companies, it is believed that his demand for flying will only increase, not decrease.

Musk’s Plane Tracker

In recent years, as the wealth and status between Musk and his fans have become increasingly disparate, there have been few Musk fans who can go viral.

However, recently, a 19-year-old college student has made it to the top financial media pages of Bloomberg, The Guardian, CNN, NBC, Business Insider and other top financial media due to his enmity with Musk.

The reason is simple – he made a Musk aircraft tracker on Twitter.

This account, @ElonJet, publishes almost real-time updates on Musk’s private aircraft takeoff, landing times, and destinations. This not only satisfies the curiosity of a large number of Tesla fans, but also provides evidence for judging the decision-making of companies such as Tesla and SpaceX.

When the aircraft is flying towards Berlin, it is a signal of phased progress at Giga Berlin. If the aircraft is landing in Florida, it may indicate that the launch date of a new SpaceX mission is confirmed.

This account quickly became a source of news for media people’s long-term attention to the progress of Tesla, and its number of fans reached as many as 83,000 (before recent news hype).

The account owner, Jack Sweeney, is just a 19-year-old student at the University of Florida, but he has a strong connection with aviation. Sweeney’s father works for an airline company, which gave him attention to flying-related matters since childhood. He especially likes to track planes and often compares the plane models he sees in the sky with the results he finds in online flight tracking apps.

Since SpaceX launched its first Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018, he has become a loyal fan of Musk.

However, he didn’t expect to have a conflict with Musk himself one day because of this matter.

A conversation worth $5000 or $50000

One night, Sweeney was surprised to receive a direct message from Musk just before going to bed.The reason why Musk brought in Swain has two aspects. Firstly, Musk feels that these real-time updates of his whereabouts have become a safety concern because he doesn’t know what his many fanatics may do at the airport. Secondly, even Musk himself doesn’t understand how Swain can figure out his itinerary.

It’s a bit shocking that the second reason destroys my understanding of things. Shouldn’t Musk, the owner of SpaceX, first use first principles to organize his geeky geniuses to analyze the technical principles?

Actually, Musk’s curiosity about this matter is reasonable. Although it’s now commonplace for us to view the takeoff and landing times, as well as flight route maps of civilian aviation aircraft through apps and websites like “Ctrip,” private planes are different. For the sake of privacy protection, the vast majority of private planes are on the LADD stoplist, which means their flight data will have identifying information about their aircraft deleted so that trackers can’t understand the flight trajectory of a specific plane.

However, it doesn’t matter. Since his idol is “not ashamed to ask questions,” Swain frankly introduced his technical solution: most planes are equipped with an ADS-B responder which can broadcast the precise location and other data (such as speed, altitude, and whether the plane is turning, climbing or descending) of the aircraft through a data link.

Swain’s crawler robot judges whether a plane is taking off or landing by capturing changes in its altitude and time information. Then, based on the continuous changes in latitude and longitude, the aircraft’s route and destination are determined. Meanwhile, cross-referencing this real-time ADS-B data with another FAA flight plan publishing site’s anonymous version allows for a more precise judgement of the aircraft’s route, which completes the tracking of private planes.

Implementing such a system requires a lot of specific knowledge about the aviation industry, which happens to be Swain’s hobby and expertise over the years.

Later, Musk asked a soul-searching question: how much money can this Twitter account make in a month?

Swain said that by earning a share of some ad clicks, he can only make $20 a month.

I think what Swain wanted to express is “I am just your fan, and I don’t earn money from this,” but Musk’s business nature obviously ignored this and immediately asked the most critical question:”I’ll give you 5000 dollars. Can you close this account? I don’t want any crazies tracking me.”

Sweeney replied: “How about 50000 dollars? I can buy a Model 3 with it.”

He felt that 5000 dollars was not enough to buy his sense of achievement, so he added, “If you don’t want to give me money, you can give me an opportunity to intern at Tesla.”

According to the interview with The Guardian, Sweeney described receiving a direct message from Musk (whom he referred to as his idol) as a surreal experience. “I was actually about to go to bed and I thought, ‘Oh my God, Elon Musk just messaged me to delete my account,'” he said. “This is crazy.”

But little did he know that this would be his last conversation with Musk.

He Was Blocked By Musk

Although Musk did not agree to Sweeney’s request, he apparently did not give up his plan to buy him out.

Scott Painter, CEO of car rental company Autonomy, proposed on Twitter that if Sweeney deleted Musk’s tracking account, the company could rent him a Model 3 for free.

The Wall Street Journal contacted Scott Painter and found out that the free rental period was three years. However, Sweeney rejected the proposal.

Finally, Musk commented on a message about @ElonJet on Twitter one day, saying, “I think this is now a security issue for me,” which greatly fueled public opinion.

This sparked a heated discussion and criticism of Sweeney within the Tesla community, and Sweeney also discovered that Musk had completely blocked him on Twitter.

Sweeney told Bloomberg that Musk subsequently blocked all of his social media accounts.

After the end of Musk’s story, Sweeney’s story was just beginning.First, he decided to replicate the model and expand his tracking business. The first two additions to the list were the two richest people in the world who also share a passion for private flights: Bezos and Bill Gates. And the funny superstar Trump, yes, the one you’re familiar with, was also nominated for the award.

“They are either outstanding or very interesting.”

Second, to avoid having his account banned by Twitter, he set up a website called Ground Control to display the same content. He told The Guardian that if Twitter cancels his account for security reasons, his website will serve as a backup for continuing tracking operations.

Finally, perhaps to strike back at Musk’s contempt for his earning ability, he launched a series of Musk smoking “tobacco” classic stickers, hoodies, and T-shirts. These products all bear the text “I know how high Musk flew,” as well as images of Musk’s jet and screenshots from the @ElonJet Twitter account.

He even received many job opportunities as a result. The New York Post reported that Joel Thomas, CEO of private charter company Stratos Jet Charters, invited him to join the company’s development team after seeing his “creativity” in setting up accounts.

But Swainy doesn’t need to worry too much about work. After all, after the showdown with Musk, his account now has 360,000 followers, and reaching 500,000 doesn’t seem like a difficult task.

But this is far from the end of the story.

The always-crazy Tesla community is slowly giving its answer to this matter.

Some say that since Swainy loves to post airplane routes of Musk’s flights, Musk should let the plane take off and draw an unspeakable pattern in the sky.

Others say that Musk should give Swainy a Model 3 he wants, then set up a Twitter account and publicly disclose Swainy’s location and destination every minute.“`markdown

So you see, love and kill each other, kill and love each other.

(By the way, Swinney just said recently that if Musk doesn’t buy him a Tesla, he will regret it because Swinney is going to launch his own crypto…)

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This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.