全通翻譯/翻譯社

Iron Man, Eat Your Heart Out

The media have dubbed him the real life Tony Stark, and indeed, like the man behind the iron mask, Elon Musk seems almost invincible. The South African-born innovator made a cameo appearance in “Iron Man 2,” where he advised Robert Downey, Jr.'s character that he had “an idea for an electric jet.” Uttered by anyone else, such a comment would be straying into the realm of comic-book hyperbole, but with Musk, it appears the sky is no limit. In fact, he is already toying with the idea of electric air travel, though he admits it might not be feasible.

A self-taught coding whiz, Musk had already developed and sold a video game by the age of 12. After dropping out of a Ph.D program at Harvard after two days, Musk founded Zip2 with his brother. The company produced online publishing software for news organizations and was sold to AltaVista for US$307 million cash and US$34 million in stock in 1999. 

However, the pivotal event for the 42-year-old was the cofounding of Paypal in 2000. The online payments company was sold to eBay for US$1.5 billion in 2002, and no one could have predicted what Musk would do with his share of the proceeds. Musk's third venture was SpaceX, a manufacturer of space launch vehicles. Some critics thought he was living on another planet, but in 2012, SpaceX became the first commercial company to dock a vehicle with the International Space Station. It can now get an astronaut to the station for US$20 million, less than a third the cost of a trip on a Russian Soyuz rocket.

嫉妒吧，鋼鐵人

媒體稱他為真實人生裡的東尼．史塔克，的確，如同在鐵面具下的男子，伊隆．馬斯克看起來似乎所向無敵。這位生於南非的創新者在《鋼鐵人2》中客串演出，他向小勞勃．道尼飾演的角色說自己有個「電動噴射機的點子。」這句話若從別人口中說出，聽起來就不免像是漫畫書裡的虛妄誇大。不過，馬斯克卻似乎永無極限。事實上，他已開始構思電動空中旅行的想法，儘管他承認這個點子大概不可行。

馬斯克是個無師自通的程式設計奇才，早在十二歲時就開發並賣出了一套電玩。他進入哈佛的博士學程才兩天就輟學，之後便和弟弟創立 Zip2。這家公司為新聞機構製作線上出版軟體，並在一九九九年以 3.07 億美元的現金加上 3,400 萬美元的股票賣給 AltaVista。

然而，對於 42 歲的馬斯克而言，最重要的事件則是在二○○○年與他人共同創立了 Paypal。這家線上支付公司在二○○二年以 15 億美元被 eBay 收購，沒有人猜想得到馬斯克會怎麼運用他分得的款項。馬斯克的第三次創業成果是太空探索科技公司——一家發射太空載具的製造商。有些批評人士認為他根本是活在另一個星球上。但在二○一二年時，太空探索科技公司成了第一家能讓太空船停靠在國際太空站的商業公司。現在，這家公司能夠用兩千萬美元讓一名太空人登上太空站，這還不到俄國聯合號火箭之旅三分之一的價格。

資料來源：biz 互動英語