A spaceship taller than the Statue of Liberty is getting ready to carry humans to Mars. This isn’t science fiction — this is what SpaceX is building right now. A Spaceship Straight Out of Science Fiction Imagine a shiny silver spaceship standing on the coast of Texas. It’s taller than a 30-story building, taller than the Statue of Liberty — a giant gleaming rocket pointed at the sky. Its name is Starship. ...
Three failures, three explosions. The fourth time — everything about space history changed. A Very Important Launch Day In March 2006, there was a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On that island stood a group of young engineers, staring at a silver rocket. This was SpaceX’s very first rocket, named Falcon 1. Falcon 1 was named after the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. Elon Musk had loved that movie since childhood. ...
If one day humans could live on Mars — how would we get there? That “too crazy to be real” question gave birth to a new kind of company. The Question from the Night Sky Imagine lying on the grass on a summer night, looking up at the stars. One tiny red dot among them is Mars. It’s incredibly far away — even on the fastest rocket, the journey takes many months. ...
Elon Musk once said: “Tesla isn’t really a car company — it’s an energy company trying to solve climate change.” So what does that actually mean? A Jaw-Dropping Announcement In 2016, Elon Musk said something that stunned the whole world: “Tesla isn’t trying to be a car company. What we’re really trying to do is solve climate change.” Wait, what? A car company that doesn’t want to be a car company? ...
Building a car as fast as a sports car, as cool as a spaceship, and cheap enough for ordinary families — that was Tesla’s next dream. The Dream Wasn’t Over Remember Tesla’s first car, the Roadster? It was fast and beautiful, but only a few could afford one. Elon Musk knew this wasn’t the finish line. He asked himself a question: “How do we make every car in the world electric?” ...
Everyone said electric cars were slow and boring — until two engineers and one big dreamer decided to build the most exciting car in the world. Cars Back Then Imagine traveling back to 2003. Cars on the street roared loudly. Black smoke puffed out of their tailpipes. The smell of gasoline hung in the air everywhere. Electric cars existed back then too. But they were slow, ugly, and could only drive a short distance. Charging took many hours. Nobody really wanted one. ...
Spotify has over 100 million songs. How do you ever find the one song that’s perfect for you? Spotify came up with a clever answer. A Small Problem in a Sea of Songs Imagine walking into a gigantic library with 100 million books. Wow, it has everything! But… where do you even start reading? That’s the exact problem Spotify users face every day. The number of songs on Spotify is ridiculous — even the world’s biggest music fan couldn’t listen to them all in a lifetime. ...
Before Spotify, getting a song wasn’t easy. A teenager in Sweden decided to turn all the music in the world into a library that fits in your pocket. Life Before Streaming Imagine you really love a song. But you can’t just tap a screen and listen. You have to go to a store and buy a physical object that has your song on it. That object might be a big round vinyl record. You have to put it on a spinning machine, and a tiny needle touches it gently to make sound come out. ...
The internet got faster. Red DVD envelopes weren’t the only choice anymore. In 2007, Netflix made a bold decision: movies would stream directly to your home. The Internet Got Faster Remember that beeping sound? In the 1990s, if you wanted to connect to the internet, your computer would make a weird beeping, hissing noise. That was dial-up internet. It was painfully slow. So slow that downloading one movie could take a whole week. ...
“There’s got to be a better way.” — Reed Hastings, after receiving a forty-dollar late fee on a DVD rental In 1997, How Did You Watch a Movie? Picture yourself in 1997. You really want to watch a movie. What do you do? You have to get a ride to a video rental store called Blockbuster. It’s a big building stuffed with thousands of VHS tapes and DVDs. You search the shelves and finally find the movie you want. ...