改变世界的名人：梦想践行者pdf/doc/txt格式电子书下载

书名：改变世界的名人：梦想践行者pdf/doc/txt格式电子书下载

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作者：《新东方英语》编辑部著

出版社：

出版时间：2015-09-01

书籍编号：30287133

ISBN：

正文语种：中英对照

字数：113459

版次：

所属分类：外语学习-英语读物

版权信息

书名：改变世界的名人：梦想践行者

作者：《新东方英语》编辑部

ISBN：8888888888888

。

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By Chris Raymond　译/辛献云

音频

伊隆·马斯克在大学时代就开始驰骋于互联网领域，在短短七年内便使自己的身价达到1.8亿美元。此后，他将自己的全部个人财富都投到了三大改变历史的项目之中：研究商用航天技术、旨在实现人类火星之旅的SpaceX，研发节能纯电动汽车的Telsa Motor，以及推广使用太阳能的公司SolarCity。一位年仅四十来岁的企业家能够在短短的二十几年内同时为互联网、航天技术和可持续能源这三大对人类发展具有重大影响的科技领域做出革命性的成就，不可谓不惊世骇俗。

When you work on an epic scale, tossing out huge ideas as if they were pennies aimed at awishing well[1], you get used to hearing the word crazy. For Elon Musk, the term springs up so frequently he might as well print it on his business card. Crazy Elon Musk. Who else would have theaudacity[2]to plan a privately funded mission to Mars?

A lifetime before he aimed at distant planets, Musk was a driving force behind two of the most successful startups the digital world had ever known. Zip2, the Internet services provider he co-founded with his younger brother, Kimbal, at age 24, was purchased by Compaq for $307 million. PayPal, the online payment system he developed with Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, wasscooped up[3]by eBay for $1.5 billion. After all his shares were added up, Musk was worth $180 million.

It takes a certain measure ofsavvy[4]topull off[5]deals like those, and you\'ve got to respect a man who assembles such a private fortune in only seven years\' time. So when Musk decided that he should aspire to put life on Mars by rocketing a miniature greenhouse there, peoplehumored[6]him. And when he flew off to Moscow to talk with the Russians about purchasing two intercontinental ballistic missiles, they smiled. But when he announced that he was going to start yet another company—one that would build its very own rockets—they concluded he was nuts.

\"The public tends to respond to precedents andsuperlatives[7],\" Musk said in a commencement speech atCaltech[8]in June, 2012. That\'s why the notion of sending that greenhouse into space held so much appeal for him. Not only would it bring life to Mars, but it would also be the greatest distance life from Earth had ever traveled. Musk believes a permanent human base on Mars is attainable sooner than even the foremoststargazers[9]canfathom[10].

Blasting Off

Born in South Africa in 1971, Musk was not like the other neighborhood boys in Pretoria. Not only did he love to lose himself in books, but he remembered virtually everything he read. The son of an engineer (electrical and mechanical) and a dietitian/model, he learned early on how to harness his brainpower to make money. At 12, he sold his first piece of software—a video game called Blastar—for $500. At 17, Musk left home to make his fortune in America. He knew that the United States is where the action is.

Of course you can\'t just show up in America without a green card. So Musk set out first for Canada and took on a series ofodd jobs[11], eventually enrolling in one of the nation\'s top schools, Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. After a year, he transferred to Penn, where he collected his dual degrees (physics and business). He graduated in 1995 and moved west to Stanford, with plans to develop expertise in high-energysupercapacitors[12]while working toward a graduate degree. That lasted all of two days. In no time he saw the feverish entrepreneurial spirit in Silicon Valley, observed the staggering success of the NetscapeIPO[13], and threw himselfheadlong[14]into the game.

He summoned his brother from Queens University, recruited a friend, and the three worked night and day beneath the leaky roof of a tiny Palo Alto, Calif. office that also served as their home, creating the code for Zip2. The company was a success. When Zip2 was sold, Musk pocketed $22 million. He immediately invested it in his next big idea, a digital payment service called X.com. In the spring of 2000, at age 29, he merged the company with a competitor called Confinity, which offered a similar service known asPayPal[15].

伊隆·马斯克登上《时代》周刊的封面

Confinity CEO Peter Thiel stepped aside and let Musk steer the company, and by some accounts he did an admirable job of blending the two operations. But he clearlyruffled some feathers[16]. After nearly 10 months in charge, Musk left the PayPal office for a long-awaited vacation in Australia. While he was gone the board of directors voted to replace him with Thiel. The dismissal stung, Musk says, but it did not soften him. He was still the company\'s largest stockholder. In the end, PayPal was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion.

Experiencing Turbulence

Is it courage that sets Elon Musk apart from most business leaders? Of course not. What makes Musk extraordinary is this: In an era when younghotshots[17]with laptops are scrambling to launch the next Google from their dorm rooms, he chose to risk his entire net worth on three enterprises with sweeping infrastructures andsteep[18]research and development costs.

First he poured $100 million into SpaceX. Then in 2003, he sank $50 million into Tesla, an automaker determined to manufacture electric cars for the masses. And three years later

....