Dear Elon,
I am writing you from my desk in Montreal [Canada]. I have always been passionate on making positive changes in the world. I quickly found out engineering and science was the realm I had to immerse myself for this dream to occur. This is why I became an engineer, and I believe this is why you became one as well.
With the expansion of the Internet, I have been able to follow the trends, specifically those related to technology companies. Without the Internet, I would have never known so much about you, Tesla, SpaceX, and so on.
Indeed, without the Internet, I would have not seen your hard work over the years. When I was studying electrical engineering [around 2012], I remember hearing about your name and Tesla. Students were saying how Tesla was revolutionizing the car industry. Little did I know, you were on a different mission. It’s not about the car industry, it’s about changing the way people live their lives.
It takes a resilient person to go against the negative forces on this planet. There are “bad” actors. There are people who will refute Electric Vehicles. Some people will spit at the idea of colonizing the space. Some will find reasons to doubt another person’s dreams to expand the limits of humanity.
It is not entirely their fault, however. Humans are driven by greed, and the risks of losses will always cloud the positives.
We fear to lose, and that is exactly why we want to win.
By watching many video clips on YouTube and researching articles about your work, I quickly understood you are an engineer at heart. However, you are on a mission — a mission that people admire and will admire for generations to come. Just like Columbus or Newton, you will be immortalized through literature and the scientific world.
While people are drinking wines and having dinners on weekends, you are working. You’re on a mission. You’re on another level. Your visionary inspires people from North America all the way to Kazakhstan. It’s infectious. It inspires people to work with more passion, to inspire others, to expand our skills beyond our horizons — foreshadowing our exploration in space.
Many of us have been inspired by your hunger to explore space, more specifically your interests in the Red Planet — Mars. With the recent launch of SpaceX and NASA, this goal of yours has never been closer than it is today. I do recognize that there are teams and organizations behind you. People that are willing to cut weekends, spend countless nights fixing bugs, or assembling parts.
I think part of humanity is to inspire others. We have an obligation to allow others around us to feed from our goals, interests and pleasures. Positivism will always triumph, and dreaming big will always be part of humans. When you think about it, what’s the point of doubting another human being for thinking big and trying to achieve more for humanity?
Maybe if Newton did not exist, maybe physics would have eventually been understood the way he made the world understand it. Maybe if Columbus did not exist, Americas would have been discovered generations later. Maybe if you did not exist, eventually the automobile industry would have shifted towards electric. Maybe someone would have eventually pushed the right buttons to allow a commercial company fire rockets with astronauts into the space. Or maybe not.
Regardless, you have enabled my generation to dream big. We must explore the galaxy. Actually, no. We must explore — period. We must lay down the foundations for future generations to build upon, just like Columbus did.
Art inspires, engineering executes. You are able to do both. You are our Millennium hero that we need.
Bless you Elon — you have been immortalized.
Hassan.
