Musk is on the news again, but this time it is not his own work, but he has been elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering. On February 10, 2022, the U.S. Academy of Engineering announced the list of additional academicians of the National Academy of Engineering in 2021, which included Tesla founder Musk, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Nadella, Zhang Hongjiang, chairman of Beijing Zhiyuan Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Sanjay Mehrotra, president and CEO of Micron Technology, and Kathleen Bergeron, vice president of Apple Hardware Engineering.
Now, in addition to having a new world richest man and various titles of founder and engineer, Ske now has to add a horse academician, and he himself replied on Twitter, very grateful.
Founded in 1964, NAE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization in the United States affiliated with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). NAE is responsible for carrying out the engineering projects needed by the country, oriented by education and research, recognizing and affirming the value and achievements of engineers.
The acquisition of NAE academician qualification is one of the most professional and highest level of evaluation standards for engineers at present, which is used to commend those who have made breakthroughs in engineering research, engineering practice, engineering literature and other fields, or those who have made outstanding contributions to innovation in the field of technology, major breakthroughs in traditional fields, and practical innovative methods to carry out engineering teaching, which is one of the highest professional honors awarded to engineers.
Musk's reasons for election were primarily his contributions to reusable launch vehicles, sustainable transportation and energy systems. Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971, entered Queen's College in Canada in 1990, then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, and received a bachelor's degree in physics in 1995. Musk actually felt that the school could not satisfy him, and after being admitted to the Doctor of Materials Science program at Stanford University, he chose to quit school and go to Silicon Valley to start a business two days after enrollment.
Among the companies created later, there is SpaceX Company, which became the reason for the selection this time, to see what interesting things have happened recently to the SpaceX company that made Academician Ma successfully elected.
First of all, in the news of the day before yesterday 9, a bad message, of the 49 new "Starlink" satellites launched last Thursday, the Falcon 9 rocket successfully sent the satellite into orbit the day after, 40 of which were destroyed by a magnetic storm. It is worth mentioning that Starlink now has a total of 1800 satellites. And on the 10th, NASA sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) expressing concern about space exploration technology company SpaceX's second-generation starlink program.
The reason is that Academician Ma's satellites are too much, in addition to the current satellites, SpaceX has actually obtained the authorization of 12,000 satellites, and as a result, it has also requested the FCC to authorize the launch of the second-generation satellite chain system, which will launch about 30,000 satellites. That's more than 40,000, according to NASA: The total number of objects currently tracked in orbit around the Earth is 25,000 (including satellites and various types of space junk), and SpaceX's second-generation starlink program will more than double the number of tracked objects in orbit.
The probability of a collision event could increase significantly, with implications for NASA's science and manned space missions. In fact, whether it is to NASA or other countries, the harm of space debris is the same, and there has been recent news of collision avoidance on the Shenzhou spacecraft series, in addition to aviation, astronomical observers and competitors Amazon have also complained about the interference of the Starlink program with their own projects.
In addition to commercial or other purposes, there has been recent news that StarLink's communication technology will be used in Tonga to help it restore network services. The previous volcano in Tonga had its biggest eruption since 1990, and the entire island was almost completely wiped out. Regardless of the stakes behind it, it makes sense for humanity to provide assistance in the face of natural disasters, reduce casualties and improve reconstruction.
Looking back at the development of SpaceX is also stumbling, the early explosion and management bankruptcy crisis, after shouting several bankruptcies, but also use Tesla's business to maintain SpaceX, until it has become what everyone sees later, as well as the more grand starlink plan and Mars plan. For now, it's a matter of time before Starlink's plans are made, and the next step is Mars, which sounds a bit magically realistic, but that's why Musk fans support him and do things that others think are crazy. In addition to Musk, there are many academicians elected this time, such as the big guys mentioned at the beginning of the article.
Dr. Zhang Hongjiang, former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft Asia Pacific R&D Group and President of Microsoft Asia Engineering Institute, one of the first ten "Outstanding Scientists" of Microsoft, is also one of the founders and vice presidents of Microsoft Research Asia. Since October 2011, Dr. Zhang Hongjiang has served as CEO and Executive Director of Kingsoft and CEO of Kingsoft Cloud. He is also a director of Cheetah Mobile, Thunderbolt Limited and 21Vianet Data Centre Limited. He is currently the non-executive chairman and independent director of AAC Technology, and the independent director of Xiaopeng Automobile and Huami Technology. He was selected for his contributions and leadership in the field of multimedia computing.
Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, was selected for cloud computing, and Nadella played an important role in the process of cloud computing becoming infrastructure.
Kathleen Bergeron, vice president of hardware engineers from Apple, and James A. Yurko, director of materials engineering, were selected as fellows. She led the team to create Hardware products such as Apple Input Devices and HomePods, and is a well-known female technical representative within Apple, and James A. Yurko was selected for her contribution to accelerating the development of materials suitable for consumer electronics.
Sanjay Mehrotra, president and CEO of Micron Technologies, born in 1958, was the co-founder of SanDisk, the world's largest supplier of flash data storage card products.
For Musk's election as an academician of the National Academy of Engineering, Chinese and foreign netizens are more of a positive voice, although his behavior is not very understandable, but his contribution is worthy of this title.
Some netizens have counted that he is a manufacturing industry, rather than playing around the point of PayPal, but actually creating an industrial benchmark. SpaceX and Tesla have raised the level of industrial engineering in the United States. According to Business Insider data, Musk's companies are SpaceX and Tesla, which rank in the top two of the most desired list of engineering students in the United States, and push NASA, Apple, Google, and Boeing.
Anyway, Musk is determined to become a Martian