Entrepreneur to Yale audience: Next up, shooting for the stars

At 39, Elon Musk has already helped create some of the most widely recognized and transformative companies on the planet. Interested in technologies that will have the greatest possible impact on human life, Musk has co-founded PayPal and Tesla Motors, which makes the world’s only all-electric luxury sports car.

The engineer and entrepreneur has now set his sights on what he considers to be the next frontier: extending human life to other planets. To help speed humanity toward this goal is his latest venture, SpaceX – the first private company to launch rockets into space. The company has been contracted by NASA to resupply the International Space Station once the Space Shuttle retires. Ultimately, Musk hopes to develop rockets capable of deep space travel.

“It’s one of the most significant things that will ever occur in the history of life itself, and this is really the first time in the four-billion-year history of life on Earth that it’s been within the realm of possibility,” he told the audience during the inaugural Victor M. Tyler Distinguished Lectureship in Engineering last week, comparing the jump from Earth to other planets to the transition of life from the oceans to land hundreds of millions of years ago.

The Victor M. Tyler Distinguished Lectureship in Engineering is sponsored by the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science. The lectureship is named in honor of Victor Tyler, B.S. ‘51 and M.E. ‘58, founder of Concord Computing Corporation and a leader in the development of electronic commerce technologies. His entrepreneurial acumen has provided financial institutions nationwide with ATM processing, debit card processing, access to a national debit network, and deposit risk management.

Watch the full lecture to hear more about Musk’s vision for making life multiplanetary: