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it was around 1994, the

answer to the age-old problem, how do i've findi find a pizza place next to my dorm room, turn by turn directions. he ended up selling that company for 300 million. that is what set him on his way. quite what did he do with that 20 million? >> he sat back and thought about an industry that needed a kick in the pants. he worked at a bank as an intern. they were dumb and kind of herd mentality. early days of the internet, and he thought to do an online financial system for everything. then it morphed into paypal.

>> often cited as the founder of paypal. >> well, they are both cofounders anyway. in the same building there is another company which was when he started with another stanford graduate. two companies in one building that were spending each other to death. they would tempt people to use their service. a lot of fraud. they come up with a service called paypal. >> you say he arrived in the

country with $100 in his pocket. >> born in south africa. have his family is canadian-american and the other half are british south african. a precocious kid who read tons of science fiction, very bright, but a bit of a no it all. bullied at school. he was kind of a loner. i interviewed tons of kids he went to school with who said pretty much the same thing. he kept to himself and was into computers which pushed him and he would always here about silicon valley and dreamed but getting to america.

he ran away from home and dated. >> ran away from home. >> he did. he wanted to get to the us but had to make a pitstop in canada. he backpacks around for a year and then dip -- gets into queens university and excels academically. >> and what did he study? >> a mix, physics and business. >> he did those in the combination on purpose? >> he did. he fancies himself a physicist. he was into capacitors and things. he does them both at the same time.

he also hosts house parties on the weekends to pay his way through school. >> you write in your book that his behavior matches more closely with someone is described by neuropsychologists is profoundly gifted. >> that's right. itright. it is a clinical term that i ran across. a lota lot of people say he is on the asp burgers spectrum. ii found there is a certain kind of person who has an empathy not for individual people put mankind as a whole.

he feels like he must help the human species. there is a flaw, and he is they're to help. >> after paypal what happened? >> he goes off on a honeymoon with his 1st wife. he hopped on a plane to go to sydney for the olympics and gets thrown out. a few month passes and ebay acquires paypal for 1.5 billion. he decides to do this grand gesture for mankind. he decides he is going to send at 1st mice to mars

and then a plan that will supply the 1st oxygen. >> was that successful? >> he never quite gets there. you have to get intercontinental ballistic missiles. russia is the only place you can buy these. the russians treat him as a .com billionaire they can take advantage of. he goes back and decides what i have to do is build my own market, the idea that they will be the southwest for space. much cheaper and faster

empathy aerospace industry on its head. >> what has the company accomplished? >> it has been on a remarkable run. it had a rocky beginning. he thought it would take a couple years.a couple years. it ended up taking six or seven. it is a commercial satellite company that takes satellites up for countries and other companies and have become the low-cost provider in the market charging 30 to 60 million per flight. they got on a good run of one launch per month very

consistently and unfortunately had there 1st rocket blowup. >> is it profitable? >> he says it is, but it is private. it has about a billion in orders over the next five years. they are the only american company right now that has american engines. they employ thousands of people. it is a fascinating story. >> where is it based? where is the manufacturing facility?

>> in california a few miles from lax. they make everything. mcgregor texas in our building spaceport. >> what is his relationship with silicon valley? >> he is a unique character. tesla motors is based in silicon valley. he splits his time every week going back and forth between the two, and then he is one of those people who

keep to themselves, very much married to silicon valley and the tech lifestyle. supposed to be this tony stark type figure. he is more of a celebrity ceo. >> who is tallulah riley? >> his 2nd wife. this gets a little complicated. she is a british actress. i understand they are back together again.again. his 1st wife he had five boys with. he met her around 2,008.

his companies were going through tough financial times. >> 's relationship currently with justine? >> they share custody of the kids and it is strained. >> you describe your book as before new line and after elon. >> i did a cover story and had gone to him and asked him. he told me he would not participate. he would do his own book were not cooperate. enough people were pursuing the book anyway and over time they go back and ask if

he will talk. one day i get a phone call from him at home. i'm either going to participate or make life miserable, and we hashed out terms over dinner where he would participate and did not get to read the book. you know, ultimately i said i could not live with that and he agreed to do interviews. >> how many sessions did you have? >> once a month for eight months anywhere from one to three or four hours at a time and i grant access to executives at his companies.

we would walk around the factory, design studio, go to aa movie premiere with him and see how he operates. >> what is his reputation command what did you take away from the factory visits? >> well, it is complicated. in silicon valley silicon valley he is seen as the next eve jobs. and time pressure.

a bear inspired by these very harder than them. he has been known to really go it people during meetings and to be pretty relentless to get them to solve problems and on the whole my takeaways he is the most, definitely the most intense i've ever met. >> host: as we are taping this in middle of 2015 how old is he? >> guest: he just turned 44 and unfortunately his birthday present was one of those rockets blowing up. >> host: did you leave this project as a fan of elon musk? >> guest: that's another complicated question. i went in, when i first started i thought he was a one none sort of guy like a techno-utopian type figure and i came away discovering he is a much more complex man. i think you could easily argue he has lived one of the most

interesting lives of anybody going and he is very complex man. i think i came away, i came away thinking that i'm a fan of the company absolutely. i think tesla is changing the automotive industry. i think spacex is changing the aerospace industry and solar panel installation companies doing very well so i'm blown away with the deck allergy. i think elon is a work in progress and i think there's a lot to love about him and there's a lot of stuff that's very hard and so but i still, to me he is a guy who in silicon valley talks a lot about disruption and i'm kind of cynical about it. i don't see companies that are really pushing that hard on the status quo but i think elon is into that degree i'm absolutely a fan of what he is doing. >> host: you mention tesla.

how did the tesla factory and up in fremont california? >> guest: that's an interesting story as well. tesla was a proper car manufacturing facility for gm and toyota. they had a partnership that dated back in the years. he was supposed to be the best of both worlds. you had japanese manufacturing and expertise along with american ingenuity and know how and they were going to combine forces and then during 2008 when the recession hit it was an asset that have to go but tesla was looking for factory and so they really got it on the cheap. it would normally be worth billions of dollars and they got it for $50 million including basically an investment from toyota in the company. >> host: and, how many are employed? tell us about the factory today? >> guest: yet absolutely. it they used to pump out hundreds of thousands of cars so

it's not at its capacity right now. tesla pumps out 50 to 60,000 cars a year. they have this model sedan which is a luxury sedan because on the order of $100,000 for most people. they are about to come out with a second car which is a model x which is an suv. they employ thousands of people. they are on the order of around 10,000 i think in the numbers getting even higher. there opening this enormous battery factor in nevada which is also scheduled to employ thousands of people in the coming years. >> host: ashlee vance you write for mosque going public represented something of a faustian bargain. what does that mean? >> guest: elan in the case of spacex he has taken this long long-term view and tesla is the thing. he had to convince people of electric cars and develop things like the network of charging

stations across the world. he had to build a battery factor and ask a lot of investors in the company to continuously buy into the idea that he's going to gamble billions of dollars again and again and again so he needed to raise money at that point in time for the company to build its factories so he had to go public. and then that put him under immense pressure and scrutiny that elon doesn't like. he prefers to operate with a little bit of secrecy around him but essentially the company had no choice. that was coming out of 2008 and a the company really needed money at that point. >> host: hyperloop, what is it? >> guest: we don't know for sure yet. a lawn announced at a couple of years ago. it's a monorail type thing. it would be to raise the platform at these pods to travel on a bed of air and his version

is the pods would go 800 would go a can of miles an hour said he could go from l.a. to san francisco which normally would take five hours by car would take 30 minutes. it's hypothetical and at this point a drawing on paper. elon was upset about the california high-speed rail project. he thinks it's expensive and slow which i guess it is and so he offered this up as an idea as an alternative. he really had been looking to commercialize it himself although two or three companies have since appeared that are essentially hyperloop startups who have taken the ideas he has put out there. they are looking to buy air rights. one is to go between los angeles and las vegas of the ideas you'd be able to do that in 15 minutes he could leave l.a., go to vegas for the night and come back and sleep in your bed. >> host: your book has been in the bestseller list for a while. have you heard any feedback from

mr. musk? >> guest: i did. he didn't get to view the book before it came out but i did let them see it once it was finished a couple of weeks. i didn't want him to have to buy it on amazon and speed read it and it seemed like a fair thing to do. as you might expect a sort of pushed back on a few things or at least giving me his feedback and then a day later he came back and he told me, he told me was well done and he told me was very accurate. he gave me a 95% accuracy rating and then so we sort of left it at that and went on with business as usual. >> host: now you compare him to steve jobs, bill gates and a couple of other silicon valley high-tech guys. give us a sense of what you say in the book. >> guest: yeah well you know in silicon valley today he is

seen as the next steve jobs figure. i actually, i think of them like that for sure. he has attention to detail and he pushes as workers really hard. i tend to lean more as sort of this as us an idea although i think elon has a lot to prove. what i've taken away as he is a guy who gets these thousands of engineers and tesla the brightest of the bright and is very hard-working individuals and really is able to get a product out of them that can be commercialized that it really changed industry. if you look at, to me he is the guy who has combined software and hardware this idea of atoms and bits in a way that nobody else has. he is has kind of change the car forever as a computer on wheels and all the other automakers are scrambling to watch his software. he has taken consumer electronics and software and change the economics of space travel.

i see them as an industrialist more on the order of an edison. i think certainly he has to get something like the mainstream car or reasonable rocket to be and not ultimate pantheon. >> host: something else that ashlee vance has proposed as the launching of the satellite to low altitude to increase internet speed. >> guest: his idea of like a space internet is what i call it. you would surround the earth for thousands of satellites in the lower earth orbit. most of the committees and satellites are much higher up than ever pretty latency of sending data back and forth that is not good enough for internet service so it's only recently we have gotten to the point where we can make these kinds of satellites and people of come up with ideas on how you could arrange them. he would send out thousands of satellites and i would assume a couple of different functions. one is there about 3 billion people on the planet who probably will never be served by

fiber-optic cables. it's either too expensive or too hard to get it to them so for the first time they would have fiber-optic equivalent speed from space and then it would be essentially a backup internet, anything that went wrong with fiber cables on the earth he would have this space internet as a backup and it could be used to deal with huge amounts of traffic between north america and europe. spacex is looking to build a satellite through partnership with google and then there's another company basically their competitor and ahead of spacex so far in this race. >> host: so is that project off the drawing board? is it and planning at this point? >> guest: the competitor, they have got to design for the satellite. they are very close to beginning manufacturing and setting up the satellite. spacex is coming from behind.

elon announced a couple weeks ago the creation of a seattle office for spacex for the satellite in its early days for sure and any then the other huge question behind all of this is that in the goodyear spacex or the european rocket launch company in the goodyear they would do one large amount and to get thousands of the satellites up into orbit we are talking about at least a launch a week or several a month and so this huge question around where this capacity is going to come from especially with spacex hitting a bump in the road lately. >> host: ashlee vance i wonder if elon musk took exception to this paragraph which opens coming each facet of musk for life might be to tempt us to the kind of existential depression that seems to nod at his very fiber. >> guest: i don't think he would necessarily take

exception. it goes back to the thing we were talking about earlier are profoundly gifted he is. he has alluded talk about the survival of the human species. you have to remember the over goal is not to send up satellites but to create a colony on mars. elon's life goal for some people as sounds really weird but he thinks the human species needs a backup plan and he feels his existential thread -- threats will be the human species will be wiped out only are not doing anything about this. i don't think he would take exception with that at all. when we would talk you would break down in tears at the thought of man being wiped out by a virus or something that we haven't even for seen. >> host: mary beth brown, who is she? >> guest: these comparisons are true or you want to indulge

them for little but she would be the invalid -- a equivalent of his loyal assistant. she worked with him for about 13 years dating back to the paypal days and elon's crazy life living in two cities every week at the same time working seven days a week. she did all of that. she essentially gave life to him. she was his personal assistant, his work assistant. she would handle as his decisions and she was the person that people would come to if they wanted to ask elon for a lot of money for project they would look to her first and see if she gave them the nod if elon was in a good mood or bad mood type of thing and during the reporting of ibook about 18 months ago she basically was let go from the company. >> host: why?

>> guest: the story as i have heard from a lot of people and from elon himself is that mary beth basically asked for a raise and she wanted to be compensated on the order of an executive vice president at spacex. she had this very weird role. there was no one job title that would really cover what she did and elon told her to take a couple of weeks off to clear her head and also he wanted to see what life was like without her. when she came back he said he thought he could survive without her and i think she took that very well. >> host: that's a taste of "elon musk", tesla spacex and the quest for a fantastic feature written by ashlee vance. thanks for being on c-span. >> guest: thank you so much for having me.

with congress in its summer recess we been bringing you booktv in prime-time. tonight it's books about military lines. we start with elliott ackerman on his book renowned blue about afghanistan. after that elaine lowry brye just discusses her book, be safe, love mom about military moms.