During Senator Max Baucus’ (D-MT) Economic Development Summit in Butte, I had the chance to throw a couple questions toward Elon Musk.
Elon Musk is the founder and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. I asked him how Montana, known as the Big Sky state for a reason, could better capitalize off of the commercial aviation and private sector space flight industry. He started his answer by mentioning one of his major suppliers-SeaCast- a Butte, Montana manufacturer.
When I asked him what more could be done in Montana, he reinforced what is already being done with SeaCast:
“I think Montana is .3% of the US population, something like that. I’m pretty sure that we source more than .3% of the rocket from Montana. So Montana is disproportionately a source of components for our rocket.”
According to the Montana Jobs Summit website, Musk’s credentials include an impressive list of accomplishments including founding PayPal and serving as founder and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors. He has been referred to by Forbes Magazine as one of the most powerful people in the world.Musk is one of the most powerful people in the world, and has been compared to a real life Tony Stark- the character in the film Ironman.
On Monday morning his kids travelled with him to SeaCast, and got to press the button to cast a titanium part used by his company.
Do his kids think of him like Ironman? “I don’t think so. No. They don’t behave that way certainly. They’re quite blase. I think it’s alwways like, anything Dad does is not that cool. Or maybe they do think it’s cool they just don’t tell me, I don’t know.”
Full press conference with Musk can be found by clicking here and listening to Tuesday morning’s Voices of Montana. Click below to hear his remarks mentioned above.
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@ElonMusk in Butte,Montana during #MTjobs press conference pic.twitter.com/SqzsI60nmb
— Aaron Flint (@aaronflint) September 16, 2013