Both Musk and Stark were the type of men, according to Downey, who “had seized an idea to live by and something to dedicate themselves to” and were not going to waste a moment.

What Downey picked up on instead were Musk’s “accessible eccentricities” and the feeling that he was an unpretentious sort who could work alongside the people in the factory. Downey appreciated that Musk was not a foul-smelling, fidgety, coder whack job. The men walked, sat in Musk’s office, and had lunch. “Things didn’t feel out of place,” he said.īeyond the surroundings, Downey really wanted a peek inside Musk’s psyche. After the initial tour, Downey came away pleased that the sets being hammered out at the Hughes factory did have parallels to the SpaceX factory. “It felt like a radical start-up company,” Downey said. Young white-collar engineers interacted with blue-collar assembly line workers, and they all seemed to share a genuine excitement for what they were doing. Enthusiastic employees were zipping about, fiddling with an assortment of machines. To Downey, the SpaceX facility looked like a giant, exotic hardware store. “My mind is not easily blown, but this place and this guy were amazing,” Downey said. He set off in March 2007 for SpaceX’s headquarters in El Segundo and wound up receiving a personal tour from Musk. Instead of visualizing how life might have been for Hughes, Downey could perhaps get a taste of the real thing. Not too long ago, that building had played host to the big ideas of a big man who shook up industries and did things his own way.ĭowney heard some rumblings about a Hughes-like figure named Elon Musk who had constructed his own, modern-day industrial complex about ten miles away. Downey felt nostalgic looking at one of the larger hangars, which had fallen into a state of disrepair. It also supplied Robert Downey Jr., who was to play Iron Man and his human creator Tony Stark, with a splash of inspiration. The facility had a series of interlocking hangars and served as a production office for the movie. And here's a taste of that. This is the start of Chapter 8 - Pain, Suffering and Survival:ĪS HE PREPARED TO BEGIN FILMING IRON MAN IN EARLY 2007, the director Jon Favreau rented out a complex in Los Angeles that once belonged to Hughes Aircraft, the aerospace and defense contractor started about eighty years earlier by Howard Hughes. During our interview, he provided the most detailed account ever of how Elon came to inform and inspire the way Downey Jr.

was one celebrity who provided some deep insight for me into the grandeur of Elon's world. Many people helped make this possible along the way, including Elon, his family and a handful of the celebrities in his circle. I always meant this to be a gripping tale first and foremost and a tome about business in the background. It's been so gratifying to receive e-mails and other messages from people who devoured the book in one sitting.

Vance ashlee