SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
As CEO of space transport company SpaceX, Elon Musk must count aerospace giant Boeing among his biggest competitors. But that hasn't stopped the billionaire entrepreneur from reaching out a hand to his rival in a time of need.
Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner fleet has been grounded worldwide since January 17, when electrical problems caused an All Nippon Airways flight to make an emergency landing; investigators believe that the root of the problem might be the Dreamliner's high-tech lithium ion batteries.
As CEO of and product architect of Tesla Motors, a high-end electric sportscar manufacturer, Musk knows all about batteries. So on January 18 he tweeted that Boeing's problems may be "already under control, but Tesla & SpaceX are happy to help with the 787 lithium ion batteries." On January 26, Musk followed up with another tweet saying his "desire to help Boeing is real" and that he was cooresponding with the 787's chief engineer.
Musk also used Twitter to slam a November 2012 Esquire profile that quoted him mocking Boeing's chances of beating out SpaceX for a lucrative NASA crew transport contract, saying the story "had high fiction content."
So why the sudden kindness towards a major corporate rival? Because both Tesla and SpaceX rely on lithium ion battery packs in their vehicles. It's in Musk's interest to help establish the safety and reliability of these systems before customers and investors start to look askew at his own businesses.
"We fly high capacity lithium ion battery packs in our rockets and spacecraft, which are subject to much higher loads than commercial aircraft and have to function all the way from sea level air pressure to vacuum," Musk told the Reuters news service in an email. "We have never had a fire in any production battery pack at either Tesla or SpaceX."
SpaceX and Boeing aren't the only companies with an interest in quickly figuring out what's wrong with the Dreamliners' batteries: United Airlines already owns six of the affected jets and has 44 on order; American Airlines is waiting for 42 and Delta Air Lines for 18. And competing aircraft manufacturer Airbus uses similar lithium ion batteries on their A380 superjumbo jet.
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