Elon Musk is in Italy, in Florence, about a month before his participation in the Italian Tech Week which will take place in Turin on 23 and 24 September next, with a small audience in attendance.
His is an unannounced journey. On Twitter, where the US entrepreneur writes daily, even several times, his feed stopped on August 7: the last tweet is a photo of the imposing Starship rocket being assembled.
In short, there was no mention of Florence, but it was of no use. His fans, undeterred followers of his life and his companies, followers of a man who is perceived as the absolute guru of innovation, they know in advance every move. Or rather, they know when he leaves and where his is headed personal jet. There may not be Musk on board, but the route is still an important clue.
And so on 7 August last Elon Musk’s Jet, the profile created on Twitter to document the movements of the entrepreneur’s private plane, announced the take-off from Los Angeles of the aircraft registered under number N628TS. A few minutes later the route was already known: destination Italy, Florence.
In the past it would have been impossible for an ordinary citizen to track the movement of Musk or any other aircraft. Then they arrived sites like Flight Aware (in 2005) and Flight Radar (in 2006) that turned air traffic into a fascinating animation. You can see the small planes in motion already on the runways, you can monitor what happens in a particular airport or follow a specific flight as in the case of Musk.
The official confirmation that the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, together with his wife Grimes, had really landed in Florence, came from short videos that have begun to circulate on social networks. Then the overwhelming evidence: a clip shared by the mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, in which Musk improvises himself as a testimonial and says in Italian “Visit Florence”.
But what is the entrepreneur doing in Tuscany? Musk, along with Grimes and the children of his first wife, Justine Wilson, has certainly visited the Uffizi. A pleasure trip, therefore. But less than 30 minutes drive from Florence, in Campi Bisenzio, there is the headquarters of the Leonardo Group, an Italian company that produces technologies at the service of the most important space programs: from the International Space Station a ExoMars, which will bring an ESA and Roscosmos (Russian Space Agency) rover to Mars.
Own Mars has always been at the center of Musk’s thoughts, who on the red planet sees the future of man. A future that the entrepreneur is working on with his company SpaceX, whose rockets will be used precisely to transport humans and materials into space.
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