The Truth About Elon Musk's College Nightclub

In a 2008 piece written for Esquire, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk explained his interest in manned interstellar travel by laying out some of the most likely threats to the human race. "An asteroid," he said, "or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us." These possibilities are mortifying, and difficult to shake from your mind once you start to consider them. The sudden collapse of everything that you know is only a blink away, at any given moment.

And do you know what else would be pretty bad? A Friday without boozy creations like Jello shots. Thankfully, Musk's got us covered on that front, too. Or at least he did, during his crazy college speakeasy days, back when he and his roommate started an unlicensed nightclub in their house while attending University of Pennsylvania.

It's infamously difficult to pay for college, even in the best of circumstances, so Elon Musk and his roommate Adeo Ressi did what any budding Bond villain would do: they opened a secret nightclub in their rented house, according to CNBC. Musk recalled, "I was paying my own way through college and could make an entire month's rent in one night." Ressi stated that the pair "would have as many as 500 people... We would charge five dollars, and it would be pretty much all you could drink— beer and Jello shots and other things."

If the idea of getting crunk with Elon sounds like your deal, bad news. Musk apparently kept it buttoned down, not enjoying the taste of booze. Ressi called him "the most straight-laced dude." Which isn't to say that the future futurist never wrestled with any vice: He was apparently deep into gaming, to the point where Ressi would have to pull him away from the computer screen so he'd come help run the party.