In July 2003, Musk teamed with three of them, Ian Wright, Marc Tarpening and Martin Eberhard to form the Tesla Corporation, in recognition of the father of AC induction motors, Nikola Tesla.
A launcher powered by a linear-induction motor has several advantages over the steam-driven catapults used on existing aircraft carriers, according to General Atomics.
Nor is the idea complete fantasy. General Atomics, an American military contractor, has already built and tested a linear-induction-motor-based system of this sort at an airbase at Lakehurst, New Jersey.
Off the clock however, Tesla continued to advance the AC theory after he was sent to work on a project in Strasbourg, where he built the first induction motor prototype.
That very same year, the Niagara Falls Power Company awarded Westinghouse the contract to generate power from the Niagara Falls with Tesla's AC induction motor.