Elon Musk

Elon Musk
Elon Musk, (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born
American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX,
maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant investors in, as
well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla.
Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early
talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and sold it to a
computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because
he was unwilling to support apartheid through compulsory military service and because he sought
the greater economic opportunities available in the United States.
Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to

the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor’s degrees
in physics and economics in 1997. He enrolled in graduate school in physics at Stanford
University in California, but he left after only two days because he felt that the Internet had much
more potential to change society than work in physics. In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that
provided maps and business directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the
computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial
services company, X.com, which later became PayPal, which specialized in transferring money
online. The online auction eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.
Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity has to become a multiplanet
species. However, he was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he
founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to make more affordable rockets. Its first two
rockets were the Falcon 1 (first launched in 2006) and the larger Falcon 9 (first launched in 2010),
which were designed to cost much less than competing rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon
Heavy (first launched in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly
twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company’s Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the
cost. SpaceX has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy–
Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000
pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing
fast transportation between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars. SpaceX also
developed the Dragon spacecraft, which carries supplies to the International Space Station (ISS).
Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug
Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to reduce the expense of spaceflight
by developing a fully reusable rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it launched from.
Beginning in 2012, SpaceX’s Grasshopper rocket made several short flights to test such
technology. In addition to being CEO of SpaceX, Musk was also chief designer in building the
Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper.
Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he became
one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric car company founded
by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. In 2006 Tesla introduced its first car,
the Roadster, which could travel 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge. Unlike most previous
electric vehicles, which Musk thought were stodgy and uninteresting, it was a sports car that could
go from 0 to 60 miles (97 km) per hour in less than four seconds. In 2010 the company’s initial
public offering raised about $226 million.
Two years later Tesla introduced the Model S sedan, which was acclaimed by automotive
critics for its performance and design. The company won further praise for its Model X luxury
SUV, which went on the market in 2015. The Model 3, a less-expensive vehicle, went into
production in 2017.
Musk expressed reservations about Tesla being publicly traded, and in August 2018 he
made a series of tweets about taking the company private, noting that he had “secured funding.”
The following month the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk for
securities fraud, alleging that the tweets were “false and misleading.” Shortly thereafter Tesla’s
board rejected the SEC’s proposed settlement, reportedly because Musk had threatened to resign.
However, the news sent Tesla stock plummeting, and a harsher deal was ultimately accepted. Its
terms included Musk stepping down as chairman for three years, though he was allowed to
continue as CEO.
Dissatisfied with the projected cost ($68 billion) of a high-speed rail system in California,
Musk in 2013 proposed an alternate faster system, the Hyperloop, a pneumatic tube in which a pod
carrying 28 passengers would travel the 350 miles (560 km) between Los Angeles and San
Francisco in 35 minutes at a top speed of 760 miles (1,220 km) per hour, nearly the speed of sound.
Musk claimed that the Hyperloop would cost only $6 billion and that, with the pods
departing every two minutes on average, the system could accommodate the six million people
who travel that route every year. However, he stated that, between running SpaceX and Tesla, he
could not devote time to the Hyperloop’s development.
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Reference: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elon-Musk

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Elon Musk

Musk attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to

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