Canadian-American inventor, engineer, entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk is not only the real image of Tony Stark from the film “Iron Man”. This brilliant inventor and leader managed to bring a fantastic future closer and speed up the path to it.
Brief biography of Elon Musk
Elon Musk (full name: Elon (Elon) Reeves Musk) was born June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa. His father - Errol Musk, African engineer and entrepreneur. His mother - May Haldman, a popular Canadian nutritionist.
Young programmer
At the age of ten, Elon received his first computer as a gift and learned to program on it. At the age of 12 he sold his first program for $500, a video game called Blast Star, in which the player fired at rows of aliens with a laser cannon.
Moving to Canada
After graduating from school in South Africa, Elon Musk decides to go to Canada, contrary to the opinion of his parents. At first he had money for an independent life - he was already at that time successfully invested in pharmaceuticals.
Elon settled in Canada with his mother's relatives in 1989. Having received Canadian citizenship, Elon Musk goes to Montreal, where at first he agrees to any job and teeters on the brink of poverty for almost a year.
Moving to the USA
In 1992 Elon Reeves Musk is finally realizing his dream and moving to the United States, having received a scholarship to study at the University of Pennsylvania. The following year he received his bachelor's degree in business, but decided to stay at the university for another year to obtain a bachelor's degree in physics.
Main question
Every person in life has a number of questions about his purpose and the future of all humanity. Elon Musk asked the same question. And in the end I decided that The future of humanity will be affected by:
…internet, transition to renewable energy sources
and the relocation of people to other planets...
He decided to try to contribute in each of these directions. But first he needed money.
Zip2 success
In 1995, Musk and his brother founded the company Zip2, which specialized in software for news companies. In 1999, Zip2 was acquired Compaq for 308 million dollars. Elon received 7% of the sale amount – $22 million.
At the time of the company’s creation, the global web was developing rapidly, but no one had yet managed to truly make money on the Internet.Zip2 was one of the very first to do this.
X.com and PayPal
After selling his first company, Elon Musk decides to master electronic payments and creates his own startup X.com. In March 2000, X.com merged on a parity basis with a competitor company Confinity Peter Thiel and Max Levchin.
This merger subsequently leads to the emergence of the now famous payment system - PayPal. In 2002, a popular service bought the online auction eBay for $1.5 billion. Elon received $180 million from this deal.
Investments and management in Tesla Motors
In 2004, Elon, with cash from selling PayPal, invested $70 million in the project TeslaMotors. This company attracted his attention because it was developing electric cars. Alternative energy sources - this was in the spirit of Musk's principles.
The main driver of Tesla's financial success was its luxury sedan Model S with a battery charge of 426 km, a bright design and unique speed characteristics (acceleration to 96 km/h in 3.9 s). The model was put into mass production at a price of $69,900 and was highly rated by Consumer Reports.
Founding of SpaceX
At the turn of the millennium, an ambitious entrepreneur and inventor thought about creating a flying ship that could reusable for traveling people into space and to other planets.
The moment Elon Musk's financial fortune increased, he decided to start making this dream come true. His brainchild in this area was the company SpaceX(full name: Space Exploration Technologies Company). The company was founded in 2002.
He invested more than $100 million in the project. The cost of proposals on the market - from $15 million for a rocket in Russia to $65 million in the USA - was considered by the entrepreneur to be many times too high. That is why he decided to build his own spacecraft.
SpaceX's first successes
Despite all the difficulties and setbacks, SpaceX managed to create two types of potentially reusable launch vehicles: Falcon 1 And Falcon 9, as well as a reusable spacecraft Dragon.
Contract with NASA
In December 2008 NASA signed a contract with the company in the amount of 1.6 billion US dollars for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 carrier and the Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, as a replacement for the ships Space Shuttle after the termination of their launch program in 2011.
Expedition to Mars
For Elon Musk, all the current achievements of SpaceX are just preparation for the realization of his main dream - expeditions to Mars. Until the end of his life, the billionaire wants to become a pioneer colonizer of the “red” planet. To this end, SpaceX is developing a project Mars Colonial Transporter(MCP).
Musk's engineers are working on innovative rocket engines and spacecraft to take people from Earth to Mars. The ambitious entrepreneur announced that he would carry out his expedition in 2020-25.
Based on the Falcon, it is planned to create the Grasshoper rocket, which can land vertically, and the second generation Dragon is technically already capable of getting to Mars, Musk assures.
Using the example of Elon Musk, we can trace the path of a person making childhood dreams come true, because many people in childhood wanted to fly into space, and soon this will be possible.
Business has come to astronautics, and many will benefit from this, because space tourism will soon become a reality, including thanks to Elon Musk.
Canadian-American inventor who founded the electronic payment company PayPal and the private space company SpaceX, creator of launch vehicles and spacecraft.
Since childhood he thought in a special way
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria. The developed scientific city in which Musk was born is the administrative capital of South Africa.
Elon's father, Errol Max, was a civil engineer by profession. Mother, May Musk, appeared on the catwalks and was a professional model from the age of 15, and later became an expert in the field of nutrition. Elon's parents lived in the same area of Pretoria and had known each other since childhood. As soon as the lovers turned 18, they got married. 9 months after the wedding, they had their first child.
The future inventor became the first and eldest child in the family. Elon has a brother, Kimbal, and a sister, Tosca.
According to his father, Elon has always been an introvert and loved reading. While most children prefer to have fun and play games, Elon spent all his time in the library. Due to the fact that his behavior was different from his peers, they made fun of him and mocked him in every possible way. So, after another squabble with the boys, he was taken to the hospital unconscious, and the doctors had to repair his broken nose.
Once, at the age of 3-4 years, he asked: “Where does the whole world begin and end?” Questions like these made me understand that he thinks in a special way,” Ilon’s father shared his memories in one interview.
When Elon was 9 years old, his parents divorced. First, the mother took the children and left with them to another city in the country. However, Elon and his brother Kimbal after some time moved to their father, in the suburbs of Pretoria.
First entrepreneurial experience
At the age of 9, the boy received his first computer as a gift. It was from this time that he began to be interested in programming. Musk learned the BASIC programming language, completing a six-month course in less than a week.
The results of his childhood hobby bore fruit: at the age of 12, Musk sold his first game called “Blastar” for $500. As planned, the player fired at rows of aliens with a laser cannon.
Musk himself later said about his first development: “a trivial game... but certainly better than Flappy Bird” (we are talking about a popular and simple mobile game released in 2013).
Formation of worldview
The goal of Musk's current developments is to preserve the consciousness of humanity in the Universe, even if the Earth dies. Musk himself has proclaimed himself a pioneer of deep space. These kinds of thoughts began to form in Elon as a teenager.
Then he delved into the literature of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and other philosophers in search of the meaning of life. At the same time, Douglas Adams’s book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” came into his hands, which talks about aliens destroying the Earth to build a hyperspace highway. Turning the last page, Musk realized: “Only one thing makes sense - the fight for universal enlightenment.”
His ex-wife Justine Musk told Esquire magazine: “Elon is not afraid to take risks. If necessary, he is ready to sacrifice himself."
Moving to Canada and doing odd jobs
After graduating from school, Musk entered the university in his hometown without any problems. However, due to political instability, it was decided to move to his mother’s homeland - Canada. According to other sources, the move allowed Musk to avoid being drafted into the army.
May helped her son obtain Canadian citizenship and solve the housing problem.
In Canada, Elon enrolled in a bachelor's degree at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. During his student years, the current businessman had a hard time. The inventor's biography says that he managed to live on $1 a day. In Canada, he worked on a farm, as a lumberjack and as a boiler room cleaner at a sawmill station.
At this time, he and his brother tried in every possible way to make useful contacts. In various ways, young people looked for the phone numbers of successful entrepreneurs and invited them to lunch. One of those who did not ignore the brothers’ proposal was Peter Nicholson, head of the Bank of Nova Scotia. He was impressed by the tenacity of the young people and invited Elon to work at the bank.
Moving to the USA
In 1992, Elon fulfilled his dream by moving from Canada to the USA. There he entered the University of Pennsylvania and simultaneously majored in physics and economics.
During his studies in the USA, Elon Musk lived in a student dormitory, which he rented together with his classmate Adeo Ressi. The young people turned the hostel into a nightclub, which, it should be noted, was popular. However, Musk himself did not take part in the parties and simply went to his room to play video games.
In May 1997, Elon received a bachelor's degree in physics and a bachelor of science in economics.
After graduating from university, the 23-year-old decided to continue his studies and get a PhD at Stanford University. After studying for some time, Elon abandoned the idea in order to develop his entrepreneurial aspirations in the field of the Internet and outer space.
In 2002, Musk became a United States citizen.
First major projectZip2
Elon and his brother Kimbal founded the first company called Zip2 in 1996. The brothers received money in the amount of 28 thousand dollars for the development of the startup from their father.
The organization was engaged in the production of software that gives news publications the opportunity to post content on the Internet and offer their clients additional paid services. Elon spent all his time in the office in order to save money on rent, and invested all his available funds in the company.
At that time, the Internet was experiencing a boom period, and on this wave the brothers managed to attract investors. The company developed successfully and two years after its creation was sold for $307 million. Elon owned 7% of the company, and he earned about $22 million from its sale. Elon invested half of his fee into the creation of his next project.
Revolution in bank payments
In March 1999, Musk founded X.com. A year after its creation, the company merged with Confinity (both systems specialized in electronic payments) and received the name PayPal. The company grew rapidly and in 2002 its shares were listed on the stock exchange. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by online auction site eBay for $1.5 billion. Musk managed to earn $175 million from this deal (11.7% of the company’s shares). The available funds allowed Musk to bring to life the ideas that originated with him as a teenager.
In July 2017, Musk bought X.com from PayPal due to the company's "sentimental value" to him. The cost of the deal was not disclosed.
The idea of sending rodents to Mars
In 2002, Elon Musk founded the first private company to fly into space. The young businessman invested $100 million in its development. Few believed that a private company could compete with the world's large government space agencies. The idea for SpaceX was born from Musk's childhood dream of sending rodents or plants to Mars. At the initial stages, Elon even tried to purchase decommissioned Soviet Dnepr missiles for these purposes. But the seller allowed the purchase of only one and asked for $8 million, which Elon thought was too high a price. Then he seriously thought about creating his own version of the rocket. According to Elon’s idea, the cost of human space flight should have been reduced by 10 times.
The first vehicles of Elon's private company were the Falcon 1, named after the Millennium Falcon spacecraft from the Star Wars movie, and the SpaceX Dragon ship, named after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon."
In 2006, SpaceX won a NASA competition and in 2008 a $1.6 billion contract was signed for 12 launches of the Falcon 9 carrier and Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, as a replacement for the Space Shuttle after the termination of their launch program in 2011.
SpaceX's long-term goal is to colonize Mars. In January 2016, at an investment forum in Hong Kong, the inventor announced that his company hopes to fly to Mars in the next 3-5 years.
In September 2017, Elon Musk posted a video on his Instagram about a new idea for using SpaceX rockets. It consists in using rockets and spaceships to fly to anywhere on earth instead of airplanes.
New generation cars
In July 2003, Elon invested in the newly created Tesla company, which specialized in creating electric cars. From the very beginning, Elon Musk took part in the formation of the company's long-term development strategy, actively participated in the design of the car and joined the board of directors.
Over the entire period of the company's existence, the developers have managed to achieve colossal results: they have created cars that are capable of moving exclusively with the help of electricity. The minimum distance that an electric car can cover is 300 km. The creators of Tesla are developing parts for other electric car manufacturers. A whole network of “electric” filling stations has been created.
Despite the fact that Tesla has faced both major financial problems and technical operational problems, Musk does not plan to stop there and has already spoken about his intentions to add a truck and a bus to the line of electric vehicles.
Solar power plant for everyone
In 2006, Musk founded the company SolarCity, which specializes in the production of solar energy. The company is a subsidiary of Tesla. Both organizations are aimed at combating global warming.
By 2013, SolarCity had become the second largest supplier of solar energy systems in the United States. SolarCity supplies solar power plants for both industrial and home use. By the beginning of 2018, SolarCity's capitalization was estimated at $3 billion.
Personal life of Elon Musk
The Canadian-American inventor was married twice.
He met his first wife, Justine Wilson, while studying in Canada. The couple got married some time after graduating from university. In 2002, the couple had a son who died of sudden infant death at 10 weeks. In 2004, the couple attempted to have children using IVF. As a result of this, twins Griffin and Damian were born. In 2006, triplets were born to the couple in the same way. Over time, the relationship between Justine and Elon began to deteriorate, and the couple filed for divorce in 2008. At the moment, the former spouses maintain a relationship and raise children together.
The businessman married the English actress Talulah Riley for the second time, with whom he began dating immediately after the divorce. The relationship between the spouses did not work out: they separated several times and then got back together. Finally, in 2016, the couple decided to separate completely.
After this, the businessman was in a relationship with actress Amber Heard, who had just gone through divorce proceedings, for almost a year. In August 2017, they separated.
Today, Elon Musk's fortune is estimated at more than $20 billion. Musk ranked 12th among tech businessmen with $20.7 billion, ahead of such businessmen as Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen ($20.5 billion) and Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt ($12.4 billion).
Take a look at the main episodes of Elon Musk's biography:
Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa.
“Elon has always been an introvert. Where most people would go to a great party, Elon would rather spend time in the library reading. For him they were entertainment. Once, at the age of 3-4 years, he asked a question: “Where does the whole world begin and end?". Questions like these made me understand that he thinks in a special way,” — Elon’s father Errol Musk shared his memories in an interview.
Elon's mother, Maye Musk, is a Canadian-born professional model whose face has appeared on cereal packages. Special K and magazine cover Time.
In 1979, parents Errol and Maye Musk divorced. 9-year-old Elon and his younger brother Kimbal decided to stay with their father.
In 1983, at the age of 12, Elon sold his first written game to a computer magazine called Blastar for 500 dollars. Musk himself considered that game trivial.
The young researcher's school years were not the best. In the book by Ashley Vance "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and a quest into a fantastic future" tells the story of how Musk was hospitalized when a group of bullies at school pulled him down the stairs and beat him unconscious.
After graduation, Elon, along with his mother Maye, sister Tosca and brother Kimbal, moved to. He spent the next 2 years studying at Queens University in the city of Kingston in the Canadian province of Ontario.
However, Elon began to continue his studies at, where he received degrees in physics and economics.
While studying in Pennsylvania, Elon and his university friend Adeo Ressi rented a 10-room house, which they sometimes turned into a real nightclub. This was an early entrepreneurial experiment for both students.
After graduating from the university, Elon decided to continue his studies to obtain an academic degree. PhD(PhD) in , but ultimately gave up this idea and decided to test his luck in the beginning Internet fever. Elon Musk will never remember studying at Stanford again.
Elon and his brother Kimbal (pictured below) took $28,000 from their father's budget to start the company Zip2— a web startup that provided city travel guides to such newspapers as New York Times And Chicago Tribune .
According to Musk, while the company Zip2 got back on his feet, he literally lived in the office and showered at the local branch of a youth volunteer organization YMCA . All these efforts will be richly rewarded when the company Compaq will acquire Zip2 behind $ 341 000 000 .
Photo: Noah Berger | REUTERS Elon Musk’s own budget after the deal will be $22 million, half of which in 1999 the young entrepreneur will spend on founding another company in the field of online banking - X.com. A year later the project will merge with a startup Confinity, which by that time had been founded by Peter Thiel. This merger will create a new company, which will be called PayPal.
Elon Musk was appointed to the post of CEO of the newly created company PayPal. But after some time, serious quarrels would arise within the project: Elon insisted on switching the company’s servers from a free operating system Unix on the product, which the chief technical director did not agree with PayPal Max Levchin (pictured).
Photo: Getty | Drew Anger In 2000, Musk took his first vacation in a long time. While Elon was there, the board of directors PayPal decided to fire him and made Peter Thiel the new CEO.
“That’s the problem with holidays.”, - Elon will joke later in one of his interviews.
However, Musk will remain one of the largest shareholders PayPal, which would bring him $165 million of the $1.5 billion he would pay for it in 2002 PayPal company eBay.
Even before the sale PayPal A sci-fi buff, Musk has already toyed with the idea of sending mice or plants to Mars. He even tried to acquire decommissioned Soviet missiles for these purposes. But a Russian seller wanted more than $8 million for the rocket, prompting Musk to consider building his own cheaper version.
In 2002, Elon Musk founded a company known as Space Exploration Technologies or simply SpaceX. Musk's goal will be to develop processes that will help make space flights more accessible.
Photo: Mario Anzuoni | Reuters The first devices SpaceX will become Falcon 1, named after the spaceship Millennium Falcon from the movie "Star Wars"..
..and the ship SpaceX Dragon, named after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon". With this name, Elon Musk wanted to answer all the skeptics who claimed that SpaceX will never be able to launch a spacecraft.
In the long term the goal SpaceX is the colonization of Mars. In an interview, Musk noted that he would not withdraw shares SpaceX for an IPO (initial public offering) until the Colonial Transporter to Mars makes regular flights.
At the same time, Elon Musk still has quite a few tasks on Earth. In 2004, he made his first investment of $70 million in Tesla Motors- a production company that he co-founded with one of the most experienced executive managers, Martin Eberhard.
Elon Musk took an active role in working on the company's products and also took over as chairman. He also helped develop the first electric car - Tesla Roadster, the release of the first version of which began in 2006.
Photo: Scott Olson | Getty Images Since this was not enough, in 2006 Musk implemented the idea SolarCity- a production company whose products were supposed to help in the fight against. To develop the company, Elon Musk recruited his cousins Peter and Lyndon Rive.
Getting back to business Tesla, everything did not go quite as Elon himself expected. Under the leadership of Eberhard Tesla burned more financial resources than it was able to bring in. In 2007, at Musk’s initiative, Eberhard was removed from further work at one of the board meetings.
In 2008, with the advent of the global financial crisis, Musk had to invest $40 million in Tesla and borrow another $40 million to avoid bankruptcy of the company. In the same year, Musk became CEO Tesla, which, of course, is not accidental.
That year the company SpaceX, Tesla And SolarCity completely ruined Musk. He describes 2008 as the worst year of his life, as Tesla still continued to lose money, and SpaceX encountered problems launching the rocket Falcon 1. By 2009, Elon was surviving only on personal loans.
Photo: Bobby Yip | REUTERS Around the same time, Elon Musk was going through a divorce from his first wife Justine Musk, a Canadian writer who gave him 6 sons.
2008 brings two good news to Elon: SpaceX receives a $1.5 billion contract with NASA for space flights, and for business Tesla finally there are external investors.
By 2010, the situation was changing seriously again: in June of that year Tesla valued at $226 million at IPO, becoming the first to go public since Ford in 1956. At this point, Elon sells $15 million worth of company shares in order to return his financial condition to normal.
Photo: Brendan McDermid | REUTERS Elon Musk's extraordinary career has become visible in other circles as well. Tony Stark's image from "Iron Man" was partially based on the real life of Elon. Moreover, in the second part of the film, Musk himself appears in the frame.
All this time, Elon’s personal life was filled with a series of different events. In 2008, he began dating actress Talulah Riley. They will get married in 2010 and divorce in 2012. By July 2013, they will get married again, but in December 2014, Elon Musk will file for divorce again, although he will take the documents back later. Riley will file for divorce in March 2016.
Photo: Pascal Le Segretain | Getty Images Things will go well with work during that period. By the end of 2015 SpaceX will make 24 successful launches to the International Space Station, doing a lot of research in the process. Some time later Falcon 9 will make the first successful landing of a reusable orbital rocket on a water platform.
Ideas still never stop coming to Elon Musk. Despite the movement towards the development of solar energy, electric vehicles and the colonization of Mars, Musk began developing a new project called Hyperloop— a transport system capable of moving passengers over significant distances at speeds of more than 1000 km/h.
Elon Musk is convinced that in the near future humanity may face the threat of losing control over artificial intelligence, and therefore at the end of 2015 the entrepreneur presented another - OpenAI , the purpose of which will be development monitoring.
Photo: jurvetson | Flickr At the beginning of 2016, it became known about another incredible project of Elon Musk - for the production of lithium-ion batteries, the area of which will be more than 300,000 square meters. The Gigafactory is expected to be able to produce more batteries than all similar factories around the world combined. The launch of the project is scheduled for 2020.
In June 2016, Elon Musk presented his , with the goal of combining its two largest energy projects “under one roof.” The $2.6 billion deal was later confirmed in August.
In December 2016, Elon Musk founded another business - THE BORING COMPANY— a drilling and construction company whose tasks will be the creation of underground infrastructure in busy cities, thanks to which residents and motorists will be able to avoid traffic jams, as well as assistance in the development of high-speed train projects Hyperloop.
The path from a victim of bullying at school to the CEO of two companies that bring science fiction to life.
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Musk became the CEO of the new company. However, this did not last long: in October, he advocated switching the company's servers from the free Unix operating system to Microsoft Windows, faced with a lack of understanding from the other co-founders. His main opponent in this matter was technical director Max Levchin.
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At the end of 2000, Musk took a vacation. While flying to Australia, PayPal's board of directors fired him and appointed Thiel as the new CEO. Years later, in an interview with Fortune magazine, Musk said, “That’s the problem with vacations.”
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But things didn't turn out so bad - Musk remained PayPal's largest shareholder, earning him $165 million of the $1.5 billion eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) paid for PayPal in late 2002.
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But even before the PayPal sale, Musk was busy with something else: an avid fan of science fiction, he hatched a crazy plan to send mice or plants to Mars. To achieve this, Musk even tried to buy decommissioned Soviet missiles. But Russian sellers asked for $8 million each, and Musk decided it would be cheaper to create his own.
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So, in early 2002, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, was founded. Musk's goal is to reduce the cost of space flights by 10 times.
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SpaceX's first vehicles were the Falcon 1 and 9 rockets, named after the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars...
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...And the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, named after the song "Puff the Magic Dragon." Musk chose this name to once again poke fun at skeptics who believe that SpaceX will never be able to send devices into space.
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Meanwhile, Musk took up the fate of the Earth. In 2004, he made his first investment in Tesla Motors, an electric vehicle company founded by venture industry veteran Martin Eberhard. Musk's total investment in Tesla will eventually exceed $70 million.
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Musk was actively involved in the development of the final product and was chairman of the company's board of directors. He helped develop the first all-electric car, the Tesla Roadster, which was unveiled to the public in 2006.
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As if all this wasn't enough, in 2006 Musk founded SolarCity, a solar energy company dedicated to combating global warming. He provided working capital to his cousins Peter and Lyndon Reeve to help develop SolarCity.
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However, things were not going very well at Tesla itself. Under Eberhard's leadership, the company was spending far more money than it was making. In 2007, Musk staged a coup on the board of directors and overthrew Eberhard.
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In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, which significantly limited his options, Musk invested $40 million in the company and provided a loan for another $40 million to save Tesla from bankruptcy. It is not surprising that in the same year he became its CEO.
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Torn between SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity, Musk himself became bankrupt. He describes 2008 as "the worst year of my life" - Tesla continued to lose money and SpaceX faced difficulties launching the Falcon 1 rocket. By early 2009, Musk was forced to live off personal loans.
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Around the same time, the founder of SpaceX and SolarCity was going through a divorce from his wife Justine Musk, a Canadian writer with whom he had six sons.
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On the eve of Christmas 2008, Musk receives two pieces of good news: SpaceX has signed a $1.5 billion contract with NASA to deliver cargo into space, and Tesla has finally found outside investors. Suddenly the white stripe replaced the black one.
? - one of the most famous people on the planet. Not a month goes by without him becoming the hero of all the news: he will either announce his intention to colonize Mars, or start digging some kind of tunnel, or break up with Amber Heard. And suspicions creep into the mind of the attentive reader: why does this smiling American guy talk so much and do so little? Where are people on Mars? Why aren’t beautiful Tesla cars driving on Russian roads? Why was this whole capsule story needed to save Thai children? Is Musk really an inventor and engine of progress or just a self-promoter?
Probably, in general terms, the creator of SpaceX can really be called Ostap Bender, who could. But he was able to because he became not only a daring adventurer, but also a really good inventor and manager. No one knows how to develop revolutionary ideas and find money for them like Musk. He founded his first computer company with $30,000 borrowed from his father, and two years later he sold it to a computer giant for $300 million. This allowed the young entrepreneur not only to repay his father, but also to bring to life an idea for which the whole world is grateful to him. So, 1999. Internet users from all over the world actively visit pages offering all kinds of goods: “our own” and foreign, exclusive and publicly available, for fans of simplicity and for lovers of luxury. Nowadays we process orders within a minute, but in 1999 purchases could only be made in the store. Musk decided to correct this by launching the electronic payment system X.com. He was not a pioneer in online banking - before X.com there was the eCash system, which laid down the basic principles of electronic payment systems, but in 1998 it went bankrupt. Her endeavors were taken up by a daring entrepreneur. Without regret, he gave away most of the millions he earned on a pure gamble - well, who among ordinary citizens in 1999 would trust their money to the Internet? Elon Musk and his super-professional team made people believe what initially seemed like a pure scam, and then the problems began. Musk fell out with the main programmers of his project, and X.com lost the trust of customers. The site worked poorly, money disappeared, personal data of users leaked - in general, the project was on the verge of complete collapse. The founder's money and reputation were saved by a merger with a competitor - another student startup, Confinity. X.com employees argued that it was Musk's leadership that led the company to crisis and merger with a competitor. But we should not forget that the idea of an online bank, as well as its implementation, belonged to Elon and without his money there would be no company. Seeing that things were going badly, he put his brainchild in good hands and in 2000 completely stepped aside from management. And the symbiosis of two student startups turned into PayPal - the largest electronic payment system in the world.
Elon Musk managed to get $180 million for PayPal, and then the inventor began to think about the eternal. A supervolcano, a meteorite, a new virus, the Large Hadron Collider - all this and much more could easily destroy humanity - perhaps the only intelligent life form in the Universe. It's time to move to other planets: people dispersed in different places will no longer be so easy to destroy. According to the official version, this is exactly what Musk was thinking about when creating SpaceX, the first private company to build spaceships. To settle on Mars, people will need reusable launch vehicles, which were developed before SpaceX, but never entered production. From 2002 to 2016, Musk's engineers sent several Falcon series rockets into space, and in 2016, the first stage of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle returned to earth. This feat was repeated by the super-heavy launch vehicle Falcon Heavy - it was on it that SpaceX employees sent Tesla on an eternal journey this winter, and it is this rocket that will deliver spaceships to Mars. The first ship of the Mars series, by the way, is also ready - the reusable Dragon cargo vehicle has already made several flights to the ISS, and a model designed to transport people is expected to be released soon. Musk has repeatedly noted that SpaceX is striving to make space flights as cheap as possible, but so far each launch costs about $100 million. Government grants help cope with such expenses.
SpaceX cost Elon Musk about $100 million. Instead of spending the remaining money on luxury goods, he rushed into a new adventure - he joined the board of directors of Tesla, a company specializing in electric sports cars. Large companies produced cars with electric drive back in the 90s, but in the early 2000s all the cars were seized and destroyed, so Tesla actually revived the industry. Musk was not the founder of the company, but his merits are so great that the creators of Tesla consider him the face of the company. He actually invented a new and improved car design and attracted major investors to the project, including himself. In total, the inventor spent about $70 million on Tesla. Other investments also turned out to be very impressive, so production is thriving, despite the unprofitability of the project. From the very beginning, Elon Musk expected Tesla to release a budget series, and finally announced it. The only problem is that Tesla is often accused of shortcomings - the company has repeatedly confiscated all cars sold to fix problems. Twice everything ended in tragedy: cars with installed unmanned control did not detect obstacles on the road and got into fatal accidents. Unmanned control is not a fully developed technology. It will become habitual only after a few years.
Another progressive project is associated with Tesla. Musk's cousins opened a company specializing in solar panels. With the help of an inventive relative, the young engineers managed to turn SolarCity into the largest solar panel manufacturer in California and the second largest in the country. Of course, SolarCity is also engaged in new projects: together with Tesla they are working on gas stations for electric cars, developing batteries that can store energy. And in all these projects, Musk clearly does not have the last role.
The Boring Company
One day Elon Musk got stuck in a traffic jam. Once he got out, he announced on Twitter that he was no longer going to take it. He will make tunnels under Los Angeles so that everyone can bypass traffic jams underground. At first the news was taken as a joke: who among us has not dreamed of tunnels or airways while stuck in endless traffic jams? But Musk is no stranger to doing what others can only dream of. His next company, The Boring Company (“boring” means “drilling” and “boring”), began construction immediately after receiving city permission. Initially, it was assumed that elevators for cars would be installed in the tunnel - they would lower cars underground and transport them at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour (the company posted a video where all this is demonstrated). Now The Boring Company has focused on passenger transportation and even introduced an unmanned carriage that can travel 240 kilometers per hour. Thus, you can get from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 35 minutes. Of course, the indefatigable Musk has already planned a whole network of tunnels and promised that a ticket for his miracle train will cost only one dollar. The entrepreneur really wants to make his futuristic new products available to everyone, but so far he hasn’t quite succeeded.
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