SpaceX

Elon Musk was born in South Africa in 1971. He quickly became interested in computers and programming and started making games for himself and his brothers and sisters to play. His love of computers continued throughout his life. He got two degrees, one in physics and one in economics, and these degrees in science and business helped shape his whole life.

After university, Musk started a company called zip2 which provided maps for online newspapers and magazines. After he sold this company for $307 million, he started a new company called x.com which later became Paypal. When Paypal was sold for $1.5 billion in 2002, Musk had more than enough money to start some truly innovative companies.

In 2002, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) to make space exploration much cheaper. SpaceX was highly successful and Musk managed to reduce the cost of rocket launches. Musk was chief designer in many of the rockets and spaceships that the company produced. If SpaceX continues to improve their rockets, Musk hopes that one day he will be able to send humans to Mars and, maybe, beyond.

Tesla is perhaps Musk’s most well-known company. Musk wanted to produce a sports car that ran on electricity because people thought most electric cars at that time were a bit boring. In 2006, Tesla introduced the Roadster which could go from 0 to 60 miles (97 km) per hour in less than four seconds and travel 245 miles (394 km) on a single charge. Since then, the company has released several models and it has won many awards for design and innovative technology.

Musk is also a major player in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), solar energy, and tunnelling technologies. With his web of companies, it looks certain that Musk will influence all of our futures.