Elon Musk

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Elon Musk is an entrepreneur and businessman from South Africa. Some of the companies that he founded include PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla Motors. As of January 2021, Musk is the wealthiest man in the world.

Early Life

Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His parents divorced when he was only 10, and to escape from his unstable life he became interested in computers and software. He taught himself how to create his own software and when he was 12 years old he sold his first software - a game he created called Blastar. Musk was also interested in karate and wrestling. When he was 17 years old, he moved to Canada to attend Queen’s University. Another reason he left South Africa was to avoid mandatory service in the South African military. Musk became a Canadian citizen that same year because he felt like it would be easier for him to become an American citizen as a Canadian than as a South African.

Master Entrepreneur

Musk eventually earned a degree in economics and physics in 1992. After this, the Internet Boom occurred, and Musk began building his internet businesses. In 1999 PayPal was created as a way to send and receive money digitally. This made shopping for goods and services much easier than they had been in the past. In 2002, Musk and other investors sold PayPal for more than a billion dollars. In 2004, Musk invested in Tesla, an electric car company, and eventually became its co-founder and CEO. Today, Tesla is well known throughout the world for its innovative technology and is one of the world’s most valuable companies.

Elon in Space

In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX. The mission of the company was to build spacecraft for commercial space travel. In less than six years, NASA presented SpaceX with a contract to transport cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS). In 2012, Musk and SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket into space and toward the ISS with 1,000 pounds of supplies for the astronauts living there. This made history because this was the first time a private company sent any goods to the ISS.

Since then, SpaceX has been in charge of sending supplies, people, and satellites into space. Commercial spaceflight has been propelled into the future by a billionaire that began his career as a kid playing games on his personal computer.

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