Elon Musk at 51: The Untold Story About the Tech Billionaire

Elon Musk has remained everyone’s favorite billionaire for a reason. From reinventing electric cars to building futuristic space vehicles, the tech billionaire has remained the center of attraction in almost every tech industry. So why should you care to celebrate Elon Musk on his birthday? His unique childhood upbringing and amazing innovations will make you fall in love with Elon Musk. Let’s dive in.

How Elon Musk Started Out

Elon Musk is a living legend changing the world with his innovations. His approach toward the future could be traced back to when the rocket man was born. On June 28, 1971, Elon Reeve Musk was born to Errol Musk and Maye Musk in Pretoria, South Africa. His parents, Errol Musk (Dad) and Maye Musk (Mom) worked hard to provide young Musk with all that he desired in his childhood.

After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk began to live with his dad, while his mother returned to Canada. The young Musk was always curious to change his world from an early age. Out of his curiosity, Musk bought Commodore Vic-20 and started teaching himself how to code at the age of 10.

He spent the next two years of his life learning how to code while engaging in other activities. At 12, Musk developed his first video game which he called Blastar. He later sold the game code to PC and Office Technology and walked away with $500. 

Elon Musk Education Life

As a young Child, Musk was bullied at school. He was once hospitalized from the injury he sustained from his bullies. But after graduating from Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and finally the Pretoria Boys High School, Musk was prepared to embrace another phase of life.

Elon Musk believed that the United States was the only country that could make his dreams come true. So he developed a particular interest in gaining entrance into the US from Childhood. He was aware that his only possible chance of entering the United States was through Canada.

So, after completing his high school education in South Africa, Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his mother. As he waited patiently for his documentation to be complete, Musk enrolled at the University of Pretoria, where he studied for five months. His enrolment into the University of Pretoria enabled Musk to escape the compulsory service in the South African military.

As soon as his documentation was completed, Musk left South Africa and arrived in Canada in June 1989 at the age of 17. In Canada, Musk lived up to a year with his second cousin. During this period, he engaged himself in several odd jobs at a lumber mill and a farm to meet some of his needs. Musk later enrolled at Queen’s University and also obtained his Canadian citizenship in 1990.

At this moment, he realized that he was closer to getting his American passport. In 1992, Musk left Canada and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania to study Business and Physics. In 1997, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania obtaining his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics and Economics.

Elon Musk’s Inventions and Career

Elon Musk began to replicate his innovations at the age of 12 when he developed and sold a video game to PC and Office Technology. When he arrived in Canada he did several odd jobs to earn some cash. After he arrived in the United States in 1992, Musk became ambitious to explore the land of opportunities.

In 1994, while Musk was still a student at the University of Pennsylvania, he enrolled in two internships in Silicon Valley. He did one of these at Pinnacle Research Institute, which was an energy storage corporation, and the other at the Palo Alto Startup Rocket Science Games.

Elon Musk’s career in Zip2

In 1995, he applied for the Doctor of Philosophy program at Stanford University in California, to which he was accepted. However, Musk dropped out of the Ph.D. program, just two days after accepting the offer. He decided to take advantage of the booming internet business.

So Musk and his brother, Kimbal alongside Greg Kouri launched an Internet startup, which they named Zip2. The web software company was funded with money borrowed from Errol Musk(Musk’s dad). The startup was established at a small rented office located in Palo Alto.

Musk and his co-founders used the company to render Internet City guides which provided directions, maps, and yellow pages to the newspaper publishing industry. During an interview, Musk revealed that he shared a computer with his brother Kimbal during the hard times for the company. However, they worked hard to ensure that Zip2 became a success.

After years of hard work, Zip2 became such a huge success that the Musk brothers sold the company to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million. From the proceeds realized from the sale, Elon Musk walked away with his 7 percent share of the company which is about $22 million. Most people think that Musk is going to spend them on the fun. But the Tech Billionaire was just getting started with his journey to success.

Elon Musk Career in X.com and PayPal

After actualizing success in Zip2, Musk took part of his earnings and co-founded X.com in 1999. X.com was established to render online financial services and email payments. The startup achieved tremendous success within its first few months of operations. It was so successful that over 200,000 clients used the services provided by the company within its first few months.

At the end of its first year of operation, investors in the company decided to replace Musk with Bill Harris as they felt that Musk was not experienced enough to run the company. In 2000, X.com saw Confinity online bank as a competition.

So X.com merged with the company to dominate online banking. This collaboration enabled Elon Musk to return as the new CEO of the company. In 2001, the board renamed the merged corporation PayPal services. The company grew even bigger over the year. In 2002, eBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion in stock.

At this time of acquisition, Elon Musk has a share of 11.72% which made him the largest shareholder of the company. Musk’s stock enabled him to receive $175.8 million from the sale of PayPal.

Beginning of Elon Musk’s Passion For Space Travel

Even before Musk ventured into other businesses, he already had a great passion for space exploration. Musk joined Mars Society, a nonprofit organization in 2001. This organization motivated him with its futuristic plans to grow plants on Mars inside a growth chamber that will be sent to the red planet.

However, the only challenge left for the organization is to find a means to transport this growth chamber to Mars. Musk was determined to contribute immensely to the success of this project. The desire to help the Mars Society in sending greenhouse payloads to Mars led Elon Musk to commence a journey to Moscow in October 2001.

The great milestone attained by Russians in building space vehicles made Musk assume that the Russian Space Industry is the right place to buy his first rockets. When Musk arrived in Moscow with Mike Griffin and Jim Cantrell, they met with the management of popular space companies including Kosmotras and NPO Lavochkin.

Musk and his team explained their intention to buy Refurbished Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) which Musk intends to launch into space. But the Russian chief designers saw Musk as a novice in the field of space exploration and ignored his request.

After their request was rejected, Musk and his team returned to the United States without accomplishing their goal. But Musk was still determined and ambitious to accomplish his goal of reaching space. 

The Birth of SpaceX

Elon Musk and his team returned to Russia with the same purpose in February 2002. After meeting with top officials of Kosmotras, the group was offered $8 million per rocket. Since Musk intended to buy three ICBMs, he found this offer above his budget. Hence, Musk rejected the offer and headed back to the United States with his team.

During their trip back to the US, Musk stumbled upon the idea of setting up a space agency and making cheaper rockets. This idea inspired Elon to use $100 million of his PayPal fortune to found Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) in May 2002.

Elon Musk’s Career At SpaceX

Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corporation kicked off with the ambition of building futuristic rockets that could send humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond Mars. The company completed its first rocket and named it Falcon 1. The Falcon 1 rocket was launched for its first flight in 2006. However, the rocket failed to reach Earth’s orbit.

But NASA saw the giant step SpaceX has taken and awarded a contract to the young space agency. SpaceX experienced two more launch failures before achieving success in 2008 when its Falcon 1 rocket succeeded in reaching orbit. Elon Musk was almost on the verge of closing the company when it attained this milestone.

A new hope was given to SpaceX when NASA awarded it a $1.6 billion contract for the commercial Resupply Services Program. Over the years, SpaceX improved in rocketry designs and made the Capsule dragon even better. In 2012, Space Dragon Capsule became the first private space vehicle to reach the International Space Station.

This milestone was celebrated by space lovers all across the world. Currently, the space agency is working on commencing with SpaceX orbital flights of its Starship Super Heavy. The success of these orbital flights will determine when the space agency will commence on the first space trip to Mars.

Elon Musk Career in Tesla

One of the reasons Elon Musk is famous is because he reinvented Electric Cars and made them even better. Tesla Inc, which was incorporated by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors in 2003, has revolutionized the world of Electric vehicles. However, this revolution would have not been possible without the perseverance and innovation of Elon Musk.

In February 2004, Elon Musk invested $6.5 million in the EV company, which made him the majority shareholder of the startup. After Musk’s investment, he was made the Chairman of Tesla’s board of directors. In 2008, Musk became the CEO of Tesla to deliver the company from its crisis.

Tesla succeeded in building its first electric sports car in 2008. This car was named Roadster and the company sold about 2,500 of these vehicles to clients across the world. With this success, Tesla ventured into building other models and meeting various demands of the market.

Today, Tesla is the most valued automobile company with a market cap of 735 Billion Dollars at the time of writing this article.

Elon Musk’s Career at SolarCity and Tesla Energy

Musk is a legend that believed so much in cleaner energy sources. He saw a wide Gap in the use of solar energy, so he funded the SolarCity idea which was founded by his cousins Peter Rive and Lyndon in 2006. In 2013, just seven years after the startup was founded, Solar City became the second-biggest provider of solar power to people in the US. In 2016, Tesla bought SolarCity for more than $2 billion.

The EV company decided to merge SolarCity with its battery production unit. Tesla Energy was born from this combination. The role of Tesla Energy in providing Electric power to Tesla vehicles and solar power to people’s homes cannot be neglected. Elon Musk is working endlessly to improve services provided by Tesla energy in the future.

Elon Musk’s Career in Neuralink

Imagine walking around and ordering a product online without actually touching your phone or computer. Elon Musk’s Neuralink Technology will make this possible in the future. Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 to give humans similar abilities to sophisticated Ai that will soon emerge.

The Neurotechnology startup company hopes to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence. The startup plans to actualize this by building devices that give humans extraordinary capabilities to compete with Ai. Musk revealed that the Ai will also give new hope to people with disabilities.

The Neuralink Technology is still under development with human trials coming soon. Let’s hope that Musk achieves tremendous success from this innovation.

Elon Musk’s Career in Boring Company

The idea of more cars hitting the road will likely extend traffic jams in the future. Musk thinks that building an underground tunnel will create a perfect solution to traffic jams. So he founded the Boring Company in 2017 to meet this demand. The Boring Company discussed with regulatory bodies the safety of the project before approving to commence with building tunnels.

The company has already constructed about a 30-foot wide, 50-foot long, and 15-foot deep test tunnel on the SpaceX premise. In 2021, The Boring Company completed a tunnel underneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. Based on the success, it has revealed approval for expansion.

As Musk prepares to send humans to Mars, the Boring Company may deploy its concept of building underground tunnels across a specific range. Maybe if the first Martian city will be built beneath the surface, then the Boring company would actually have a lot of work to do.

Elon Musk Career in OpenAI

Musk is one of the tech Billionaires that is fascinated with the idea of Artificial intelligence. He founded Open Ai in 2015, to meet the rising need for Artificial intelligence in his other futuristic inventions. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit organization. It stands as a research corporation that hopes to develop artificial intelligence that will not create terror for humans.

In several interviews, Musk has warned about the threats of Artificial Intelligence in the future we are approaching. Musk has urged governments to regulate the development of artificial intelligence in a way that will be beneficial to humanity instead of harming us.

At OpenAI, scientists are working on developing safe Ai that everyone can use without the fear of the unknown. OpenAI is already servicing Tesla Autopilot. Musk may likely deploy OpenAI in Tesla Bots which will soon be revealed. These Tesla bots may become part of the crew that will explore space someday in the future.

Elon Musk Involvement in other Futuristic Technologies

Elon Musk has involved himself in several futuristic technologies that will change the world in a few decades to come. From Hyperloop to Starlink, Elon Musk is not stopping anything soon. He may likely come up with other futuristic inventions that will change the way we will live and access Technologies in the future.

What is Elon Musk Thinking About Mars?

Before Elon Musk dreamt of establishing SpaceX he was already fascinated with the red planet. Musk plans to colonize Mars and make humans a multi-planetary civilization. He founded SpaceX intending to send humans to Mars before the end of this decade. Currently, Musk is still hoping to make his long-term dreams become a reality soon. 

Will Elon Musk Go to Mars?

With the approval of Elon Musk starships by the FAA, one could see that the massive starship is close to commencing its first orbital flight. Elon Musk has yet to disclose his interest in visiting Mars. But he is certain that his starships will surely go to Mars anytime soon. 

Conclusion

Elon Musk is almost everyone’s favorite Billionaire because of the innovative ideas he has brought to reality. One of his goals is to make humans multi-planetary species. He once predicted that the first humans will land on the red planet in 2029. If he successfully attains this milestone, Musk will forever be remembered as the legend that changed the world and made humans multi-planetary species.

As today is Elon Musk’s birthday, I have decided to write about the tech billionaire Who is changing the world and making space exploration more interesting than ever. We at Futurespaceworld.com wish Elon Reeve Musk a Happy Birthday. Write a good birthday wish to the tech Billionaire.