Musk was born and raised in South Africa, the son of a South African engineer and a Canadian mother who worked as a nutritionist and model. Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software for about $500, a space game called Blastar.His mother was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, and many of his relatives reside in western Canada, so Musk immigrated there in June 1989.
He left Canada in 1992 after getting a scholarship to study business and physics at the University of Pennsylvania. From the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, he received an undergraduate degree, and stayed on another year to finish a second bachelor's degree in physics. His undergraduate degrees behind him, and drawing inspiration from innovators such as Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, Musk then considered three areas he wanted to get into that were "important problems", as he said later, "One was the Internet, one was clean energy, and one was space.".
In 1995, Musk went on to a graduate program in applied physics and materials science at Stanford, in which he stayed two days before dropping out to start Zip2, with his brother Kimbal Musk which provided online content publishing software for news organizations. In 1999, Compaq's AltaVista division acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash and US$34 million in stock options.
PayPal
In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. One year later, X.com merged with Confinity, operator of the then largest auction payments service PayPal. The combined company at first adopted X.com as the corporate name, but in February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal Inc. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.
SpaceX
In June 2002, Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX),[11] of which he is currently the CEO and CTO. SpaceX develops and manufactures space launch vehicles, with an emphasis on low cost and high reliability. The company's first two launch vehicles are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets and its first spacecraft is Dragon.
On 23 December 2008, SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion NASA contract for 12 flights of their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after it retired in 2011. Initially, Falcon 9/Dragon will replace the cargo transport function of the Shuttle and astronaut transport will be handled by the Soyuz. However, SpaceX has designed Falcon 9/Dragon with astronaut transport in mind and the Augustine commission has recommended that astronaut transport be handled by commercial companies like SpaceX.
Musk views space exploration as an important step in expanding—if not preserving—the consciousness of human life.[13] Musk has said that multiplanetary life may serve as a hedge against threats to the survival of the human species. "An asteroid or a super volcano could destroy us, and we face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, catastrophic global warming or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us. Humankind evolved over millions of years, but in the last sixty years atomic weaponry created the potential to extinguish ourselves. Sooner or later, we must expand life beyond this green and blue ball—or go extinct." Musk's goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100. He founded SpaceX with $100 million of his early fortune. He remains chief executive officer and chief technology officer of the Hawthorne, Calif.-based company.
In seven years, SpaceX has designed the family of Falcon launch vehicles and the Dragon multi-purpose spacecraft from the ground-up. In September 2009, SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket became the first privately funded liquid-fueled vehicle to put a satellite into Earth orbit. NASA selected SpaceX to be part of the first program that entrusts private companies to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. This contract, which has a minimum value of $1.6 billion and a maximum value of $3.1 billion, has become a cornerstone of the Space Station. In addition to these services, SpaceX's goals include simultaneously lowering the price of orbital spaceflight and improving reliability, both by a factor of ten, while creating the first fully reusable orbital launch vehicle. In the coming years, Musk will focus on delivering astronauts to the International Space Station, and even Mars.
TeslaMotors
Musk is perhaps most well known for his role as co-founder and head of product design at Tesla Motors, where he led development of the Tesla Roadster, arguably the first viable production electric car of the modern era. Musk's interest in electric vehicles extends long before the creation of Tesla. He originally went to Silicon Valley to do a PhD in Applied Physics and Materials Science at Stanford, where his goal was to create ultracapacitors with enough energy to power electric cars.
Musk provided almost all of the capital for Tesla's first two funding rounds and continued to invest in every subsequent financing round. As a result of the financial crisis in 2008 and a forced layoff at Tesla, Musk agreed to assume the additional responsibility of CEO.
Tesla Motors currently builds an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, and has shipped over 1800 vehicles to 31 countries. Tesla expects to be in production with its four door Model Ssedan in 2012 and has said it will unveil its third product the Model X, aimed at the SUV/minivan market, in late 2011.
In addition to its own cars, Tesla sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler, for the Smart EV and Mercedes A Class, and Toyota, for the upcoming electric RAV4. Musk was also able to bring in both companies as long term investors in Tesla.
Musk is principally responsible for an overarching business strategy that aims to deliver affordable electric vehicles to mass-market consumers. His vision was to create the Tesla Roadster as a means to that end—a car aimed specifically at affluent early adopters, whose purchase of the sports car would subsidize the research and development costs of lower priced models of electric vehicles. From the start of Tesla, Musk has been a champion of the Model S, a four-door family sedan with an anticipated base price of half that of the Roadster. Musk has also favored building a sub-$30,000 subcompact and building and selling electric vehicle powertrain components so that other automakers can produce electric vehicles at affordable prices without having to develop the products in house.Several mainstream publications have compared him with Henry Ford for his revolutionary work on advanced vehicle powertrains.
Musk has described himself as a workaholic who routinely invests 100 hours per week in running Tesla Motors and SpaceX, often flying in a fuel-efficient corporate jet. In his rare free time, he says he plays with his five children.The SpaceX factory was used as a shooting location for Iron Man II and Musk has a cameo in the movie.According to Jon Favreau, director of the Iron Man movies, Musk is the inspiration for Favreau's and Robert Downey Jr.'s interpretation of Tony Stark.Musk owned a McLaren F1 sports car that he purchased for approximately $1 million and sold in 2007 for $1.5 million, and a Czech-built Aero L-39 trainer worth approximately $250,000,. The 1994 model Dassault Falcon 900 aircraft used in the film, Thank You for Smoking (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2006) is registered to Musk (N900SX). Musk is listed as an Executive Producer of the film.
