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Elon Musk

Elon Musk (born 28 June 1971) is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of PayPal and SpaceX. He is chairman of Tesla Motors and SolarCity.

Early life

Musk was born and grew up in South Africa, the son of a South African engineer and a Canadian-born mother who has worked as a New York City dietitian and modeled for fun. His father inspired his love of technology and Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software, a space game called Blaster.

After matriculating at Pretoria Boys High School he left home in 1988 at the age of 17, without his parents' support, and in part because of the prospect of compulsory service in the South African military: "I don't have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn't seem like a really good way to spend time,". He headed toward the US, saying: "It is where great things are possible. I am nauseatingly pro-American." Leaving South Africa he first went to Kingston, Ontario where he enrolled at Queen's University, barely scraping by on as little as $1 a day with part-time and summer jobs. He then landed a prestigious scholarship to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "Tuition costs are outrageous ... Fortunately, they gave me a scholarship ... so I only had to cover living expenses, books, etc., by working." From Wharton he received an undergraduate degree in economics and stayed on another year to finish a second bachelors degree in physics. His undergraduate degrees behind him, 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."

Musk lives in Bel-Air, California, with his wife, the author Justine Musk, their five sons and three dogs. On September 13, 2008 Justine posted a notice on her blog that the couple is divorcing. The blog, moschus.livejournal.com, partially read, "I am getting divorced. We had a good run. We married young, took it as far as we could and now it is over. That's about all I can say for now, other than that it was a very sad and very necessary decision."

Entrepreneurial activities

In 1995, Musk went on to a graduate program in high energy physics at Stanford, in which he stayed exactly two days before dropping out to start Zip2, 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.

In March 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and email payments company. One year later, X.com acquired Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. 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.

In June 2002, Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), 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.

In addition to his business activities in entrepreneurial space, Musk is the principal owner and Chairman of the Board of Tesla Motors, which builds a high-end luxury electric vehicle. He is also the primary investor and Chairman of the Board of SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services startup company. The underlying motivation for funding both companies is to help combat global warming.

Musk's fortune is estimated at US$328 million.

Philanthropy

Non-space-related activities

Musk is Chairman of the Musk Foundation, which focuses its philanthropic efforts on science education, pediatric health, and clean energy.

Space-related activities

In 2001, Musk had plans for a "Mars Oasis" project, which would land a miniature experimental greenhouse on Mars, containing food crops growing on Martian regolith. He put this project on hold when he discovered that launch costs would dwarf the mission development and construction costs for the project, and decided to work on lowering launch costs by founding SpaceX. His long term goal is that SpaceX helps humanity become a true spacefaring civilization.

Musk is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, a Director of the Planetary Society and a Trustee of The X-Prize Foundation.

In 2005, Musk acquired a 10% share of Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL), a world leader in the design, manufacture and operation of high performance small satellites, majority owned by the University of Surrey, UK.

Interests

Musk owned a McLaren F1 sports car that he purchased for approximately $1 million and sold it 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 Mr. Musk (N900SX). Mr. Musk is listed as an Executive Producer of the film.

Musk owns a Tesla Roadster car 0001 (the first one off the production line) from Tesla Motors, a company in which he is an early investor. The Roadster is a battery electric sportscar with a 220 mile range.

Education

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, B.S., Economics
University of Pennsylvania, B.A., Physics
Excelled at mathematics and science at Pretoria Boys High School.

Family

Elon Musk's sister Tosca Musk is the founder of Musk Entertainment and producer of various movies. Elon himself was the executive producer of her first movie, called Puzzled.