Elon Musk
Elon Musk ( born June 28, 1971 in Pretoria, South Africa) is an American entrepreneur. He was known for his achievements as an Internet service provider, especially with the payment service Paypal, which made him rich, and funded with this money founding of three companies: the solar power company SolarCity, the electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors and its third company SpaceX, on which his vision a privately funded aerospace industry realized.
Life
Musks father was a South African mechanical engineer, his mother a Canadian model. Elon Musk was married to the novelist Justine Musk Fantasy, the couple has five sons.
As a 12 -year-old Musk developed a video game that he could sell it to a computer magazine. Shortly before his 16th birthday requested Musk together with his younger brother at the Canadian Embassy passports and a year later he emigrated to North America to avoid military service in the South African army. His first destination was Canada, where he was at Queen 's University in Kingston, Ontario, enrolled. After moving to the University of Pennsylvania, he closed his studies there with a Bachelor 's degree in economics and physics. In 1995 he moved to Palo Alto, California, where he had been admitted to Stanford University for a Ph.D. program in Physics.
However, he decided on campus, not to include the study and instead to start an internet company after two days.
In March 2010, he was in the documentary The 4th Revolution - to see EnergyAutonomy. On September 25, 2010 Musk married the British actress Talulah Riley, however in early 2012 divorced again. Musk has his main residence in Bel Air, a district of Los Angeles.
Entrepreneurial activities
1995, when he founded his first company, Zip2 ( along with his brother Kimbal ), the offered content for media companies, had Musk in his own words " a vague idea about the opportunities that could provide a dotcom company, $ 2,000 cash, a car. , and a computer "When Compaq, the company bought out for $ 307 million in 1999, this was the hitherto highest price paid for an internet company price; Musk himself could then fall back to $ 22 million of capital on participation.
Immediately afterwards founded the company Musk X.com, which developed an online payment system via e-mail. Already in 2000 merged with X.com a competitor Confinity, who specialized on a similar product called PayPal. PayPal has become the main online payment system worldwide in the coming months - and received cash proceeds of $ 1.5 billion when it was sold to eBay in 2002. Musk this date held 11.7% shares in the company, making it the largest shareholder.
While Musks Internet companies with products that did not previously exist in this form, opened up new markets, was the business idea that was based on the entrepreneurial activities of the following years, a different: Musk was expensive and technically complex products cheaper and suitable for mass production offer.
Musks third company was founded was the space company SpaceX, 2002. SpaceX initially sold unmanned spaceflights to put satellites into orbit and to supply the ISS space station, and later manned flights are planned. ( Can be enabled to help lower the cost of space travel so that life on other planets) The underlying vision is "to help reduce the cost of space transportation so it would be feasible to establish_link life on another planet". Since the successful launch of the Falcon 1 28 September 2008, SpaceX is the first company, which succeeded with a liquid-propellant rocket completely privately funded to reach orbit. The cost of a start amount to only about one -third the cost of comparable space flights state-funded.
In addition, Musk invested in 2003 very early in the vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, which specializes in the production of electric cars, nachzustehen with the aim of conventional comparable vehicles in nothing. Musks so far (as of August 2013) penultimate business creation is the company Solar City, which operates the installation of solar energy systems since 2006.
Under the name Hyperloop a project for passenger and freight traffic was presented for long-distance routes in August 2013. In a double- tube are closed capsules for 28 people on air cushions accelerated to 1220 km / h and according to statements made by Musk eg a 600- km route overcome cheaper than the train in 35 minutes. According to Musk work a dozen engineers from the company Tesla and SpaceX in the plans, it intends to develop open and complete a test model until about 2017.
Prizes and awards
In June 2011, Musk was awarded with prize money of $ 500,000 Heinlein Prize for Advances in Space Commercialization.
In February 2011, Forbes Musk was one of "America's 20 Most Powerful CEOs 40 And Under".
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awarded Musk 2010, the highest award, the FAI Gold Space Medal; to the previous awardees include Neil Armstrong, Burt Rutan and John Glenn.
In his contribution to the series " The 100 Most Influential People 2010 " Time Magazine describes director Jon Favreau, as Musk served Man ( movie ) as a template for the figure of the genius billionaire Tony Stark in Iron Man.
The Esquire magazine named Musk one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.
The Kitty Hawk Foundation honored him in 2010 as Living Legend of Aviation; other carriers of this title, Buzz Aldrin and Richard Branson.
The National Space Society awarded Musk Von Braun Trophy 2008/2009; former recipients of these awards were Burt Rutan and Steve Squyres.
The National Wildlife Federation Conservation Achievement Award National awarded him in 2008; other prize winners that year were the journalist Thomas Friedman, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy and Florida Governor Charlie Crist.
The R & D Magazine honored him as an innovator of the year 2007.
After Bill Ford, Bob Lutz, Dieter Zetsche and Lee Iacocca Musk was recognized as auto- Manager of the Year 2010.
The Inc Magazine awarded him the 2007 Entrepreneur of the Year for Tesla and SpaceX.
His design of the Tesla Roadster won the 2007 Index Design award and the Global Green Award for Product Design 2006, presented by Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Art Center College of Design awarded him an honorary doctorate in design.