Elon Musk has risen to such prominence over the past decade that he is now a household name.
From ensuring that money trades hands easily in the vast World Wide Web, Musk has dedicated a lot of his time in trying to ensure that even the average earthling is not only confined to this planet of dirt and water, as he is on the verge of making space travel more accessible to the public.
With a net worth estimated at over USD$20 billion, he can more than afford to be ambitious – with some change too, and we’ve taken it upon us to dig up a few facts – other than just Tesla cars – about a man so determined to change the shape of the world.
Taught himself how to program at 12
Well, it is an age where most boys spend copious amounts of time in their rooms doing a bit of… ahem, exploring.
Elon wasn’t much different to his peers, but he dedicated plenty of his alone time doing a bit of computer programming, as he taught himself, and created his own PC game called Blastar, which he also managed a bit of commercial success as he also made a few sales.
He founded PayPal… well, sort of
In 1999, Musk founded and ran an online bank called X.com, which merged with software developer, Confinity a year later.
Confinity had developed a money transfer service by the name “PayPal” and, when the two companies merged, Musk remained CEO and President and was the driving force behind making the money transfer service its main focus.
Other internet banking services fell by the wayside and, soon after he left X.com in 2001, it renamed to PayPal, which would take off exponentially, and was eventually sold to eBay the following year.
TO CONFINITY… AND BEYOND!!! No?
Moving on to SpaceX
Changing the way in which money changed hands in the 21st century was obviously not enough for Musk, as he took on a venture that was literally out of this world – space travel.
He founded SpaceX with the intention of making space travel accessible to the public in 2002, and within the first decade of the company’s existence, it scored a contract with NASA to handle cargo transport for the International Space Station.
He was an adviser to Donald Trump
During his campaign trail, The Donald yelled some utterances about “yuuge” technological advancements, and when he was eventually elected, there were very few people more suited to guide him towards making good on that promise than Musk, given he had made a few groundbreaking advancements of his own over the years.
He was reportedly at odds with the POTUS when it came to policy and, after mere months in the advisory role, he stepped down just after the announcement that the US was withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.
The Musk foundation
Musk probably recognised that he might not get to enjoy his ridiculous wealth on his own and has pledged to give away half of his fortune to philanthropy.
In 2001 he founded the Musk Foundation, which is dedicated to research in renewable energy, human space travel and science and engineering education.
TOP IMAGE: Elon Musk. (By SpaceX – , CC0, Link)
