Elon Musk - "Iron Man"

Как вы думаете, кем вдохновилась кинокомпания MARVEL создать "Железного Человека ( Тони Старка)"? Правильно! Илон Маск - тот самый гений.

Elon Musk is a Canadian-American entrepreneur. He is the founder of SpaceX, Tesla, and Zip2, among others. He was also one of the people responsible for the success of PayPal. Currently he serves as (CEO) and Chief Designer (CDO) of SpaceX, CEO and product architect of Tesla, and chair of SolarCity.

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South-Africa on 28 June 1971. He’s the son of a Canadian model (Maye Musk) and a South-African electromechanical engineer (Errol Musk). His parents divorced in 1980, after which Musk lived with his father.

When he was 10 years old, he discovered the Commodore VIC-20. He taught himself to programme and sold a video game coded in BASIC two years later. BASIC is an imperative programming language that was originally intended to help people learn programming very quickly. The game was called Blastar, and he sold it to PC and Office Technology magazine for 500 dollars soon after.

As a child, Musk attended the independent Waterkloof House Preparatory School. He did his final exams at Pretoria Boys High School and moved to Canada in June of 1989. He then became a Canadian citizen through his Canadian mother.

In 1989 Musk was admitted to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In 1992, after two years at Queen’s University, Musk left for the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences and his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Musk continued for another year to get his second bachelor.

During his studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Musk and fellow student Adeo Ressi bought a student house to use as a nightclub. In 1995, at the age of 24, Musk moved to California to get his PhD in physics from Stanford University, but left the university after just two days to start his own businesses in the fields of Internet, sustainable energy, and space. He became an American citizen in 2002.

When he’s just twelve years old, he’s already a better programmer than his teachers. At 24 he gives up his studies at Stanford University to start his first business. Four years later, that business is worth 300 million dollars and is bought by Compaq. In 2002 eBay buys one of his other businesses – PayPal – for the considerable sum of 1.5 billion dollars. He invests his considerable fortune in SpaceX (2002), Tesla Motors (2004), and SolarCity (2006).

Zip2

Musk and his brother Kimbal founded Zip2 in 1995, an internet company. They did so with investments from a group of business angels. One of the things the company developed was an online city guide for newspapers. Musk approached The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. During his time at Zip2, Elon wanted to become CEO of the company, but none of Zip2’s board members agreed. Compaq bought Zip2 for 307 million American dollars, of which 7% went to Musk, amounting to 22 million dollars.

X.com and PayPal

In March of 1999, Musk founded X.com, an online payment platform. He invested 10 million in it. A year later the company merged with Confinity which had its own payment platform named PayPal. The merged company focused on the services PayPal already had and continued under that name in 2001. PayPal’s early growth was driven by a promotion that offered money to new customers if they signed up. PayPal was acquired by eBay in October of 2002, for one-and-a-half billion dollars. 165 million of that sum went to Musk. Before the takeover, Musk had been the largest shareholder with 11.7% of PayPal’s shares.

SpaceX

In 2001 Musk came up with the concept ‘Mars Oasis’; a project to have a small, experimental greenhouse with food crops land on Mars to generate public interest in space exploration. In October of 2001, Musk, Jim Cantrell, and Adeo Ressi travelled to Moscow to purchase old ICBMs that could shoot things into space.

Elon Musk quotes

Some people don't like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.
Некоторые люди не любят перемен, но перемены необходимо принять, если альтернатива это катастрофа.

If you're trying to create a company, it's like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.
Если вы пытаетесь создать компанию, то это как испечь торт. У вас должны быть все ингредиенты в правильной пропорции.

I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.
Я бы хотел умереть на Марсе. Только не от столкновения.

People should pursue what they're passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
Люди должны неотступно следовать за своим страстным увлечением. Это сделает их в высшей степени счастливыми.

Patience is a virtue, and I'm learning patience. It's a tough lesson.
Терпение — это добродетель, и я учусь терпению. Это непростой урок.

When I was in college, I wanted to be involved in things that would change the world.
Когда я учился в колледже, я хотел быть причастным к событиям, которые изменят мир.

I don't spend my time pontificating about high-concept things; I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.
Я не трачу время на проповеди о высоких идеях; я трачу своё время на решение инженерных и производственных проблем.

Publications and Books by Elon Musk

2018. Making life multi-planetary. New Space, 6(1), 2-11.
2017. Making humans a multi-planetary species. New Space, 5(2), 46-61.
2006. The secret Tesla Motors master plan (just between you and me). blog), August, 2.
2001. U.S. Patent No. 6,185,194. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
1999. U.S. Patent No. 5,944,769. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.