THE RISE OF A TECHNOLOGICAL GENIUS...ELON MUSK

Helo everyone, I am here once again to enlighten and to bring to the knowledge of everyone who cares to read this piece, the biography of the man of the moment, who goes by the name ELON REEVE MUSK.

Funny enough I just got to know about Elon Musk after his recent ground breaking feat, the launch of the Falcon heavy into space. I actually got to ask a few persons on steemit who Elon Musk was and got no reply. I actually thought the launch of the falcon heavy was all there was to Elon Musk, not until I saw a video on facebook which showed list of his other achievements among which was the invention of the electric car called Tesla. Tesla is a car I have always admired but never knew it had a connection with Elon Musk. After seeing that video, I decided to make my own research on who the man of the moment really is and what he has been able to achieve so far and that’s what I will be sharing with you all today so stay glued.

Who is Elon Musk?

This was the question in the mouth of many and the same question in my own mouth after the recent launch of the falcon heavy to space. It’s only natural to want to know the brains behind successful achievements so if this question is in your mouth too, then you aren’t doing anything wrong (LOLZZ).

Elon Musk

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa on the 28th of June, 1971. Oh yes, he is an African man (Lolzz). He was born to a wonderful, talented couple, Maye Musk and Errol Musk. Maye Musk (His mum) is a model and a dietician from Regina, Canada while Errol Musk (His dad), an electromechanical engineer, a pilot and a sailor from South Africa.

Elon Musk isn’t alone as he has two younger siblings, a brother who goes by the name, Kimbal and a sister who goes by the name Tosca. His parents got divorced in 1980, after which he decided to stay with his dad, a decision he later acknowledged was a bad idea. Well, I don’t know the reason he though it was a bad idea, I am sure he has an answer to that and would be delighted to let you know if you go ask him personally and not over the media. (smiles)

Elon Musk loved reading so much when he was a child and at the age of 10, developed interest in computing. At the age of 10, I think I was still learning how to type my name into a computer. Elon Musk taught himself computer programming at the age of 12 and was able to develop a video game. He later sold the code of the Basic-based video game her created to a magazine called ***PC and Office technology for about $500. That was a lot of money back then you know for a child who was only 12 years old.

Elon Musk was often bullied in school during his childhood days and was even once hospitalized after a group of boys threw him down a flight of stairs. Well I would say he suffered from bullies because of his nerdy nature. It’s all stories now though and all in the past.

Elon musk is a highly educated young man. At the age of 17, Musk attended the Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario after which he was transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in physics and in economics.

At the age of 24, must started his PhD in applied physics and material science at Stanford University in California but due to his passion for internet entrepreneurship, renewable energy and outer space, Elon Musk abandoned the PhD program to pursue his dreams and in 2002, he became a U.S citizen.

Abandoning his PhD program to pursue his dreams and passion was what gave rise to the numerous projects and inventions accredited to Elon Musk today and we will be looking at them in detail.

Projects carried out by Elon Musk till date…

First Project: The Zip2 project

Zip2 was a company that provided a software used for online city guide to newspapers. It was founded in 1995 in California by Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal with the assistance of Greg Kouri. The company started off as Global Link Information Network. What the company did at inception was to provide local businesses with internet access but later decided to assist newspapers in designing online city guides.

The company name was changed from Global Link Information Network to Zip2 in 1996 when they received $3 million in investments from Mohr Davidow ventures. It was this new acquirers that brought up the idea of selling national software packages to newspapers to build their own directories.

By 1998, the company had achieved a lot and had partnered with over 160 newspapers including the famous New York Times before it was bought over by Compaq Computer for $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock in February 1999.

Second project: The X.com and Paypal Project

Elon Musk, being a very hardworking young man, decided to start up another company in March 1999, just a month after selling off Zip2 to Compaq Computer. This company he founded was the X.com which was a company responsible for online financial services and e-mail payment.

Soon after X.com was found, it was merged with its fiercest competitor, Confinity. The merge gave birth to Paypal, which was money transfer service. Two years after, PayPal was acquired by eBay for the sum of $1.5 billion. On 5th July 2017, Elon Musk purchased X.com from PayPal saying that it has sentimental value on Twitter and on 14th of July, it was lunched on Twitter.

Third project: The SpaceX Project

Space exploration Technologies Corp known as SpaceX is a privately owned aerospace manufacturer and space transport service company founded in 2002 by Elon Musk ad has its headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Elon Musk decided to embark on this project to reduce the cost of space travel and to enable the colonization of mars, a vision which many saw a laughable.

SpaceX headquaters in Hawthorne, California

In October 2001, Elon Musk travelled to Moscow with two of his friends, Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to purchase refurbished ballistic misssiles that could send the payloads for mars exploration into space. In the meeting, Musk was seen as a novice and cajoled by one of the Russian chief designers.

Elon Musk and his friends returned empty handed as the meeting was unsuccessful but in February 2002, they returned to Russia but time going along with Mike Griffin, an expert who had worked for CIA’s venture capital arm as well as NASA’s jet Propulsion Laboratory.

During the meeting, they took Elon Musk seriously because of the presence of Griffin and decided to sell a rocket for the price of $8 million which Elon Musk saw as being too expensive and he angrily walked away from the meeting. In the flight back from Moscow, Musk realised that he could start uo his own company which would build the affordable rockets he needed. He mad calculations as to how much the raw material would cost to build a rocked and realised that it cost only 3% of the price he was given at Russia and that was the birth of SpaceX.

Falcon Heavy leaving the earth's crust

Since the creation of SpaceX, a lot has happened with the company and they have been able to achieve a lot of feats, one of which is the recent successful launch of the Falcon Heavy on the 6th of February 2018, carrying Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster into space.

Forth Project: Tesla Project

Tesla Inc. which was originally called Tesla Motors was incorporated by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003 and is based in Palo Alto, california. They both were very active and played active role in the companies’ early development before Elon Musk assumed the position of the Chief Executive Officer, CEO.

Tesla Model S

The company’s area of specialty was in the manufacture of electric cars, lithium-ion batteries and photovoltaic panels.
Elon Musk took over the activities of the company and oversaw the production of the Roadster. The company first built an electric sports car in 2008 after which they produced the Model S sedan which had four doors on the 22nd of June 2012 and then the Model X.

Fifth Project : SolarCity project

SolarCity is a company founded by Elon Musk and co-founded by his cousins, Lyndon and Peter Rive in 2006. It became the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States and was acquired by Tesla in 2016.

One of Elon Mussk's SolarCity Projects

The reason Elon Musk funded SolarCity and Tesla was to combat global warming. Tesla felt that the dependence on crude oil and petrol caused pollution of the environment which had adverse effects on the ecosystem and so wanted to help produce an electric car which would reduce the dependence on crude oil hence reducing air pollution. Invariable, the use of generators also caused pollution and to combat this, SolarCity was created.

Other prominent projects carried out by the genius, Elon Musk, includes;

• Hyperloop project(construction of a high speed transportation system)

• OpenAI project (An artificial intelligence research company created for non-profit)

• Neuralink Project (A neurological company which will integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence)

• Boring Project (construction of a boring machine to dig tunnels which would help reduce traffic grid locks)

Aren’t these just so amazing projects, initiated and carried out by just one man? Its really amazing how our brains function when we decide to task it. Elon Musk is set to digitalize the world and make it a better place. We all have the capacity to be like Elon Musk, all we need do is reach deep down within us and unlock the full potential in us.

Till we meet again, I remain your humble tutor @sistem…Do have a lovely night rest.

Image Sources: 1. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

A big shout-out to @greenrun