- At his age of 12, Elon Musk created and sold a video game ‘Blastar’ to a magazine. The space fighting game was sold to PC and Office Technology magazine for $500. Musk also worked at a gaming startup called ‘Rocket Science’.
- Musk’s earliest venture was the founding of Zip2, a company that provided maps and business directories to newspapers and was later sold to Compaq for $307 million.
- Musk made his fortune in Paypal, which he founded in 1999, Paypal was then acquired by Ebay for $1.5 billion, of which $165 million was given to Musk in stocks.
- In 2002, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX. He accomplished with the launch of the Falcon 1 in 2006, the Falcon 9 in 2010 and the Falcon Heavy in 2018.
- The Falcon Heavy could carry 53,000 kg into orbit, twice as heavy as its closest competitor at nearly one-third the cost. Because of the lack of funding, Musk had to invest his own money into the development of SpaceX rockets.
- Thanks to the developments in SpaceX, Musk has managed to reduce the cost of travelling to the space station by up to 90 percent. What then cost $1 billion per mission now costs $60 million.
- Musk then became a major funder in Tesla Motors, now called Tesla. Largely uninterested in the electric vehicles then, Tesla introduced the Roadster, the car with futuristic looks and a battery with a range of 394 km on single charge.
- Both of Musk’s successes, SpaceX as well as Tesla, had come very close to failing. While the first three rockets failed to launch the fourth was a success and the Roadster went through several production problems.
- In 2010, Musk received the FAI Gold Space Medal from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale for designing the first privately developed rocket to reach orbit.
- In 2018, Musk introduced the Hyperloop, a transportation system that is theoretically capable of transporting people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 90 minutes.
- Musk is sometimes referred to as a trillionaire, a high-tech entrepreneur looking to turn science-fiction into reality. Musk also owns a James Bond custom-car called Wet Nellie. The Wet Nellie is a custom-built Lotus Esprit submarine car in the movie, the Spy Who Loved Me.
- Musk also made an appearance in The Simpsons episode, “The Musk Who Fell to Earth”.
- Recently Musk became richest person on the planet.
Interesting facts about Elon Musk
