TURNING SCIENCE FICTION INTO FACT
He is a dreamer, a schemer and one of the most powerful and innovative people on this planet. Originally from South Africa, Musk immigrated to Canada then the US, where he has since made his home as one of the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley.
is personal net worth has reached 12.5 billion. e visionary PayPal co-founder, Elon Musk, is taking us into the future. He is the founder and brains of the electric car company Tesla Motors and the energy providing company SolarCity.
e basic premise of both companies is to help combat global warming. In the same vein, his prototype public transportation system ‘Hyperloop’, is ready to be tested. Its goal is to span hundreds of miles, using low air pressure, with ‘capsules’ in ‘tubes’ that will transport people at up to 800 MPH.
He is also the founder and CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). SpaceX is the rst privately funded space exploration company to create a liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit, successfully launch and recover a spacecra , send a spacecra to the International Space Station, and send a satellite into geosynchronous orbit.
His latest market achievement: lithium-ion batteries made available to consumers and utilities. And up next? In late December of last year, Musk successfully launched 11 satellites into orbit and successfully returned its 15-story booster rocket, bringing him that much closer to creating his giant global high-speed internet provider with up to 4000 satellites and ful lling his dream of establishing a Mars colony with a population of 80,000 by 2040.
“It will be important for Mars to have a global communications network as well,” he says. “I think this needs to be done, and I don’t see anyone else doing it.”
