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  • Essay / The Life and Achievements of Elon Musk

    Throughout this essay I will discuss the life and achievements of Elon Musk's life-changing inventions. I chose Elon because of his amazing, creative and futuristic inventions. Elon is such an inspiration in the world of physicists in my opinion. He overcame what seemed like the “impossible” which I will talk about throughout this essay. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essayElon was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. The South African native born to his mother Maye and father Errol. Her mother was a Canadian-born model and dietitian. His father was an electromechanical engineer also born in South Africa. Elon was the oldest of two siblings. His brother Kimbal and his sister Tosca. At age ten, Elon's parents divorced and Elon, spending most of his time with his father, traveled around South Africa. Errol was allegedly abusive and cruel to children, particularly Elon and his brother Kimbal, often lecturing both brothers for several hours. Although young Elon had a difficult childhood, he managed to make a few friends in the difficult culture he grew up in. Elon thought he had made a good group of friends, but he was continually bullied, saying, "They asked my best friend to pick me up." I came out of hiding so they could beat me up. And it hurt. For some reason they decided it was me and they were going to come after me all the time. This is what made growing up difficult. For several years there was no respite. At school, we'd get chased by gangs trying to beat me up, and then I'd come home, and it would be just horrible there too. The only way Elon could escape the bullying and harassment was through technology. Elon attended Waterkloof House English Preparatory School. Later graduating from Pretoria Boys' High School, Elon's first technological asset was the VIC-20 (an expensive personal computer). Soon after, his intelligent self created the program/game "Blastar", a video game with the same concept of "space invaders". He sold this “code” for the game for an astonishing $500. He moved to Canada at the age of 17 and later obtained Canadian citizenship to better abstain from the South African military whose main objective in the 1980s was apartheid (a policy or system segregation or discrimination based on race). After studying at Queen's University, he went to the University of Pennsylvania. At the University of Pennsylvania, he had two majors, a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the Wharton School. Both majors had a huge impact on his future plans. Physics is what sparked his way of thinking and his impression of daily life. As he said, “physics is a good framework for thinking, you have to boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason from there.” While in school, in order to pay for his studies, he sold computer parts and complete PCs for some extra money. People on campus would bring their virus-filled computers to him and he would fix them. At university, he was known for being able to solve any computer problem. His entrepreneurial spirit grew significantly when he and a friend he met at college (Ressi) had a great idea. They would buy a made-up old ten-bedroom fraternity house. During the week, Musk and Ressi decided to devote these days to studying. On weekends, they transformed the house of tenrooms in nightclubs. Cover the windows with trash bags and other decorations, making the house black. They would invite about five hundred people to come party and drink for $5 each, making an incredible profit, up to $2,500 per weekend, to help profit from future inventions. They had a second home, it had fourteen rooms. They arranged the tables by placing plywood on empty barrels, also used for a “party house”. Elon said he would have the occasional vodka and diet coke. Every weekend he hoped he could earn enough money to pay his rent for the month. At age 24, he moved to Palo Alto, California to pursue a doctorate in applied physics at Stanford University. After just two days in the program, he left his studies to pursue new entrepreneurial ideas. Musk and his younger brother Kimbal, with $28,000 in hand, launched "zip2", which provided, licensed and helped newspapers develop an online city guide. Even though Elon wanted to become CEO of the company, the board wouldn't let him. The board sold the company for $307 million, plus some $34 million. He got 7% ​​of the sale, or $22 million. Soon after, he co-founded the company "X-.com", which was an online banking account. He used ten million from the sale of Zip2. Later, the dotcom bubble burst and tech companies closed their doors. He bought the company Confinity (another online banking tool) and its money transfer service called “Paypal”. Paypal has quickly become the most important part of X.com. Soon after he realized he renamed x.com, paypal in 2001. Paypal quickly became the most used payment method. Once again, the boardroom removed Elon as CEO, leading to yet another sale of another company. He sold his Paypal service to Ebay in 2002 and received $165 million for his 11.7% stake in the company. In 2001, he went to Moscow to purchase an ICBM, which he could convert to carry payloads into space. . Elon and his advisors failed to see eyes on them and he did not continue. He tried again in 2002, but failed again because Russian aerospace companies wanted what was way beyond his budget. On his trip back to America, he thought about starting a company to build affordable rockets using vertical integration and modular engineering. All his ideas came to fruition and he launched “Space X” in 2002 with the mission of being able to create a “true space civilization”. He invested $100 million to launch this mission. Its first project was "Falcon 1", setting a record in 2009, being the first privately funded liquid-filled rocket to launch a satellite into Earth's orbit. Along the way, SpaceX continued to make history. In 2012, SpaceX Dragon docked with the International Space Station. In 2015, the same rocket made history again when the company managed to successfully land the first stage of the Falcon rocket on the launch pad. To make all this possible, NASA gave Spacex $1.6 billion to fund missions. Musk did not slow down and decided to take on another major project. In 2003, Tesla Motors Inc. was just getting started. Two guys, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, started this company but failed to hold the first round of financing in 2004. At that time, he came to power by investing $7.5 million in the automaker. He already had ideas.