Elon Reeve Musk was born June 28, 1971, in South Africa. By the age of 12 Musk had taught himself how to program and began designing games like Blastar. In 1989, he moved from South Africa to Canada to avoid the military’s mandatory service. After studying at Queen’s University for a while he became a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Musk received his undergrad degree in economics and went on to get his Bachelor’s Degree in Physics at UPenn. After UPenn Musk did intend to continue his education at Stanford University but dropped out two days after due to the remarkable success of the Internet which he joined and created his first company on.
Musk has gone on to start a few companies his first being Zip2; an online guide. He went on to sell the company for 307 million dollars. His next startup was a payment company called X.com, many know it now as PayPal, which was later acquired by eBay. The Space Exploration Technologies Corporation also known as SpaceX was founded by Musk in 2002. SpaceX has a contract with NASA to transfer cargo to the International Space Station, ISS, and they hope to eventually be a transport system for astronauts. In 2012, SpaceX launched the Falcon 9 rocket to the ISS which carried about 1000 pounds of supplies for astronauts and since then has launched two satellites. Another company Musk has created is Tesla, which creates electric cars. Tesla’s first unveiled the Roadster in 2008 which had the ability to travel around 250 miles with its lithium battery. Since then Tesla has created electric cars like the Model S, and plans to release the Model 3 in 2017. In April of 2017 Tesla became the most valued US car maker.
Many great people have graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and many more will graduate and have an impact. Elon Musk walked the same halls many are walking today and went on to become a billionaire at the age of 25. Musk has gone on to change the world for the better and continues to do so like many UPenn alumni.
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