Elon Reeve Musk FRS (born June 28, 1971) is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and engineer. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa. The interesting thing about Elon Musk is that he finished a degree in economics before he decided to study physics. He got into Stanford University but he dropped out days after because he wanted to become an entrepreneur.
By now he is well recognized all around the globe mostly because he is known as the co-founder of Tesla, Inc. But this isn’t his only contribution in the fields of engineering. He has been involved in many other projects and plays a part in a number of companies. What is particularly interesting about Elon is that he is a self-taught engineer as he mentions in a lot of his interviews. [2: Tesla, Inc. information ]
Here we are going to mention a number of his projects which changed the worlds as it is and left an inerasable mark on it. Elon’s first project was Zip2. Zip2 was a software which provided city guides to newspapers. The company was later sold for millions and he got a nice share out of it. [3: Zip2 was a company that provided and licensed online city guide software to newspapers.]
His second project is X.com which is probably an unknown company to most of people but the product of it is something that life now would probably not be the same. By merging X.com with another company they created PayPal. PayPal is now used in all spheres of society because this new virtual way of paying is rapidly taking over and is used in almost every part of the world. Via PayPal people can make online transactions which are safe and their users are trustful. Elon later left PayPal a bit before they were acquired by eBay, another huge company which changed the internet and the way of life. [4: PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. ]
After that Elon was interested in space exploration. He founded SpaceX in 2002 in attempt to lower the transportation costs and colonizing Mars. The company produced quite a few spacecrafts and rockets. They are the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft (Dragon in 2010), the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station (Dragon in 2012), the first propulsive landing for an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2015), the first reuse of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2017), and the first private company to launch an object into orbit around the sun (Falcon Heavy's payload of a Tesla Roadster in 2018). This is a huge step in space exploration and he is setting the way for future generations on how to approach space exploration. SpaceX has a number of future projects which even include transportation on earth which would replace airplanes. So called Starships would replace airplanes as the duration of the trip would be reduced by a lot. Long distance trips are said to take about half an hour. This would change transportation as a whole.
Another transportation project and probably the most known project of Elon Musk is Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Inc. (formerly Tesla Motors, Inc.) is an American automotive and energy company based in Palo Alto, California. The company specializes in electric car manufacturing and, through its SolarCity subsidiary, solar panel manufacturing. Tesla makes and sells cars which are powered by electricity and do not cause pollution. These cars are Tesla Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Roadster and Semi vehicles. Elon Musk did not found the company but he is a co-founder as he joined later. These cars are currently changing the car market and are raising in sales every day. They are getting exported to Europe more and more and will probably take over the market in a few years. The cars are made on every platform, so there is not a gas powered car that has an advantage over the Tesla models. They have incredible capabilities, they are fast, modern and are not a danger to the planet. Tesla models can be charged by home chargers and there are Superchargers set up all over US at the moment and will probably put them all over Europe as well. The time it takes to charge (30 minutes), it is longer than to charge gas but it is not that long to be unbearable. The battery has a projected length and can cover the mileage that is projected before it needs charging. At the moment the company is working on self-driving cars which will hopefully make transportation safer. [8: ]
Elon Musk is taking part in many more projects as SolarCity, Hyperloop, OpenAI, Neuralink , The Boring Company and such. He has even had time to venture into music. He released a rap single on April 2, named RIP Harambe.
In conclusion Elon Musk is one of the most influential people in the world at the moment. He has been involved in many projects that are changing our everyday life and he keeps on delivering new ideas that will change it even more. While others are too busy playing on their smartphones Elon Musk is sending shuttles into space, making self-driving cars and changing the world. His contribution to the society and technology as a whole cannot be diminished as the world would not be the same without him.
REFERENCES
Elon Musk : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
Tesla, Inc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
Zip2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2
Paypal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal
SpaceX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
Tesla: https://www.tesla.com/
Amir Bajraktarević, 170302090