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Elon Musk: A Founder of Spacex

Elon Musk developed an interest in computers at age 10 and sold his first computer game at age 12 for $500. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and used $28,000 from his father to co-found Zip2, an online city guide sold to Compaq for $307 million. Musk used the money to co-found X.com, which merged with PayPal where he became the majority shareholder. In 2002, Musk conceptualized a Mars colony and founded SpaceX with the goal of making space travel more affordable and commercial by building reusable rockets. After early rocket failures, SpaceX's Falcon 1 became the first privately-developed rocket to achieve Earth orbit in 2008.

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848 views2 pages

Elon Musk: A Founder of Spacex

Elon Musk developed an interest in computers at age 10 and sold his first computer game at age 12 for $500. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and used $28,000 from his father to co-found Zip2, an online city guide sold to Compaq for $307 million. Musk used the money to co-found X.com, which merged with PayPal where he became the majority shareholder. In 2002, Musk conceptualized a Mars colony and founded SpaceX with the goal of making space travel more affordable and commercial by building reusable rockets. After early rocket failures, SpaceX's Falcon 1 became the first privately-developed rocket to achieve Earth orbit in 2008.

Uploaded by

Viraj 36221201718
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Elon Musk: a Founder of Spacex

At the age of 10 Elon Musk developed interest in computers. Musk created a game
called blaster at the age of 12 he sold its game to magazine for $500. He studied
physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. With $28,000 of his
father money, Musk and his brother Kimbal started zip2, which is web startup that
provides city travel guides to newspapers. Later in 1999, they sold zip2 to Compaq
computers for $307 million, earning Musk $22 million. He invested more than half of
his earning to co-found X.com, and online banking services. The company quickly
merged with its rival and became PayPal, with musk at the majority shareholder.

In 2001, Musk conceptualized a project to land a miniature experimental greenhouse


on Mars. In 2002, eBay bought PayPal and musk walked away with $180 million. Musk
traveled to Russia to buy refurb intercontinental ballistic missiles, also known as
ICBMs to send colony of mice to Mars. Russian offered to sale one rocket at $8 million
USD, Musk felt it was arti cially overpriced. They even taunted Elon Musk that “oh
little boy don’t have the money?” Musk Replied “I think we can build a rocket
ourselves” and then stormed out of the meeting.

On the ight back from Moscow, he realized that he could start a company. That
could build the affordable rockets he needed. Musk calculated that the raw materials
for building a rocket actually were only 3 percent of the sales prices of rocket at the
time.

SpaceX could cut launch price by a factor of ten and still enjoy a 70 percent gross
margin, with $100 USD, Musk founded SpaceX, in May 2002, with the intention of
building spacecraft for commercial space travel. In 2006 the rst SpaceX rocket failed
in just 33 seconds after lift-off. In 2007 and in 2008 the 2nd and the 3rd chance to
establish company’s credibility also ended in failure. The 3rd Failure almost killed the
company. Musk had money that could only found the 4th launch. On 28th September
2008. The 4th falcon 1 Rocket was successfully launched and achieved earth orbit.

History was made, Falcon 1 become the rst privately developed liquid fuel rocket to
orbit the earth. On December 23, 2008 NASA awarded SpaceX $1.6B Dollar contract to
handle cargo transport for the international space station, with plans for astronaut
transport in the future. In a move to replace NASA’s own space shuttle missions. In
2011 SpaceX publicly announced reusable launch system development program. After
few failure attempts.
SpaceX achieved a successful landing and recovery of a rst stage in December 2015.
In March 2017, SpaceX relaunched the used rocket and brought it back by landing it in
the ocean. All rockets are designed to burn up reentry, it can also successfully land
back on earth and re y again. Musk believes a fully and rapidly reusable rocket is
needed to reduce the cost of space travel. And in time, Musk wants to build a city on
the red planet.

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