While on a vacation to native South Africa, Elon Musk had a near-death experience. He suffered from cerebral malaria and took 6 months to recover.
Who doesn't know the name of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, who is all set to takeover the microblogging site, Twitter. Elon Musk, who has reached the peak of his career at a comparatively young age, had his own share of struggles and failures to finally reach this position where he is today.
At first glance, the resume of the famous industrialist, investor and engineer Elon Musk can impress you. But it would be hard to believe that the charismatic and very successful tycoon failed many times during his lifetime. His ideas, initially termed dreams by many, have turned into realities.
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Elon Musk has mostly acquired his wealth through investments and the stock market. E-cash (PayPal), electric cars (Tesla), rocket technology (SpaceX), and energy services (SolarCity) tell the story of his achievements. But before reaching the peak, Elon Musk had to go through many lows.
Low-points in Elon Musk's life
(Image Source: IANS)
Elon Musk was born in South Africa to an engineer father and a model mother. He was always buried in books and computers. Musk was never much of a social being. He was younger and weaker than other students, making him an easy target for bullies.
In one such childhood incident, he was thrown down a staircase and beaten afterwards, so much that he had to be hospitalised. He sustained an injury because of which he has trouble breathing even now.
Not many know that Elon Musk had applied for a job at Netscape, one of the leading tech-companies at that time. However, he did not receive any reply as he had no background in computer science. He had degrees in economics and physics from Wharton School.
Elon Musk founded X.com, an online-payment company which went on to become PayPal. In April 2000, Musk was made the CEO of the company. Soon after, he got into an argument with the then CTO. The disagreement eventually resulted into his ousting as CEO from PayPal, while he was on his honeymoon.
Near-death experience
While on a vacation to his native country South Africa, he had a near-death experience. He suffered from cerebral malaria, a complication of Plasmodium falciparum malaria, which has a 20% mortality rate even if treated. It took him six months to recover.
Son's sudden death
Elon Musk had his first son with his long time girlfriend and first wife, Justine Wilson, in May 2002. They named him Nevada Alexander. But he died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at the age of 10 weeks. By the time paramedics got there, he had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was brain dead.
SpaceX crisis
In June 2002, Elon Musk founded SpaceX, with an objective to lower space transportation costs and make Mars colonisation a reality. Elon Musk invested a lot of money which he got from the sale of PayPal into SpaceX. The company’s first three launches failed leading to investors worrying. They only had enough money for one more launch and were almost at the verge of bankruptcy.
The fourth launch was a huge success, and as a consequence SpaceX received a contract from NASA for USD 1.6 billion. SpaceX was sending rockets to space at one third the cost of any other agencies in the business. Elon Musk had gone all out for the SpaceX launch which, fortunately for him, turned out to be a success.
Close to shutting down Tesla
Elon Musk founded Tesla Motors in 2003, a company aimed to produce cost-efficient electric cars. The company's first electric car was Roadster, a high performance vehicle but not very cost-efficient. The launch was delayed and the company also faced severe financial issues, coming very close to shutting down.
By his own admission, 2008 was the worst year of his life. The car was costing almost double the predicted price, thereby making the funds insufficient. Elon Musk had to make an important decision - either put all his life's savings into the company or see his company fade away.
He decided to put everything. The gamble turned out to be lucky for him as the car received great reviews for its performance.
Visionary thinking
(Image Source: Reuters)
Apart from the CEO and Chief Engineer of the company, he is an expert in manufacturing storage batteries. His thinking is very different from the rest of the industrialists of the world. It is believed that Elon Musk has a large fan base due to his visionary thinking.
While many of his plans proved unsuccessful, he also has many achievements to boast of. His achievements include 16 orbital class rockets that completed the mission and made a successful landing on Earth. Two of these were rockets that took off for the second time.
Elon Musk believes in reusing of things. According to him, space travel is expensive because once used, the aircraft is not used again. He says that why can't space rockets be made like passenger airplanes, whose expense is mostly because of fuel.
Companies Elon Musk owns
SpaceX CEO and CTO
Tesla Inc CEO and Product Architect
Chairman of Solar City
Co-Chairman of OpenAI
Founder Neuralink
Co-Founder PayPal
Elon Musk wants to take people to Mars
In the year 2016, Elon Musk claimed that he wanted to settle on Mars. He told the whole world about his plan. According to his plan, he will take 100 people to Mars at a time and will help in their settlement there. For this a huge spacecraft will have to be built. Even the cost of a man's going to Mars will not exceed more than USD 1 lakh dollars.
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 "How Elon Musk transformed his failures into success")
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