ELON MUSK

Known for the most innovative inventions and projects in the 21st century, Elon Musk started with computer games, purchasing his first computer at age 10, teaching himself how to program.

After moving to Canada at age 17, he attended Queen’s University, studying business and later physics and economics at the University of Pennsylvania, before heading to Stanford University in California for his Ph.D. in energy physics. His classes were short lived, however, as the Internet caught his attention. His programs eventually were sold to Compaq Computers and he achieved more success by founding x.com, eventually selling it’s product to Pay Pal and to eBay.

Never letting his mind rest, he then turned his attention to space and founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, in 2002, building spacecraft for commercial space travel. NASA awarded SpaceX the contract to handle cargo transport to the International Space Station, a first entry for private sector corporations to compete with NASA in the race to travel back and forth to the space station, and to eventually carry human astronauts to the space station and beyond.

Musk has boundless energy seeing the potential of space exploration and the possibility of future habitation on different planets. Musk flies a Falcon 900 on many trips; he is in high demand for many news and media programs.

Other ventures Musk has challenged himself and the country to do is to create a hyperloop, a new form of transportation that would help people commute between major cities in large tubes, cutting travel time. Solar power applications in homes and businesses is also of a concern to him, and so he has negotiated contracts to add solar heating and cooling into daily life, saving energy and using the sun as its power source.

Lithium batteries are an important part of energy savings, and he has used his expertise to design and produce Tesla cars, a hybrid electric automobile, and has expanded the different models of roadsters, adding the Model S electric car in 2010.

Elon Musk was honored at the “Aviation Entrepreneur of the Year Award” in 2009 and was inducted into the “Living Legends of Aviation” in 2010.