Elon Musk

When you think about people who are trying their best to save the earth, you might think of veterinarians, or biologists, but does an entrepreneur+inventor (in a sense) come to mind? Probably not, but Elon Musk may change all that. Born and raised in Pretoria, South Africa, Elon Musk was a creative nut from the very beginning, writing comic books in early elementary school and throughout elementary school. He was smart, too. When he was just 10, he taught himself programming, and then at the age of 12 he programmed a BASIC-based video game called Blastar, which you can still play today*. But if you think he was left alone because of his skills, you are dead wrong. He was bullied for them. (And remember: he made a entire video game.) Throughout school, he was severely bullied, and once had to be hospitalized because a group of boys had shoved him down a flight of stairs and then smashed his head into the pavement until he lost consciousness.

He moved to Canada when he was 17 to attend Queens University. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania and got an economics degree from the Wharton School and got a degree in physics from the College of Arts and Sciences. He also began a Ph.D in applied physics and material sciences at Stanford University. But surprisingly, he dropped out after two days to pursue a career in entrepreneurship. As a result, he founded Zip2, a Software Company that was later bought by Compaq for $340,000,000. That’s 340 million dollars. 340 MILLION dollars. Musk used some of that money to found X.com, which later merged into Confinity, which became PayPal and then was bought by Ebay in 2002. But that’s not the point of the story.

What I think is the hero part about him is the reason he founded SpaceX and Tesla, and made those proposals to build a greenhouse on Mars. He said that the reason he did those things revolves around his vision “that in the future, humanity will have changed.” I think that he means it in a good way. I also like how he’s thinking about ways to prevent human extinction, and one of his best ideas (I think it’s his best) is to move the human race off the globe, and onto Mars. (That’s why he proposed the greenhouse on Mars). I think that he is one of the most amazing people to walk the Earth, and he should be respected. A lot.

*Blastar