Whiff of Musk
ELON Musk has made history by sending two astronauts into space in a privately built rocket for the first time. Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, below, reached the International Space Station in a craft built by the billionaire’s firm Spacex.
But that’s not the limit of Musk’s ambition – he plans to establish a human colony on Mars in case the Earth becomes uninhabitable.
Here NADINE LINGE brings you all you need to know about the eccentric entrepreneur...
Growing up in South Africa, the young Elon Musk learned to code aged 10 and two years later created and sold a video game, Blastar, for £500. He had a tough childhood – he was badly bullied at school and once had to spend weeks in hospital. He later said: “I was almost beaten to death.” Musk’s engineer dad Errol and model mum Maye divorced when he was eight. Errol would go on to marry and have a child with his stepdaughter, more than 40 years his junior. In a magazine interview, Elon branded his father a “terrible human being” who would “plan evil”. Errol denied this saying he had never intentionally hurt anyone except for an incident when he shot dead three armed people who broke into his home. He was later cleared on self-defence grounds. Aged 17, Musk moved to Canada before transferring to the US to study. In 1995 he began a PHD but dropped out to start internet business Zip2. Four years later Zip2 was sold for £270million, with Musk bagging almost £18m. His next project was online bank X.com which merged with another company and became Paypal. In 2002 Paypal was sold to ebay and Musk walked away with a cool £145m.
That year Musk founded Spacex, declaring his goal was to build a BFR, a Big F***ing Rocket, to take humans to space. He also co-founded luxury electric vehicle company Tesla Motors, now the world’s bestselling electric car. Musk’s first wife was fantasy writer and university sweetheart Justine Wilson. The pair have five sons but divorced in 2008.
Musk started dating British actress Tallulah Riley who he married and divorced twice, before a year-long relationship with Johnny Depp’s ex Amber Heard.
He is currently with Canadian singer Grimes, and the pair had a son last month called X AE A-12 (pronounced Ex ash A 12) although they had to alter it to X AE A-xii because Californian authorities don’t accept numbers for names.
He also owns The Boring Company, set up to create a network of transport tunnels under LA, and Neuralink, which aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence.