Elon Musk rated world’s 54th-richest man
SOUTH African-born Elon Musk has been ranked as the 54th-richest person on the planet by Forbes Magazine in its list of billionaires for this year.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos topped the list with a fortune of $112-billion (R1.3 trillion).
Musk‚ who is the Tesla electric car manufacturer and SpaceX founder‚ was ranked at 54 with a net worth of $19.9-billion (R236-billion).
Musk launched a Tesla car into space aboard one of his heavy Space X lift rockets last month.
Originally from Pretoria‚ he moved to Canada at the age of 17 to study at Queen’s University in Ontario.
He transferred to the University of Pennsylvania after two years and earned bachelor’s degrees in physics and business.
Forbes placed Nicky Oppenheimer as the richest South African at No 202, with a net worth of $7.7-billion (R92-billion).
Johann Rupert is deemed the second-richest man in the country at No 228 on the list, with a net worth of $7-billion (R83-billion). South African mining magnate Patrice Motsepe was estimated to have a net worth of $2.4-billion (R29-billion).
Forbes said the 20 richest people on the list together were worth a staggering $1.2-trillion (R14-trillion).
The list was compiled using stock prices and exchange rates from February 9.
After graduating from the prestigious Ivy League school, Musk abandoned plans to pursue further studies at Stanford University.
Instead, he dropped out and started Zip2, a company that made online publishing software for the media industry.
He banked his first millions before the age of 30 when he sold Zip2 to US computer maker Compaq for more than $300-million (R3.6-billion) in 1999.
Musk’s next company, X.com, eventually merged with PayPal, the online payments firm bought by internet auction giant eBay in 2002.
After leaving PayPal, Musk embarked on a series of ever-more ambitious ventures.
He became the chairman of electric car maker Tesla in 2004 and it was a Tesla roadster that was sent into orbit on Tuesday from a Cape Canaveral launchpad.
SpaceX’s webcast showed Musk’s cherry-red car soaring into space, as David Bowie’s Space Oddity played in the background – with the words “DON’T PANIC” visible on the dashboard, in an apparent nod to the sci-fi classic the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Powering the car on its journey towards an orbit near Mars was a massive Falcon Heavy rocket built by Musk’s space exploration company SpaceX, founded in 2002.
Musk serves as chief executive and chief technology officer of SpaceX, which has become a leading provider of private space launches.
In 2012, SpaceX sent its Dragon cargo ship to the orbiting International Space Station.
After some early crashes and near-misses, SpaceX has also perfected the art of landing booster engines on solid ground and on ocean platforms, rendering them reusable.
SpaceX recently announced that two private citizens had paid money to be sent around the Moon in what would be the furthest humans have travelled to deep space since the 1970s.
Besides being the head of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk is the chairman of SolarCity, a solar panel installer recently bought by Tesla.
He has also promoted research into an ultra-fast “Hyperloop” rail transport system that would transport people at near supersonic speeds.
Musk’s jokingly named The Boring Company aims to potentially build tunnels for the Hyperloop One super-high-speed transport project.
Some of his ideas have prompted questions and he has raised eyebrows with a theory that the world as it is known may be a computer simulation.
Musk has also said he wants to make humans an interplanetary species by establishing a colony of people living on Mars. – Additional reporting by AFP