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“I thought about what are the problems that are most likely to affect the future of the world or future of humanity.”
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Elon Musk, a South African-born engineer, inventor and billionaire, is one of the most important entrepreneurs in the world.
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But the 47-year-old is no stranger to turmoil,
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and by his own account
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his career has been full of highs and lows.
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“Just three years ago,
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I was showering at the Y and sleeping on the office floor.
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And now, obviously I've got a million-dollar car
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and quite a few creature comforts.”
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After making a fortune with his first successful startup, Zip2,
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Musk gained fame as the co-founder of PayPal in the late 1990s.
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“So this is an ATM. What we're going to do is transform the traditional banking industry.”
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The company lost hundreds of millions of dollars,
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and Musk was ousted as CEO because of internal turmoil.
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But when PayPal went public in 2002,
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and then was sold to eBay, Musk — as the biggest shareholder — walked away with $200 million.
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By the mid-2000s, Musk had turned around and invested almost all of his PayPal fortune into his new companies:
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SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity.
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With SpaceX, Musk's aspiration is out of this world — literally.
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It's a commercial space flight company,
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which designs and launches advanced rockets into space.
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“Behind me is where Falcon 9 would sit during launch.”
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One of its ambitions is to eventually send people to Mars.
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“And I can't think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”
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But it has faced some roadblocks.
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Their first three rocket launches —
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failed, burning through almost all of the company's assets.
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But SpaceX has had recent successes.
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The Falcon Heavy launch earlier this year was a big milestone and it carried an interesting payload:
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a dummy astronaut riding a Tesla car that was orbiting space.
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The company has also landed contracts with NASA,
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but questions about safety and cost remain.
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“We sold over 1,000 cars — and by sold
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I mean people put down a substantial deposit on the car.”
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Tesla, Musk's electric car company,
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is one of the first of its kind to work on a large scale.
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It has also successfully disrupted the auto industry.
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The company is valued at over $50 billion.
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The Tesla Model S has been called
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the greatest car ever built.
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But Tesla has also faced some setbacks, including
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car batteries that caught on fire, recalls and production delays.
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SolarCity, Musk's renewable energy venture,
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initially had a bright future.
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It's the largest provider of rooftop solar systems in the U.S.,
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and the company boomed on Wall Street.
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But after investors raised doubts about its business model,
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SolarCity's shares quickly lost value,
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and Tesla had to take over
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in what was widely seen as a bailout.
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“We really need to make solar panels as appealing as electric cars have become.”
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But while Musk may have been flirting with bankruptcy and calamity for years,
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his projects continue to captivate the collective imagination.
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“Life has to be more than about solving problems.
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There have to be things that make you proud to be a member of humanity.”