Who Is Elon Musk?
In this pandemic situation, Elon Musk earned more than $150 billion in 2020, and on 7th January 2021, he became the world’s richest man.
Elon Musk was born on 28 June 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa. His parents were divorced and he mostly lived with his father. His father was an engineer and his mother was a nutritionist, she was natively from Canada. He attended grade school at Pretoria and he was subjected to jokes at school as he was fond of reading books and was nerdy. He was also the youngest and smallest kid in the class. He was fond of comics too.
Musk was so thoughtful as a kid that his parents and doctor thought he was deaf. Then, his mother Maye Musk noticed that it was his way of daydreaming.
At the age of 10, he was given his first computer and he learned to code and at the age of 12, he coded a computer game that he sold for $500.
In 1989, he went to Canada, and then he studied at Pennsylvania University in the USA. He was mostly influenced by the internet, renewable energy, and space travel. In 1995, he founded a company Zip2 with his brother, which was basically a telephone directory much like yellow pages and this company was sold off at a high price.
Then, he founded a financial service company named X.com which merged with another company in 2000 to form PayPal. In 2001, he became the CEO and the chairman of Paypal after which it was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion.
He invested more than $100 million to start a company named SpaceX. The main objective of this company is to colonize Mars. In 2020, SpaceX became the first private company to send a person to Space.
By 2025, SpaceX plans are to send the first human being to Mars. The rockets which Spacex has are Falcon 1, 9, and Heavy and are named after the Millennium Falcon from star wars. Falcon 9 and heavy rockets both are 70 meters high. Falcon 9 can lift to 22,800 kilograms in weight and falcon heavy up to 64000 kilograms. Falcon 9 has a mass of 505806 kg and Falcon heavy of 1.421 million kg. Other than this there are many like a starship, falcon 1e, grasshopper, falcon 9v1, etc. Starship was made for the purpose that it can carry up to hundred people to mars and it was made in September 2019.
Due to his vision and ideas, he is also referred to as the real-life Tony Stark. He believes that it is not necessary to have a college degree to make a good career.
Who Is Richard Branson?
Richard Branson was born on July 18, 1950, to Edward James Branson and Eve Branson. His father worked as a barrister and his mother was a flight attendant. He suffered from dyslexia and faced many difficulties during his schooling.
At 16, he dropped out to start a youth culture magazine known as Student. The first run of fifty thousand copies was set for free and the income was earned through advertising.
In 1969, Richard had the plan for starting a mail record company called Virgin to help fund his magazine.
The company performed well enough for him to expand his business. So he opened a record shop on Oxford street. In 1972, he built a recording studio in Oxfordshire.
In 1972, when Richard Branson was 22 years old, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and Tom Newman founded Virgin Records, it was originally launched as an independent record label. It grew worldwide and gained popularity and success over time. In 1992, Virgin Records was sold to EMI. Then, EMI was taken over by Universal Music Group(UMG).
In 2021 it was announced that Virgin records will be rebranded as Virgin Music Label and Artist Services. In 1993, he founded the station Virgin Radio. In 1996, he started a record company that was signed with Powderfinger and Tom Jones.
He is also known for sporting events like Virgin Atlantic Challenger, etc.
In 2012, he and Burt Rutan founded the spaceship company for various purposes like building space ships, testing them, manufacturing spaceships, designing spaceships, and selling them.
In 2019, he was on the World Billionaires list with 2.5 billion dollars and he also owns two private islands.
On 11th July, Branson did the space tour on his own spacecraft (VSS Unity) and beat Jeff Bezos by nine days. VSS Unity looks like three airplanes are attached. It consists of a custom-built carrier aircraft and white knight two, it was the world’s first spaceship which was private and was built for space tourism. It went above the Karman line and went 86 km but according to Europe, space starts from 100 km up at the internationally recognized Karman line. It took 90 minutes and five days of preparation. It cost 1.5 crores approx, and there were 6 astronauts and two crew members.
In 2004, he had an idea to build a spacecraft and that in 2007 space tourism will be possible. He tried in 2014 but the flight crashed leading to the death of the crew.
Who Is Jeff Bezos?
Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico to Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen and Ted Jorgensen.
But after a year of marriage, they separated and Ted took responsibility for young Jeff. From a very young age, he started displaying technological proficiencies and scientific interest.
He was always preoccupied with inventing different things like a solar cooker, a robot, an eclectic alarm, and a hovercraft(it’s a vehicle that travels over land or water on a cushion provided by a downward blast). He has a sharp mind and was considered a brilliant and bright student at the school.
He graduated in 1986 from Princeton with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. His first job was with Fitel, a telecom company. He worked there for two years. Then he worked at Bankers Trust and D.E Shaw, an investment management firm on Wall Street.
In 1994, he quit his job at D.E to start Amazon. Jeff started this from his garage and his first employee was Shel Kaphan on 5 July 1994 in Washington, US.
He started Amazon as an online store and he used to pack his orders himself and deliver them to post offices. In two months, sales reached $20,000 a week and it grew faster than Bezos and his team expected to. In 1997, Amazon went public. As there was progress, it expanded to sell different things like electronics, software, video games, furniture, toys, etc.
In 1995, the sale was $510000. In 2011 it increased to $ 17 billion. In 2016, he made a cameo in the film ‘Star Trek Beyond’.
In 2018, he was listed on Forbes in the list of the World’s billionaires. In 2000 he founded Blue Origin to make space tourism possible. In 2017, he invited reporters to visit his headquarters and stated that he will see about $1 billion in Amazon stock annually to fund Blue Origin and he also described that humans will not only visit space but colonize it.
A few years later he revealed that the company was conducting test flights of its New Shepard rocket that would take tourists in a few minutes. In 2019, NASA announced that Blue Origin was among 13 companies that were chosen for collaboration on 19 technology-based projects for reaching the moon and mars.
The team of Blue Origin is developing a safe precise landing system for the moon as well as engine nozzles for rockets with liquid propellant( it is a liquid that is combustibly fed to the combustion of a rocket engine).
On 20th July 2021, Jeff Bezos went to space with Mark Bezos and Wally Funk and there wasn’t any need for staff as it was completely automatic. The New Shepard rocket took vertical take-off. It went to 100 km of height which is an internally recognized space boundary. It took just ten minutes. The landing was a capsule landing vertically with three parachutes. This rocket requires a day’s preparation and the next flight is scheduled for this year September.
Impact On Environment
During this tour, carbon emissions really impact the environment as it depletes the ozone layer. Space launchers said that it also injects particles into the stratosphere which absorb heat and reflect solar energy, heating the stratosphere and cooling the surface.
Blue Origin Rocket did not impact the environment much because it was powered by a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Due to this reason the propellants were much cleaner than conventional rocket fuel.
Branson Vss Unity Rocket uses a mix of solid and liquid propellants and Elon Musk rocket uses liquid oxygen and rocket grade kerosene , RP1. The rocket releases a lot of carbon dioxide into the air when burned. The SpaceX rocket is harmful for the environment.