In a country called South Africa, there was a boy named Elon Musk. He was six years old, and even at that young age, he was very, very intelligent. He was always very curious. He used to be very good in mathematics and science, and he was very good in English, but he was not so good in his local language, Afrikaans.
But he was a very awkward child. He didn't make many friends. He used to always fight with some children, and he had no friends except for his dad and his mom. But he was a really good friend with his daddy, and his daddy always taught him many, many things—how to make an aeroplane and all sorts of things.
Even in the young days, all he was interested in was science. In all his science projects, he used to make rockets and cars and batteries—things like that which were real. Other children used to make just model rockets, but Elon Musk would make an actual rocket. He would find things. He would read up on the internet and on YouTube how to make things, and he would find out how to make something which can fly, and then he would fire it.
One day, he made a rocket, and in a big exhibition, he was going to show it. He lit a fire under the rocket, and the rocket blasted because he had made some technical mistake. But he was not deterred by that. He said, 'I'm going to keep trying. I'll keep trying to make a better rocket.' And he kept doing that. He was just very, very interested in these things.
After that, he went to America to do college. He went to a college called Stanford. In the middle of college, he was getting very bored. He was already 18 years old, and he didn't want to study anymore. So he basically asked his college if they could give him a one-year break.
Then he met somebody else, and he said, 'What I'm going to do is this: Every time I want to give money to somebody, I have to go to the ATM machine and take out the money. I want to create a system where I can use my phone to send somebody money. I will attach my bank account, my credit card to the phone, and I'll send money to somebody.' This company was called PayPal.
And he created this system, and that company became very, very popular. A lot of people started using that application where they could send money to each other through the phone. Then he sold that company to somebody else, and he became very, very rich.
Now, he became very rich at a very young age. At only 21 years old, he already had 100 million dollars. And he said, 'Wow!' And everybody told him, 'Now you can just retire. You have so much money.' Retire means you don't need to work anymore—just use your money and spend it, travel around the world, and don't basically work. He had enough money to do that.
But he said, 'No, no. I'm too young to retire. I want to create new things.'
And they said, 'What are you going to create?'
He said, 'Now, my real, real passion and interest is rockets. So I'm going to make a giant rocket which can go to the space station. And I want to make an even bigger rocket which can go to the moon and to Mars. And I want to create a colony on Mars.'
People said, 'You're crazy! There's no rocket which can reach Mars.'
But he had 100 million dollars. So he went to Russia, and there there was this company which was selling old rockets because they used to use these rockets for firing missiles. And he said, 'Can I buy the rocket?' It was a very old rocket, and he bought that rocket for 90 million dollars. He had 100 million dollars, and he spent 90 million dollars just on the rocket. Then he used the rest of the 10 million dollars to fix the rocket. After that, he had no money.
But he was crazy. He said, 'Money doesn't matter. I just want to do what I really like, which is build a rocket.'
Then he made that rocket, and that rocket could go to space and come back. But then he said, 'I'm going to make a company out of this—a rocket company.'
But they said, 'What are you going to do with this rocket company? How will it make money? Nobody wants to go to space.'
But he realized that there is a space station in space run by NASA. So he started delivering food and clothes and water to that space station with this rocket. And then he started making money.
And then he said, 'You know what? In this rocket, the most powerful thing is the battery because this battery can store power for very, very long. So what else can use battery?'
So he made an electric car, and he called it Tesla. And he started making cars which don't run on petrol but actually run on battery. And all you need to do is take the car at the end of the day and charge it like your phone, and next morning you can ride your car. You don't need to put petrol in it.
And that became very, very popular. And his company became very big. Millions and millions of people bought that car. And then he made more money.
And then all the money that he made from the cars, he put back in the rocket company so that he could make bigger rockets and send more people. After that, he started making rockets which he could send people into space so that they can see the Earth from the top.
And this was his invention. He was such a genius. He is such a genius person that he likes to create these new things. And because of his cars, all the pollution has come down because battery cars do not emit any kind of pollution or gases or smoke.
And this way, he became the richest, richest person in the whole world. And his name is Elon Musk.
