8 milestones along Elon Musk's path to become our real-life Tony Stark

Much like Tony Stark's snarky posturing for the media as he worked on planet-saving ventures, Elon Musk is literally laughing his way to the bank.Jon Favreau's inspiration for the cinematic portrayal of the fictional billionaire playboy industrialist and engineer in Iron Man is less "fictional" than one might think. Sure, there are aspects — such as the brilliantly cartoonish goatee, or bronze-and-red work attire — that are exaggerated, but everything else is a lazy daydream and bank withdrawal (or funding round) away for Musk. The native South African's most recent concept, the HyperLoop, has been making its way through the news cycle, and we figured it was high time to roadmap how the inventor and entrepreneur became our real-life Tony Stark.

1. Musk, like Stark, was born to an engineer father. He also, like Stark, was a boy genius. While his fictional counterpart entered MIT at the age of 15 — what we here on the periphery deem a success — Musk sold his first invention, a space video game called "Blastar," by the time he was 12. The $500 profit he made was but a drop in the pail in comparison to his current net worth of $2.7 billion (according to Forbes), but this taste of success drove him to the United States, by way of Queen's University in Ontario, Canada.

2. After earning two bachelor's degrees in economics and physics, he enrolled at Stanford, moving to Palo Alto, where he planned on earning a PhD in energy physics. He instead dropped out after two days (alright, so not the same as being kidnapped to Afghanistan, as Stark was — but their paths are not exactly alike) to start a company building online content publishing software for news organizations. Zip2 eventually sold to Compaq's AltaVista in 1999 for $307 million, with Musk's share at $22 million. Student loans were no longer of concern.

3. Musk started X.com in 1999, founding the website with $10 million from his recent fortune. It was at the forefront of P2P technology, what we today might more frequently associate with PayPal. But PayPal wasn't always the online transferring giant that it is today. X.com acquired a company called Confinity, which at the time operated PayPay, and a Musk-led viral growth campaign is what is hailed as the advent of its outlandish popularity. eBay eventually swooped in and acquired X.com in 2002 and all its subsidiaries for a cool $1.5 billion, $175.5 million belonging to Musk.

With his fortune firmly in place, he then embarked on his mission to save mankind.

4. While selling X.com, Musk had already began a dream project of his to land a miniature experimental greenhouse on Mars, containing crops that would be grown in Martian soil, or its regolith. This specific project was short-lived — though the dream is very much alive, as Musk has declared his intentions to retire on the red planet — due to space flight limitations in 2001.

5. This industry short-coming inspired Musk to build his own space travel vehicles, and he founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, in 2002. Their Falcon 9 launch vehicle (pictured) and Dragon multi-purpose spacecraft were such profound advancements that Nasa awarded Musk with a contract in 2008 ranging between $1.6 and $3.1 billion dollars, the final amount dependent on deliverables. These replaced its predecessor, the Space Shuttle, in 2011.

6. His most notable "hardware" to date, Musk cofounded electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors in 2003. Thus far, they have launched its first vehicle, the pricey Roadster, and its follow-up, a more affordable yet still pricey Model S. The family utility vehicle, the Model X, is expected in late 2014. While these may be high price points for the everyman, Musk sees them as a means to an end, the end being affordable, eco-friendly transportation at $30,000. These more expensive models lend in realizing the ultimate goal by providing the funding to back such ambitious projects.

7. A side project of his, SolarCity was founded in 2006. Musk acts as Chairman for the company, headed by his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive. It is the largest provider of solar power systems in the United States, its clients including eBay (pictured).

8. Finally, the Hyperloop: a proposed $6 billion project in response to the state's $70 billion California High-Speed Rail; supersonic transport between Los Angeles and San Francisco (380 miles) in 30 minutes. That is 760 miles per hour.

So, while he may not be snatching Gwyneth Paltrow out of the sky, Musk is definitely doing mankind a big solid.