Elon Musk: Inventor's Plans For Outer Space, Cars, Finding ...

1. Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. Area, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also among the very first substantial investors in, along with chief executive officer of, the electric automobile maker Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft business Space, X. Elon Musk established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the primary executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electrical automobiles. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a computer game and sold it to a computer publication. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was reluctant to support apartheid through obligatory military service and since he sought the greater economic opportunities available in the United States. Musk attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he moved to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997. In 1995 he established Zip2, a business that provided maps and service directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services company, X.com, which later on became Pay, Pal, which concentrated on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, humanity needs to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the excellent expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets. A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has actually revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first phase would can raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for supplying fast transportation in between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars. Dragon can carry as many as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to minimize the expense of spaceflight by establishing a completely multiple-use rocket that might lift off and return to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of short flights to check such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electrical cars and truck company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.