Elon Musk Recommends 12 Books That Changed His Life

1. Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Area 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, Buddy and formed Area, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the first significant financiers in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric automobile manufacturer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft company Space, X. Elon Musk established Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the president and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electrical vehicles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mom. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and offered it to a computer publication. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he hesitated to support apartheid through required military service and due to the fact that he looked for the greater economic chances readily available in the United States. Musk participated in Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997. In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that offered maps and company directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services business, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Pal, which specialized in transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity needs to become a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the excellent expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more budget-friendly rockets. A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first phase would be capable of raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for supplying fast transport between cities in the world and developing bases on the Moon and Mars. Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to minimize the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that could raise off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made several brief flights to evaluate such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also primary designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electric automobiles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electric car company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.