Elon Musk - Speaker - Ted

1. Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Spaceport Station. Space, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was also among the very first substantial financiers in, in addition to ceo of, the electric automobile manufacturer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft company Area, X. Elon Musk founded Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electrical cars. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He displayed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and sold it to a computer publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through compulsory military service and because he sought the greater economic opportunities offered in the United States. Musk participated in Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he moved to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997. In 1995 he established Zip2, a company that offered maps and service directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Buddy, which concentrated on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity has to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the excellent expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more affordable rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially 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 Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has actually revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first stage would be capable of raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for offering fast transport in between cities on Earth and developing bases on the Moon and Mars. Dragon can carry as lots of as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to lower the expense of spaceflight by developing a fully multiple-use rocket that might lift off and go back to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made numerous short flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical automobiles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electric cars and truck company established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.