Elon Musk: What To Know About The Visionary Billionaire ...

1. Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X commemorating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first business spacecraft to dock with the International Spaceport 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, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise among the very first considerable financiers in, in addition to chief executive officer of, the electrical cars and truck producer Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft business Area, X. Elon Musk established Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the chief executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical automobiles. 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 produced a computer game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he looked for the higher financial opportunities readily 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 founded Zip2, a company that offered maps and business directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later on became Pay, Buddy, which specialized in moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to make it through, humanity has to become a multiplanet types. However, he was disappointed with the fantastic cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more inexpensive rockets. A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has actually announced the follower 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 created for supplying fast transportation in between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars. Dragon can bring as numerous as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to lower the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a fully multiple-use rocket that might lift off and go back to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made several short flights to check such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electrical cars, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electrical vehicle business founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.