How Elon Musk Became Elon Musk: Elon Musk's Early Years

Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first business spacecraft to dock with the International Area 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 company Pay, Buddy and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the first substantial read more investors in, along with chief executive officer of, the electrical car producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal 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 significant funder of Tesla, that makes electrical vehicles. 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 offered it to a computer system magazine. In Additional resources 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through required military service and because he looked for the greater economic chances available 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.

In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that offered maps and business directory sites to online newspapers. 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 ended up being Pay, Buddy, which focused on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity needs to become a multiplanet species. However, he was dissatisfied with the terrific expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more inexpensive rockets.

A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was created to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, 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 can More help raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for providing quick transportation in between cities on Earth and constructing 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 lower the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a fully multiple-use rocket that might raise off and return to the pad it released from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made numerous brief flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Click for more Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to exclusive material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical automobiles, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electrical automobile business established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

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