Elon Musk - Royal Society

Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first business 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 entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Buddy and formed Area, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was also among the first substantial investors in, as well as president of, the electric vehicle producer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft business Space, X.

Elon Musk founded Space, X, a company that Click here for more info makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the chief executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electric cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mom. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a video game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was reluctant to support apartheid through compulsory military service and due to the fact that he looked for the greater financial 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 business that supplied maps and company directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services business, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Pal, which concentrated on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in Continue reading 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humankind has to become a multiplanet types. However, he was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more budget-friendly rockets.

A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its biggest competitor, 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 offering fast transport in between cities on Earth and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.

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Dragon can carry as lots of as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley Hop over to this website and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to reduce the cost of spaceflight by developing a fully multiple-use rocket that could lift off and go back to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made several short flights to check such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also 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 been interested in the possibilities of electric vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electric cars and truck company founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.