Bloomberg Billionaires Index - Elon Musk - Bloomberg.com

Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space 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 lorries and spacecraft. He was also among the very first considerable financiers in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla. Top Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon 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 became the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical vehicles. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through obligatory military service and due to the fact that he looked for the higher 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 established Zip2, a business that offered maps and service directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later on became Pay, Buddy, which focused on 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 endure, humankind has to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the terrific expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more budget-friendly rockets.

A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first released in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Business's Click for info Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Space, X has announced the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for supplying fast transportation in between cities in the world and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.

Dragon can bring as numerous as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to decrease the cost of spaceflight by establishing a completely reusable rocket that might raise off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made numerous short flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also chief designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to unique material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars and trucks, and in 2004 he ended elon musk children up being one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric vehicle business established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.