Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first commercial 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 entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first substantial financiers in, in addition to president of, the electrical vehicle maker Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He showed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a video game and offered it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he was unwilling to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he looked for the greater economic chances readily 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 company that provided maps and organization directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services business, X.com, which later on became Pay, Buddy, which specialized in moving money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to make it through, humanity needs to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the excellent cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more budget friendly rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business'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 phase would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for supplying fast transport in between cities on Earth and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as numerous as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to decrease the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that could take off and go back to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made a number of short flights to check such innovation. 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 exclusive content. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical automobiles, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical car company established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.