Video launched 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 Space 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, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant financiers in, as well as primary executive officer of, the electrical cars and truck producer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and established the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical cars. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He showed an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and offered it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through obligatory military service and since he sought the greater financial opportunities offered 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 established Zip2, a company that provided maps and organization directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services business, X.com, which later became Pay, Friend, which focused on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to endure, humanity has to end up being a multiplanet species. However, he was dissatisfied with the fantastic cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more inexpensive rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially introduced in 2018), was developed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Space, X has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first phase would can raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for supplying fast transport in between cities on Earth 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 sought to reduce the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a totally recyclable rocket that could take off and return to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made several short flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical automobiles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electrical car business founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.