Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Area Station. Area, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Buddy and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also among the first substantial financiers in, along with chief executive officer of, the electrical automobile producer Tesla. Top Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Buddy and founded the spacecraft business Area, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electric cars. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a computer game and offered it to a computer publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was reluctant to support apartheid through required military service and because he looked for the higher economic opportunities 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that offered maps and company directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services company, X.com, which later became Pay, Pal, which specialized in moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, mankind has to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the terrific expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was created to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has revealed the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very 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 transport between cities in the world and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as many 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 reduce the expense of spaceflight by developing a completely recyclable 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 evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also primary designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electric cars and truck company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.