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 Spaceport 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 firm Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also one of the first considerable financiers in, in addition to president of, the electrical vehicle maker Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a computer game and sold it to a computer publication. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was reluctant to support apartheid through obligatory military service and due to the fact that he sought the higher economic chances 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 business that provided maps and organization directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services business, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Pal, which concentrated on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, mankind needs to end up being a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the excellent expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first stage 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 transportation between cities on Earth and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as lots of 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 fully multiple-use rocket that could raise off and go back to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect 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 content. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electrical cars and truck business established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.