Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, 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. Space, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was likewise among the very first considerable investors in, in addition to ceo of, the electrical car producer Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the primary executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electrical cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mom. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a computer game and sold it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through obligatory military service and since he looked for the greater financial opportunities offered in the United States. Musk went to 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 business that supplied maps and company directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Buddy, which focused Extra resources on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humankind needs to become a multiplanet species. However, he was disappointed with the great expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more budget-friendly rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was created to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has actually revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first stage would be capable of raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as lots of as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to decrease the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that might take off and return to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made numerous short flights to check 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 exclusive content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric automobiles, and in 2004 he became one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electrical car company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.