Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X commemorating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Space 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, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also among the first considerable financiers in, in addition to ceo of, the electric automobile producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric cars and trucks. 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 developed a computer game and offered it to a computer publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he was reluctant to support apartheid through required military service and since he sought the greater financial chances readily available in the United States. Musk participated in Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred 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 service directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services company, X.com, which later became Pay, Buddy, which concentrated on moving money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to make it through, mankind has to become a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the fantastic cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more economical rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched 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 expense. Space, X has revealed the follower 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 designed for offering quick transport between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as lots of 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 establishing a fully multiple-use rocket that might lift off and go back to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of short flights to evaluate such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to unique material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electrical cars and truck company established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.