Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first business spacecraft to dock with the International Area 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, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the first substantial investors in, along with president of, the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and founded the spacecraft business Area, 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 automobiles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a computer game and offered it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he hesitated to support apartheid through compulsory military service and since he sought the higher economic chances readily available 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a business that provided maps and business directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services company, X.com, which later on became Pay, Buddy, which concentrated on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, humanity has to become a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the great cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more inexpensive rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was created to bring 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. Area, X has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for offering quick transport in between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as numerous 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 cost of spaceflight by establishing a fully reusable rocket that could raise off and return to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of brief flights to evaluate such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually 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 vehicle company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.