Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first industrial 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 company Pay, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the very first considerable financiers in, along with ceo of, the electric automobile producer Tesla. Top Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electrical automobiles. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a video game and sold it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was reluctant to support apartheid through compulsory military service and since he looked for the higher financial opportunities offered 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a business that provided maps and business directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services company, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Friend, which concentrated on moving money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, humankind needs to become a multiplanet types. However, he was dissatisfied with the fantastic expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially introduced in 2018), was created to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Company'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 first phase would can raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for providing fast transportation in between cities in the world and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as numerous as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to decrease the cost of spaceflight by establishing a fully recyclable rocket that might take off and return to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of brief flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electric cars and truck company established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.