Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first business 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, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the very first substantial investors in, as well as ceo of, the electric car maker Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and founded the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the primary executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electric cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He showed an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and offered 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 because he sought the higher 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 established Zip2, a business that offered maps and company directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Buddy, which concentrated on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, humanity has to become a multiplanet species. However, he was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has announced 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 created for supplying quick transportation between cities in the world and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as many as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to reduce the cost of spaceflight by establishing a completely reusable rocket that could take off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made several short flights to check such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in constructing 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 vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical vehicle company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.