Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Spaceport Station. Area, 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, Buddy and formed Area, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also among the first considerable financiers in, along with president of, the electrical car manufacturer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical vehicles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video 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 required military service and due to the fact that he sought the greater economic chances available in the United States. Musk went to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that supplied maps and service directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later became Pay, Buddy, which focused on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to endure, humanity needs to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the great cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more inexpensive rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first released in 2018), was created to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Space, X has revealed the successor 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 constructing 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 sought to decrease the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a completely reusable rocket that could raise off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made numerous brief flights to evaluate such innovation. 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 unique material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electric automobiles, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electric automobile company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.