Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first business 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 firm Pay, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise among the very first considerable financiers in, along with president of, the electrical cars and truck manufacturer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft business Area, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electrical cars. 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 computer game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after getting 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 offered 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 offered maps and business directory sites 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 ended up being Pay, Pal, which concentrated on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity needs to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the excellent expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially introduced in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. 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 raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing fast transportation between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as many as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to reduce the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a fully reusable rocket that could raise off and return to the pad it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made several brief flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to unique material. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electrical automobiles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electric cars and truck business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.