Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating 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 firm Pay, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also one of the first substantial investors in, along with primary executive officer of, the electrical car manufacturer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft business Area, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electric automobiles. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he hesitated to support apartheid through mandatory military service and due to the fact that he looked for the greater 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that supplied maps and organization directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services business, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Buddy, which specialized in transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, humanity needs to become a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the great expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Space, 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 twice as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, 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 designed for supplying quick transport in between cities on Earth and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to reduce the cost of spaceflight by developing a fully recyclable rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of short 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 Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars and trucks, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric car business established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.