Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became 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, Buddy and formed Area, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was likewise among the first significant investors in, in addition to ceo of, the electric vehicle maker Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon 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 company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the ceo and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electrical automobiles. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He displayed an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a computer game and offered it to a computer publication. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through obligatory military Click to find out more service and because he sought the greater financial opportunities available in the United States. Musk participated in Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that provided maps and company directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Pal, which concentrated on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to endure, humanity needs to become a multiplanet species. However, he was disappointed with the terrific expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more budget friendly rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first released in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first stage would be capable of raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for offering fast transportation between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring 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 minimize the expense of spaceflight by developing a fully multiple-use rocket that might take off and return to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made several brief flights to check such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities Informative post of electric automobiles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electric vehicle company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.