Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first commercial 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, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the very first substantial investors in, in addition to chief executive officer of, the electrical vehicle manufacturer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the chief executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electric cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He showed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a computer game and offered it to a computer publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was reluctant to support apartheid through mandatory military service and since he looked for the greater financial opportunities offered 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 company that provided maps and business directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later became Pay, Buddy, which specialized in transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to endure, humanity has to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the great cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more economical rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially introduced in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has revealed the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing fast transport in 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 carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to lower the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a fully reusable rocket that might lift off and return to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of brief flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electrical vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electric cars and truck company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.