Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very 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 entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Buddy and formed Space, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant investors in, in addition to ceo of, the electric automobile manufacturer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the chief executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electric automobiles. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer publication. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through compulsory military service and because he sought the greater financial 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a company that offered maps and company directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services business, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Friend, which specialized in transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to make it through, mankind has to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the terrific cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has actually revealed the follower 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 supplying fast transportation in between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as lots of as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to reduce the cost of spaceflight by establishing a completely reusable rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made several brief flights to test such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electric cars and truck business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.