Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Area Station. Space, 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 Area, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was likewise among the first substantial investors in, in addition to ceo of, the electrical automobile maker Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and founded the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the primary executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mom. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and offered it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was unwilling to support apartheid through compulsory military service and due to the fact that he sought the higher financial chances readily available 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/13175333/958397822.jpg.jpg)
In 1995 he established Zip2, a company that supplied maps and service directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services business, X.com, which later became Pay, Friend, which focused on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to endure, humankind needs to become a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the fantastic expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more budget friendly rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has actually revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy 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 developed for providing fast transportation in between cities in the world 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 decrease the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a completely multiple-use rocket that might lift off and go back to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of short flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also primary designer in building 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 major funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electric cars and truck business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.