Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first business 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 business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was likewise among the first substantial investors in, in addition to primary executive officer of, the electric cars and truck producer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and founded the spacecraft business Area, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical automobiles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through required military service and since 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a business that provided maps and organization directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services business, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Friend, which focused on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to endure, humankind has to become a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the terrific expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more budget-friendly rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first stage would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for supplying fast transport in between cities on Earth and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry 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 decrease the cost of spaceflight by developing a fully multiple-use rocket that could take off and return to the pad it released from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made numerous short flights to evaluate such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he became one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electrical car business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.