Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Space 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 vehicles and spacecraft. He was likewise among the very first substantial investors in, as well as president of, the electrical vehicle maker Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the primary executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electrical vehicles. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mom. He showed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he hesitated to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he looked for the higher financial opportunities readily available in the United States. Musk attended 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 supplied maps and business directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services company, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Pal, which focused on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to make it through, humanity needs to become a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the excellent expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially introduced in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Space, 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 can raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for providing fast transportation between cities in the world and constructing 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 lower the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a fully multiple-use rocket that could raise off and return to the pad it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made several short flights to check such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electric vehicle company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.