Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first commercial 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, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was also one of the first substantial financiers in, along with ceo of, the electrical vehicle producer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft business Area, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the chief executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical cars. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he was unwilling to support apartheid through required military service and because he looked for the higher economic chances 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that provided maps and organization directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later on became 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, humanity needs to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the excellent expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more economical rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was created to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very 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 designed for providing quick transportation between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as numerous as 7 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 developing a totally multiple-use rocket that could raise off and go back to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of brief flights to evaluate such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electrical cars, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric automobile business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.