Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being 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 business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Buddy and formed Space, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also among the first substantial investors in, in addition to president of, the electrical cars and truck producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and established the spacecraft business Area, 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 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 video game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he was unwilling to support apartheid through required military service and because he looked for the greater economic opportunities offered 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that offered maps and service directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later on became Pay, Pal, which specialized in transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, mankind has to become a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the terrific cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more inexpensive rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially introduced in 2018), was created to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Space, X has revealed the follower 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 fast transportation between cities on Earth and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to decrease the expense of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that might raise off and go back to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of short flights to test such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to exclusive material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electrical 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.
