Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became 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 business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise among the very first considerable financiers in, along with president of, the electric vehicle maker Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the chief executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric cars. Musk was born to a South African father 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 magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was reluctant to support apartheid through compulsory military service and since he sought the higher financial chances offered in the United States. Musk went to 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 founded Zip2, a business that provided maps and organization directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Friend, which concentrated on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, humankind needs to end up being a multiplanet types. However, he was disappointed with the terrific cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was developed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has actually revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first phase 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 transportation between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as lots of as 7 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 establishing a completely recyclable rocket that might lift off and go back to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made a number of brief flights to test such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to unique material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical vehicles, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electrical car company founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.