Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first business spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. Area, 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 Area, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was also among the first substantial investors in, along with primary executive officer of, the electric automobile producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the primary executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a video game and offered it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was reluctant to support apartheid through required military service and because he sought the higher economic chances readily available 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and Helpful resources economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that supplied maps and company directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services business, X.com, which later 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 convinced that for life to make it through, mankind has to end up being a multiplanet types. However, he was disappointed with the excellent cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more inexpensive rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched in 2018), was developed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice 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 stage would be capable of raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for supplying fast transportation in between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as lots of 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 establishing a totally recyclable rocket that could take off and go back to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made numerous brief flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to exclusive material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical cars and trucks, and in 2004 he became one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electrical automobile business established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.