Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Area Station. Area, 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, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the very first substantial financiers in, along with ceo of, the electric vehicle maker Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a business that makes rockets Learn here and spacecraft. He ended up being the president and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electric cars. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He displayed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he looked for the higher economic opportunities 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that supplied maps and company directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later on became Pay, Buddy, which focused on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to make it through, mankind has to become a multiplanet types. However, he was dissatisfied with the terrific expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has announced the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first phase would can raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for supplying quick transport between cities in the world and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring 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 lower the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a fully multiple-use rocket that might lift off and go back to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of short 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 Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical cars and truck business established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.