Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the first business spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. Space, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of Click here to find out more launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was also one of the very first considerable financiers in, in addition to chief executive officer of, the electrical cars and truck manufacturer Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mom. He showed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a video game and offered it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he hesitated to support apartheid through required military service and because he sought the greater financial opportunities 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 economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a company that provided maps and business directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services business, X.com, which later became Pay, Friend, which focused on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to endure, humankind needs to end up being a multiplanet types. However, he was dissatisfied with the excellent expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has actually announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first stage would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for offering fast transportation between cities in the world and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as lots of as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to minimize the expense of spaceflight by establishing a completely multiple-use rocket that could take off and return to the pad it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made numerous brief flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also primary designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars and trucks, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric automobile company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.