Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, became 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 entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also one of the first substantial financiers in, in addition to ceo of, the electrical automobile maker Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the primary executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electrical vehicles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a video game and sold it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was unwilling to support apartheid through required military service and since he sought the greater economic chances available 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that supplied maps and organization directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services company, X.com, which later on became Pay, Friend, which concentrated on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, humanity has to become a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the excellent expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has 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 providing quick transport in between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as numerous 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 cost of spaceflight by establishing a fully multiple-use rocket that could raise off and go back to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made numerous brief flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars and trucks, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electrical cars and truck company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
