Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the 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 entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electrical vehicle maker Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the chief executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, that 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 developed a video game and offered it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through obligatory military service and due to the fact that he sought the higher financial opportunities readily 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that supplied maps and organization directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later became Pay, Pal, which concentrated 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 survive, humankind needs to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the fantastic expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has actually revealed the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for providing quick transportation between cities in the world and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring 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 looked for to minimize the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a fully multiple-use rocket that might take off and go back to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made several brief flights to check such innovation. 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 unique content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electrical cars and trucks, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical cars and truck business established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.