Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first business 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 entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was likewise among the first considerable financiers in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electrical automobile producer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the president and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electrical cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He displayed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a computer 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 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 moved to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a business that offered maps and service directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services business, X.com, which later ended up being 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 persuaded that for life to make it through, mankind needs to become a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the excellent expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first released in 2018), was designed to carry 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. Space, X has actually revealed the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first phase would be capable of raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing quick transport between cities in the world and constructing 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 expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a totally recyclable rocket that could lift off and go back to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made several brief flights to check such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electric car business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.