Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, Visit this website X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first commercial 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 company Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the very first significant financiers in, in addition to ceo of, the electric cars and truck producer Tesla. Top Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Buddy and established the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a video game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he hesitated to support apartheid through required military service and due to the fact that he sought the greater economic opportunities offered in the United States. Musk participated in 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 offered maps and business directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services business, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Friend, which specialized in moving money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, mankind needs to become a multiplanet types. However, he was dissatisfied with the fantastic expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched in 2018), was created to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has 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 supplying quick transport in between cities in the world and constructing bases Additional reading on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry 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 minimize the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a fully recyclable rocket that could take off and return to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made several brief flights to check such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to unique material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electrical cars and truck company founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.