Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the first business spacecraft to dock with the International Spaceport 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, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the first substantial financiers in, as well as ceo of, the electrical vehicle producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the ceo and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electric cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a video game and offered it to a computer publication. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he hesitated to support apartheid through compulsory military service and since he looked for the higher economic chances available 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 provided maps and organization directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online elon musk age financial services business, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Friend, which concentrated on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, humankind needs to end up being a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the fantastic cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more economical rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first released in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has actually revealed 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 providing fast transport between cities in the world and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as many as seven 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 expense of spaceflight by developing a totally recyclable rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it released from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made several brief flights to check such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars and trucks, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical cars and truck company founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.