Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first business 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 firm Pay, Buddy and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the very first significant financiers in, in addition to president of, the electrical vehicle producer Tesla. Top Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and established the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electric cars. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a video game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he was reluctant to support apartheid through compulsory military service and because he looked for the greater economic opportunities readily available in the United States. Musk attended 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 established Zip2, a business that offered maps and organization directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later became 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 persuaded that for life to make it through, humankind needs to become a multiplanet types. However, he was disappointed with the excellent expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was created 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 cost. Area, X has actually announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for offering fast 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 sought to reduce the expense of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that could take off and return to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made several short flights to evaluate such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he ended up being one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical vehicle company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.