Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first commercial 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 Space, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first considerable financiers in, as well as ceo of, the electric cars and truck maker Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the chief executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electrical vehicles. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a computer game and offered it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was reluctant to support apartheid through obligatory military service and since 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 Find more information Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that provided maps and service directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Friend, which specialized in transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to endure, humanity needs to become a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the great cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more economical rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was developed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has announced the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first phase would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for offering quick transportation between cities on Earth and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as numerous as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to reduce the expense of spaceflight by establishing a totally multiple-use rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made several brief 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 Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to unique content. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in Go here the possibilities of electric vehicles, and in 2004 he became one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical cars and truck business established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.