Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X commemorating 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 business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was also among the very first considerable financiers in, along with president of, the electrical cars and truck maker Tesla. Top Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and established the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He showed Browse around this site an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and offered it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was unwilling to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he looked for the higher financial chances offered in the United States. Musk participated in 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 company directories to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later became Pay, Friend, which concentrated on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, mankind needs to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the fantastic expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more inexpensive rockets.
A third 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 largest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has revealed the successor 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 fast transport in between cities in the world and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as many as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to minimize the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a totally multiple-use rocket that might raise off and return to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made a number of short flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the more info possibilities of electrical cars and trucks, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electrical car business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.