Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Area Station. Area, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant financiers in, along with ceo of, the electrical car maker Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the primary executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electrical cars. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was reluctant to support apartheid through required military service and because he looked for the greater economic opportunities offered in the United States. Musk went to Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that supplied maps and business directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later on became Pay, Pal, which focused on moving money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, humanity has to end up being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the fantastic cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Space, X has announced the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship Article source system. The Super Additional resources Heavy first stage would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for offering fast transport between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as lots of 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 decrease the cost of spaceflight by establishing a fully reusable rocket that might raise off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made a number of short flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also chief designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical cars, and in 2004 he became one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electrical cars and truck business established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.