Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Spaceport 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, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was also among the very first considerable financiers in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electrical car producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the chief executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric cars. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He displayed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he hesitated to support apartheid through mandatory military service and due to the fact that 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a business that offered 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 monetary services company, X.com, which later became Pay, Pal, which focused on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to endure, mankind needs to end up being a multiplanet species. However, he was dissatisfied with the great expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more budget-friendly rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Company'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 stage would can raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for providing fast transportation 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 bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to minimize the expense of spaceflight by establishing a totally recyclable rocket that might lift off and return to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of short flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also primary designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical automobiles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electric automobile company established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.