Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first industrial 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 business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Buddy and formed Area, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was Browse around this site likewise one of the very first considerable financiers in, as well as president of, the electrical vehicle maker 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 Area, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric 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 created a video game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he was unwilling to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he looked for the greater economic chances available in the United States. Musk attended Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he moved 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 papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services company, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Friend, 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. However, he was disappointed with the excellent cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Exploration Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially introduced in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to website 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 follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first phase would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for offering quick transportation between cities on Earth and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to lower the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a fully recyclable rocket that might take off and return to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of brief flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also primary designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electrical cars, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric cars and truck business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.