Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first business 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 business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Buddy and formed Area, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the first substantial financiers in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft business Area, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electrical vehicles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a video game and sold it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he was unwilling to support apartheid through obligatory military service and because he looked for the greater economic chances readily available 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that offered maps and company directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought 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, Buddy, which focused on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, 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 (Space, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was developed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to 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 announced the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for supplying quick transport in between cities in the world and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as numerous as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to reduce the expense of spaceflight by developing a fully reusable rocket that might raise off and return to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made several brief flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also primary designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electrical vehicles, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electric cars and truck business established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.