Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first business 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 firm Pay, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was also among the very first considerable investors in, in addition to chief executive officer of, the electrical car producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the president and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electrical cars. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mom. He showed an early skill for computers 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 due to the fact that he was reluctant to support apartheid through mandatory military service and since he looked for the higher economic opportunities 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that provided maps and service directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later on became Pay, Friend, which focused on transferring money 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 end up being a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the excellent 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 launched in 2018), was created to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its biggest rival, 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 stage 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 supplying quick transportation between cities on Earth and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to lower the cost of spaceflight by developing a completely recyclable rocket that could lift off and go back to the pad it released from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made a number of short flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and Additional info gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electric automobiles, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric automobile business established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
