Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Spaceport Station. Space, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South elon musk elon musk kid name Africa), South African-born American business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also among the very first substantial investors in, along with ceo 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 founded Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the ceo and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mom. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was unwilling to support apartheid through required military service and since he looked for the greater economic chances 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 received 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 papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Buddy, which specialized in transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to survive, humanity needs to become a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the fantastic cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more budget-friendly rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was developed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its biggest rival, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has actually revealed the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would can raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, More help a spacecraft designed for supplying fast transport between cities on Earth and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as lots of 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 minimize the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a completely reusable rocket that could raise off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Grasshopper rocket made numerous brief flights to evaluate such innovation. 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 special material. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electrical cars, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electrical car business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.