Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, became the first business 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, Friend and formed Space, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was likewise among the very first considerable investors in, Additional reading in addition to primary executive officer of, the electrical vehicle manufacturer Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a major funder of Tesla, which makes The original source electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mom. He displayed an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and offered it to a computer publication. In 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he hesitated to support apartheid through obligatory military service and due to the fact that 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 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 company that provided maps and service directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services business, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Friend, which concentrated on transferring money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to endure, humanity needs to end up being a multiplanet types. However, he was dissatisfied with the great cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Exploration Technologies (Area, X) to make more economical rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has Discover more 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, a spacecraft created for supplying fast transportation in between cities on Earth and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the Learn more ISS in 2020. Musk sought to minimize elon musk kid name the expense of spaceflight by developing a completely multiple-use rocket that could take off and go back to the pad it released from. Beginning in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made a number of brief flights to test such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special 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 on renamed Tesla), an electric cars and truck company founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.