Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the first industrial 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 automobiles and spacecraft. He was also among the first considerable financiers in, as well as primary executive officer of, the electrical cars and truck producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and founded the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a video game and offered it to a computer publication. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he hesitated to support apartheid through mandatory military service and because he sought the greater economic opportunities offered 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a business that offered maps and company directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services business, X.com, which later on became Pay, Friend, which focused on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to make it through, mankind has to become a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the great expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has actually revealed the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first phase 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 fast transportation between cities in the world and building bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as numerous as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to minimize the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a completely multiple-use rocket that might take off and return to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of brief flights to evaluate such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. 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 on renamed Tesla), an electrical car business established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.