Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first commercial 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 company Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of Helpful site launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the very first significant investors in, as well as president of, the electric car producer Tesla. Top Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and founded the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the primary executive officer and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electrical cars. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. 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 acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through mandatory military service and since he looked for the greater economic chances available 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 company that supplied maps and business directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services business, X.com, which later on became Pay, Pal, which focused on transferring money online. The online auction e, diigo.com/0o11hr Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, humanity needs to end up being a multiplanet types. Nevertheless, he was disappointed with the fantastic expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest rival, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very 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 elon musk providing fast transportation between cities on Earth and building 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 ISS in 2020. Musk sought to decrease the expense of spaceflight by developing a totally multiple-use rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made several short flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to unique material. Subscribe Now Musk had 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 relabelled Tesla), an electric car business founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.