Video launched by spacecraft maker Space, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. Space, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was likewise among the very first significant investors in, as well as ceo of, the electrical vehicle maker Tesla. Top Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and founded the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the president and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and sold it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through compulsory military service and because he looked for the higher economic opportunities offered 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 established Zip2, a company that provided 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 founded an online monetary services business, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Pal, which focused on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to endure, mankind has to end up being a multiplanet species. However, he was disappointed with the excellent expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more budget-friendly rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced 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. Space, X has actually announced the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first phase would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for providing quick transport between cities in Homepage the world and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as lots of as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to reduce the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a totally reusable rocket that might take off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of brief 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 gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electric vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electric car business established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.