Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X commemorating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very first business spacecraft to dock with the International Area Station. Area, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the first substantial financiers in, in addition to chief executive officer of, the electrical cars and truck producer Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk established Space, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electric cars. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a computer game and offered it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through required military service and because he sought the greater financial opportunities readily 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 established Zip2, a company that supplied maps and company directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services company, X.com, which later became Pay, Friend, which specialized in moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to endure, humanity needs to become a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the terrific expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more economical rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was created to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly two times as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has actually announced the follower to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very first stage would be capable of lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft designed for supplying quick transportation between cities in the world and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring as numerous as 7 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 totally reusable rocket that could lift off and return to the pad it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made numerous brief flights to check such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric cars and trucks, and in 2004 he became one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electrical cars and truck business founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.