Video released by spacecraft maker Area, X celebrating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, became the first industrial 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 entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch lorries and spacecraft. He was also one of the very first significant financiers in, along with president of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Pal and founded the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the president and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical cars. Musk was born to a South African father Home page and a Canadian mom. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a video game and sold it to a computer publication. 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 Extra resources because he looked for the higher economic opportunities 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 business that provided maps and organization directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online monetary services company, X.com, which later on became Pay, Additional resources Pal, which specialized in 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 survive, humanity has to end up being a multiplanet species. However, he was dissatisfied with the terrific cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Space Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more economical rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially launched in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Area, X has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for supplying quick transport between cities in the world and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can bring 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 decrease the expenditure of spaceflight by establishing a totally reusable rocket that might raise off and go back to the pad it released from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made several brief flights to test such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also primary designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special material. Subscribe Now Musk had long been interested in the possibilities of electrical vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later renamed Tesla), an electric automobile company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.