Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the first commercial 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 firm Pay, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the very first significant financiers in, along with president of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla. Leading Questions, 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 established Area, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a major funder of Tesla, which makes electric vehicles. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He showed an early talent for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a computer game and sold it to a computer magazine. In 1988, after acquiring a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was unwilling to support apartheid through obligatory military service and because he sought the higher financial opportunities readily available 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 got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a business that offered maps and business directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online financial services company, X.com, which later ended up being Pay, Pal, which focused on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to endure, humanity has to become a multiplanet types. However, he was disappointed with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more cost effective rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first released in 2018), was developed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Area, X has revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy 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 offering fast transportation in between cities in the world and building 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 minimize the cost of spaceflight by developing a totally recyclable rocket that could lift off and go back to the pad it launched from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made several short flights to check such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electrical automobiles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electrical car company established by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.