Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being 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 entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm Pay, Pal and formed Area, X, maker of launch automobiles and spacecraft. He was likewise one of the first significant investors in, as well as ceo of, the electric cars and truck producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment firm Pay, Buddy and established the spacecraft business Area, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the primary executive officer and a significant funder of Tesla, which makes electrical cars. Musk was born to a South African dad and a Canadian mother. He displayed an early skill for computers and follow this link entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a computer game and offered it to a computer system magazine. In Home page 1988, after getting a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa since he hesitated to support apartheid through obligatory military service and since he sought the higher economic chances readily available in the United States. Musk attended 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 business that provided maps and service directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services business, X.com, which later became Pay, Friend, which specialized in moving money online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Buddy in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to endure, humankind has to become a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the great expense of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first launched in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Space, X has revealed the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first stage would can raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for supplying fast transport between cities in the world and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as numerous as 7 astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to decrease the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a fully recyclable rocket that might take off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made Check out here a number of brief flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was also primary designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars and trucks, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later relabelled Tesla), an electric vehicle company established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.