Video launched by spacecraft maker Area, X commemorating its Dragon capsule, which on May 25, 2012, became the first industrial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station. Area, X (A Britannica Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also among the first significant investors in, along with primary executive officer of, the electric cars and truck maker Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Buddy and founded the spacecraft business Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Space, 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 mother. He displayed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a video game and offered it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he was reluctant to support apartheid through compulsory military service and since he sought the higher financial opportunities available in the United States. Musk participated in Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and in 1992 he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where he got bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he founded Zip2, a company that provided maps and organization directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was bought by the computer system maker Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services business, X.com, which later became Pay, Friend, which focused on moving cash online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, humanity needs to end up Hop over to this website being a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the great expenditure of rocket Discover more launchers. In 2002 he founded Space Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more affordable rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially introduced in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Company's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. Space, X has revealed the successor to the Falcon Look at more info 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy very 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 providing quick transport in between cities on Earth and constructing bases on the Moon and Mars.
Dragon can carry as numerous as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight carrying astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk looked for to lower the expenditure of spaceflight by developing a totally multiple-use rocket that might raise off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made a number of brief flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise primary designer in developing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium membership and gain access to unique content. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest 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 electric vehicle business founded by business owners Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.