Video launched 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 Spaceport Station. Area, X (A Britannica Take a look at the site here Publishing Partner), (born June 28, 1971, Pretoria, South Africa), South African-born American business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Pal and formed Space, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was likewise among the very first significant financiers in, along with ceo of, the electric cars and truck producer Tesla. Leading Concerns, Elon Musk was born upon June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Friend and established the spacecraft company Space, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the president and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electric cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African daddy and a Canadian mom. He showed an early skill for computers and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he produced a computer game and offered it to a computer system magazine. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa due to the fact that he hesitated to support apartheid through compulsory military service and since he sought the greater financial chances available in the United States. Musk attended 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 established Zip2, a company that provided maps and company directory sites to online newspapers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Buddy, which focused on moving cash 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 needs to become a multiplanet types. However, he was disappointed with the excellent cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he established Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more budget friendly rockets.
A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first introduced in 2018), was designed to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its largest rival, 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 can lifting 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft developed for offering fast transportation between cities on Earth and building 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 sought to minimize the expense of spaceflight by developing a totally reusable rocket that might take off and return to the pad Homepage it introduced from. Starting in 2012, Space, X's Grasshopper rocket made several brief flights to test such innovation. In addition to being CEO of Space, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Grasshopper. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long had an interest in the possibilities of electric cars, and in 2004 he became one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on renamed Tesla), an electric automobile company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.