Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, became the very 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 business owner who cofounded the electronic-payment company Pay, Friend and formed Area, X, maker of launch cars and spacecraft. He was also among the first considerable investors in, as well as ceo of, the electric vehicle producer Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft company Area, X.
Elon Musk founded Area, X, a business that makes rockets and spacecraft. He became the ceo and a significant funder of Tesla, that makes electric cars and trucks. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mother. He showed an early skill for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he developed a video game and sold it to a computer 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 due to the fact that he looked for the greater financial opportunities readily 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 received bachelor's degrees in physics and economics in 1997.
In 1995 he established Zip2, a company that offered maps and company directories to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer system manufacturer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then established an online financial services company, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Friend, which focused on transferring cash online. The online auction e, Bay bought Pay, Pal in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long persuaded that for life to survive, humanity needs to become a multiplanet species. Nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the excellent cost of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded Area Expedition Technologies (Area, X) to make more budget friendly rockets.
A third rocket, the Falcon Heavy (initially released in 2018), was created to carry 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, nearly twice as much as its largest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the expense. Space, X has announced the successor to the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy: the Super Heavy, Starship system. The Super Heavy first phase 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 transport between cities on Earth and developing 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 establishing a fully multiple-use rocket that could take off and go back to the pad it launched from. Starting in 2012, Area, X's Insect rocket made a number of brief flights to evaluate such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was also chief designer in building the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to special content. Subscribe Now Musk had long had an interest in the possibilities of electrical cars, and in 2004 he turned into one of the significant funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical automobile company founded by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
