Video released by spacecraft maker Space, X celebrating its Dragon pill, which on May 25, 2012, ended up being the very first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Spaceport 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 Space, X, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also among the very first substantial financiers in, as well as president of, the electrical car maker Tesla. Leading Questions, Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971. Elon Musk cofounded the electronic payment company Pay, Pal and established the spacecraft business Space, X.

Elon Musk established Space, X, a company that makes rockets and spacecraft. He ended up being the president and a major funder of Tesla, that makes electric automobiles. Musk was born to a South African father and a Canadian mom. He displayed an early talent for computer systems and entrepreneurship. At age 12 he created a computer game and sold it to a computer system publication. In 1988, after obtaining a Canadian passport, Musk left South Africa because he hesitated to support apartheid through obligatory military service and due to the fact that he looked for the higher financial opportunities 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 established Zip2, a business that provided maps and organization directory sites to online papers. In 1999 Zip2 was purchased by the computer producer Compaq for $307 million, and Musk then founded an online monetary services company, X.com, which later on ended up being Pay, Friend, which specialized in moving money online. The online auction e, Bay purchased Pay, Friend in 2002 for $1. 5 billion. Musk was long convinced that for life to endure, mankind needs to become a multiplanet types. However, he was dissatisfied with the great expenditure of rocket launchers. In 2002 he founded twitter elon musk Area Expedition Technologies (Space, X) to make more cost effective rockets.

A 3rd rocket, the Falcon Heavy (first Click here for info released in 2018), was designed to bring 117,000 pounds (53,000 kg) to orbit, almost two times as much as its biggest competitor, the Boeing Business's Delta IV Heavy, for one-third the cost. 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 raising 100,000 kg (220,000 pounds) to low Earth orbit. The payload would be the Starship, a spacecraft created for supplying quick transportation in between cities on Earth and developing bases on the Moon and Mars.

Dragon can carry as many as seven astronauts, and it had a crewed flight bring astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken to the ISS in 2020. Musk sought to minimize the cost of spaceflight by establishing a fully reusable rocket that might take off and go back to the pad it introduced from. Beginning in 2012, Space, X's Insect rocket made numerous brief flights to test such technology. In addition to being CEO of Area, X, Musk was likewise chief designer in constructing the Falcon rockets, Dragon, and Insect. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to unique material. Subscribe Now Musk had actually long been interested in the possibilities of electric vehicles, and in 2004 he turned into one of the major funders of Tesla Motors (later on relabelled Tesla), an electrical cars and truck company established by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.