SpaceX Presentation
What: The second presentation in the Engineering Excellence in the 21st Century Distinguished Lecture Series Elon Musk, founder and CEO of SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies When: Tuesday, February 21, 2006, 7:30 p.m. Where: Burruss Hall Auditorium on the Virginia Tech campus Cost: Free SpaceX is developing a family of launch vehicles intended to reduce the cost and increase the reliability of access to space. With its Falcon 1, Falcon 5 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles, SpaceX is able to offer light, medium and heavy lift capabilities to deliver spacecraft into any inclination and altitude, from low Earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit to planetary missions. The first Falcon 1 rocket is scheduled for liftoff in February. The customer for the mission is the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force. The payload will be the FalconSat-2, part of the Air Force Academy's satellite program to measure space plasma phenomena, which can adversely affect space-based communications, including GPS and other civil and military communication. SpaceX is the 3rd company founded by Elon Musk. Prior to SpaceX, he co-founded PayPal, the world's leading electronic payment system. Mr. Musk was the largest shareholder of PayPal until the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002. Before PayPal, Mr. Musk co-founded Zip2 Corporation in 1995, a leading provider of enterprise software and services to the media industry. In 1999 he sold Zip2 to Compaq for $307 million in an all-cash transaction. Mr. Musk's early experience extends across a spectrum of advanced technology industries, from high energy density ultra-capacitors at Pinnacle Research to software development at Rocket Science and Microsoft. He holds a degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, a business degree from Wharton and originally went to California to pursue graduate studies in energy physics at Stanford. Presentation is free and open to the public. Doors open at 7:00 p.m.
