The Mars Society announced today that SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk will present a plenary talk at the 6th International Mars Society Convention, which will be held at the Hilton Hotel in Eugene Oregon, August 14-17, 2003:
The founder of the PayPal payment system, Elon Musk is widely regarded as one of the most successful of the internet entrepreneurs to emerge from the 1990s. A long time supporter of space exploration and development, in 2001 Musk started investigating how he could make a difference in this area. The result was the June 2002 founding of SpaceX, a company devoted to reducing the cost and increase the reliability of access to space by approximately an order of magnitude.
SpaceX's first launch vehicle, named Falcon, is a mostly reusable rocket capable of placing either 1250 pounds in the standard configuration or 4000 pounds in the heavy configuration into low Earth orbit. SpaceX expects to have the Falcon physically ready for launch by late 2003, with the actual liftoff date subject to regulatory approval and other external dependencies. Following this vehicle, SpaceX plans to develop a large three-stage rocket using the first and second stages of Falcon as its second and third stages. That vehicle would compete in the heavy lift payload class occupied by Arianespace, Boeing, Lockheed, China Aerospace and Russia's Krunichev.SpaceX is privately developing the entire Falcon rocket from the ground up, including both engines, the turbo-pump, the cryogenic tank structure and the guidance system. A ground up internal development increases difficulty and the required investment, but no other path will achieve the needed improvement in the cost of access to space.
Musk will describe the progress of the Falcon program and explain SpaceX's future plans in a plenary talk on the morning of Saturday August 16.
Registration for the convention is now open at the Mars Society website at www.marssociety.org. the deadline for abstracts and reduced registration fees is June 30, 2003.
For further information about the Mars Society, visit our website at www.marssociety.org. For further information about SpaceX, visit the company website at www.spacex.com.
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