Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, September 15, 2003 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Elon Musk

"The Falcon Launch Vehicle -- A Starting Point for Revolutionizing Access to Space"

ABSTRACT -- Falcon is a mostly reusable, two stage, liquid oxygen and kerosene powered launch vehicle being built by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) from the ground up. The vehicle is designed above all for high reliability, followed by low cost and a benign flight environment.

Falcon in the heavy configuration can deliver over two metric tons or 4500 lbs to LEO. Upon completion of the Falcon development program, SpaceX intends to build a super-heavy lift rocket with an order of magnitude greater capability.

To minimize failure modes, the vehicle has the minimum pragmatically possible number of engines (two) and stage separation events (one), as well as dual redundant avionics.

Since the first stage is recovered via parachute to a water landing, approximately 80% of the vehicle mass is reusable as compared with 90% for the Space Shuttle. The price per launch, which nominally assumes no advantage for recovery, is $6M for a standard Falcon and $10M for a heavy Falcon. At $6M, the Falcon represents an 80% price reduction compared with the next lowest cost American launch vehicle (the Pegasus from Orbital Sciences), which has a NASA list price of $30M.

First launch is currently scheduled for January 22nd, 2004, from Vandenberg, carrying a US military satellite.

SPEAKER -- Elon Musk is CEO & Chief Technology Officer of SpaceX, which is the third company founded by Mr. Musk. Prior to SpaceX, he co-founded PayPal, the world's leading electronic payment system, and served as the company's chairman and CEO. PayPal has over twenty million customers in 38 countries, processes several billion dollars per year and went public on the NASDAQ under PYPL in early 2002. Mr. Musk was the largest shareholder of PayPal until the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in October 2002.

Before PayPal, Mr. Musk co-founded Zip2 Corporation in 1995, a leading provider of enterprise software and services to the media industry, with investments from The New York Times Company, Knight-Ridder, MDV, Softbank and the Hearst Corporation. He served as Chairman, CEO and Chief Technology Officer and in March 1999 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 has a physics degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a business degree from Wharton and originally came out to California to pursue graduate studies in energy physics at Stanford.