Media invited to University Elon Musk talk
To celebrate the centenary year of the Department of Electronic Engineering at the University of Surrey from its origin in Battersea Polytechnic to the present day, members of the media are cordially invited to attend an evening with Elon Musk on Friday 5 October. The evening, which will commence at 5pm with a drinks reception followed by talks and a fork buffet, is preceded by a daytime robotic challenge event for teams from local schools.
Elon Musk will be talking about his enterprises into the space industry. He is CEO and CTO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), which he founded in 2002, who have a 10% stake in SSTL. SpaceX develops launch vehicles and spacecraft for missions to Earth orbit and beyond. Last year, SpaceX won the NASA competition to design, build and demonstrate operation of a commercial replacement for the Space Shuttle, which retires in 2010.
Prior to SpaceX, Mr. Musk co-founded PayPal, the world's leading Internet payment system, and served as the company's chairman and CEO. PayPal currently has over one hundred million customers in 190 countries, processes tens of billion dollars per year and went public on NASDAQ in early 2002. Mr. Musk was the largest shareholder of PayPal until the company was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in mid 2002.
Elon’s presentation will be preceded by a daytime robotic challenge in which teams of ten pupils from nine local Surrey and Hampshire schools will compete to build a lunar rover robot. The robots will then compete in a number of tasks mimicking the tasks a real lunar rover would be expected to perform. Each school will be able to keep its robot and the school of the team with the winning robot will win £1,000.
For more infomation contact Peter La, Press Office at the University of Surrey, Tel: 01483 689191.
