Anderson said of Musk, “He is the most impressive entrepreneur alive today. His ability to see which sectors will matter most, to get there with just the right timing, and to muster all the necessary skills for success in worlds as disparate as rocket design and electric cars is inspiring to all of us, and of benefit to the world. His successes justify our optimism.”

In giving the award, Anderson noted Musk’s early successes with PayPal and Zip2 Corp. prior to helping create the U.S.’ largest solar panel installer, the first viable electric car company in the modern era, and the first company to achieve the launch of a payload into Earth orbit with an entirely privately developed rocket.

On receiving the award, Musk said, “As someone who has attended the FiRe conference for many years and heard some of the most prominent people in the world speak there, I feel honored to receive this award.”

Future in Review, called “the best technology conference in the world” by The Economist, exposes world experts and participants to new ideas, producing an accurate portrait of the future. The conference pioneers in bringing technology solutions to current local and global problems.

It looks like this:

The company is taking orders now, with a deposit.  Production is slated for 2011.  The whole deal seems to be contingent upon Tesla’s receiving over $300MM in TARP funds for creating the facilities, although something tells me that this is just Elon being opportunistic: he’d go ahead with or without TARP, although why the government wouldn’t want someone like Elon to succeed in this day and age – well, they just would.

I have fingers crossed that he will drive the sedan (and maybe the Roadster, too) down to FiRe 2009 in May

www.futureinreview.com

and show it off a bit.  Last time, he ended up selling a handful of Roadsters at around $100k, so who knows how many S’s he might sell at FiRe, at a post-rebate price of s$50k?

Beautiful design, Elon, and best of luck to everyone involved.  The world needs these cars, sooner rather than later.

Given all of the difficulties around the world, I thought it would be worth talking about something upbeat, and I easily found three subjects. 

The first: SNS Project Inkwell (www.projectinkwell.com) and a recent, successful trip made to Mexico (I’ll write a separate blog on this, with a few pictures);

The second: The difference in the economic roles between venture investing and Wall St.  While the vampire investors have been busy trying to extract money without adding value, it has been the venture community that has provided the greatest productivity to the U.S. economy.  In my world, IP is valuable, not only as Intellectual Property, but as the combined values of Intellectual Honesty and Productivity growth which the venture community has traditionally provided.

Finally, I listed some of my personal heroes, and how they represented these values added, focusing on a short list of Craig Venter, Larry Smarr, Elon Musk and the investor Vinod Khosla.

These are some of the people who, in the midst of corruption and tragedy, are providing the new tools for the next steps of our civilization.  Their work keeps me optimistic.

This history-making effort comes as the fourth launch attempt for the new SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket; the company has launches scheduled going forward for this LEO-oriented satellite launcher, even as it continues development on two versions of the nine-engine Falcon 9.

Here are our conversations from today, including a url you can use to see it for yourself:
From: mark r. anderson [mailto:mark@stratnews.com]
Sent: Sunday, September 28, 2008 7:06 PM
To: Elon Musk
Subject: Congratulations!!

Hi Elon,

We just got to Mexico City, and the first thing I heard on the Net
was that Launch 4 was a success.  This is a critically important
moment in the history of manned spaceflight, and it comes thanks to
the courage, independent thinking, and single-mindedness of you and
your whole crew.

Please accept our most heartfelt congratulations on this incredible
success, and may many more follow.

mark anderson
P.s. when / how do i get to see the video?

[Elon responded:]

Thanks Mark.  Here is a low res version on YouTube:

http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=To-XOPgaGsQ and attached is high res of
liftoff.

Elon

__

Many members, and many FiRe participants who have met Elon personally, will remember this day for the rest of their lives.  Space travel will be forever changed, as private companies open space to cities, universities, and private citizens, even as they cut costs for major national programs.

My congratulations again to Elon for a truly inspiring achievement.

—–Original Message—–