The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the professional society for the field of aerospace engineering. The AIAA was founded in 1963 from the merger of two earlier societies: the American Rocket Society (ARS), founded in 1930 as the American Interplanetary Society (AIS), and the Institute of Aerospace Sciences (IAS), founded in 1932 as the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences.

The AIAA is the U.S. representative on the International Astronautical Federation and the International Council on the Aeronautical Sciences. As of 2004^[update], the AIAA has more than 35,000 members. Despite its name, the society has members among aerospace professionals worldwide, although the majority are American and/or live in the United States. Some AIAA seminars and conventions are restricted to U.S. citizens, due to security issues.

The AIAA is split to seven regions, North-East, South-East, Central, South-Central, Mid-West, West, and International. The regions are subdivided into Sections, usually based in major cities. Universities with programs in aerospace engineering or related fields may form Student Branches, which are overseen and in part funded by their parent Section.

Elon Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a South African-born American business magnate, engineer and inventor. He is best known for co-founding SpaceX, Tesla Motors and X.com, which later became Paypal after acquiring the service. He is currently the CEO and Chief Designer of SpaceX, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors and Chairman of SolarCity. While at those companies, Musk co-designed the first viable electric car of the modern era, the Tesla Roadster, a private successor to the Space Shuttle, Falcon 9/Dragon, and the world's largest Internet payment system, PayPal.

Elon Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a Canadian-American mother and a South African father. His maternal grandfather was from Minnesota, and had moved to Saskatchewan, where Musk's mother was born. His father is an engineer and his mother is an author, nutritionist and model, appearing on the cover of New York Magazine in 2011 and a Time Magazine supplement in 2010.

Musk bought his first computer at age 10 and taught himself how to program; by the age of 12 he sold his first commercial software for about $500, a space game called Blastar.