“We need to know how gravity really works so that we can do in the future what we see in the movies. That’s what needs to be studied here. And then in 100 years from now we will all float out of here in our cars — get in and fly home, and go to the space station without a rocket,” shared the South African engineer, businessman, and politician, father of Elon Musk, Errol Graham Musk, during his visit to Skoltech on October 29. The guest was presented with the Institute’s advanced scientific developments, told about advanced student projects, and invited to become a mentor for the “Innovation Workshop” in 2026 — Musk agreed.

During his visit to Skoltech and tour of its advanced research infrastructure, Musk shared his vision for the future and urged the study of antigravity, noting that similar research was actively conducted in the early 20th century but then ceased.

“That’s what this unit should have — a special group who gets together and say, we are the anti-gravity students. Now, the chance of them actually finding out anything is very, very, close to absolute zero, but there’s still a chance. Somebody is going to find that out somewhere in the world in the next 50 to 80. Someone somewhere like Faraday or Tesla or Einstein will come along and say this is how it’s done. It happens by chance. And so in a laboratory like this, it may be somebody like you who finds out something about gravity. Because the chances are the solutions are totally counterintuitive. They are our future,” Musk noted.

As examples, the guest cited Michael Faraday, who discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetism without a formal education, simply by eavesdropping on lectures through a window while working as a cleaner, and Otto Hahn, who, together with Fritz Strassmann, first achieved artificial fission of the uranium atomic nucleus, not yet suspecting how this discovery would change the world. All these stories, according to the entrepreneur, confirm that the future can be determined by a confluence of circumstances.

After the motivational speech, Errol Musk was told about student projects and invited to join Skoltech’s Innovation Workshop in 2026. This one-month course is mandatory for all new MSc students at the Institute. Its goal is to immerse participants in the technological cycle of project creation. Under the guidance of mentors, students work in interdisciplinary teams, create prototypes of their solutions, receive feedback from experts, and present their projects at defense sessions. During further studies, students can continue working on their projects, receive support from Skoltech, and even present them as a graduation thesis to obtain a degree. Musk agreed to share his expertise and become a mentor for the course in 2026.

Skoltech President, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Kuleshov, held talks with Errol Musk and introduced Skoltech to him. Also during the visit, the entrepreneur was presented with the technology of using a polypropylene network to eliminate the consequences of oil product spills in the Black Sea, which was developed by an Institute scientist and gained recognition among specialists, volunteers, and government representatives. Musk was presented with cathode materials developed by the research group of the Skoltech Energy Center, the Skoltech AI Center’s AI platform for multi-scale environmental monitoring, the e-nose project for odor analysis, “Hyperspectrus” for assessing the condition of infantile hemangioma, as well as a manipulator for autonomous feeding of people with disabilities.