CHAPTER 4
ONE PLANET IS NEVER ENOUGH
Planet Earth may be called the Goldilocks Planet—not too hot, not too cold, plenty of water, organic molecules, just right for life—but the future of the planet is no fairy tale.
Earth is at risk of a life-ending asteroid strike. And global warming, as the name suggests, could heat the planet to the point that humans’ habitat is destroyed. And then there’s the threat of nuclear war or some other man-made disaster. And if that’s not enough to ponder, at some point in hundreds of millions of years, the sun will boil Earth’s oceans.
For Elon, it doesn’t matter that these events could happen in millions of years or in fifty, nor whether it’s a long shot or a sure bet.
“I mean something bad is bound to happen if you give it enough time,”65 he said. And Elon sees that as a huge problem.
A problem that has weighed on his mind for years. In 2001, as he began contemplating what to do with his time, he kept thinking about this problem in particular. The more Elon thought about it and studied it, the more convinced he became that there was only one solution: Humans needed to colonize other planets. And they should start with Mars.
Image of Mars taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on June 6, 2001. (Photo by NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team [STScI/AURA].)
“If we were a multi-planetary species, that would reduce the possibility of some single event, man-made or natural, taking out civilization as we know it, as it did the dinosaurs,” Elon said in an interview with Rolling Stone. “There have been five mass-extinction events in the fossil record. People have no comprehension of these things. Unless you’re a cockroach or a mushroom—or a sponge—you’re…”66 Well, to paraphrase, you have no hope.
That kind of complex problem, those kind of stakes, and the herculean effort required to save the day, well … Elon was no stranger to that plot. He had read it over and over again in hundreds (maybe even thousands) of science fiction novels and comics as a kid. Couple that with an education in physics, experience running a company, and confidence … Elon was ready for takeoff.
OASIS
So now what? That was sort of the crux of the conversation that Elon had with his old college roommate/nightclub partner-in-crime, Adeo Ressi.
They had spent the weekend in New York’s ritzy Long Island playground: the Hamptons. Driving back to Manhattan, they were shooting the breeze about the whole Mars thing. At first, Adeo thought Elon was kidding.
But by the end of the ride, it was clear that Elon was most certainly not joking. Elon needed more information. He dove headfirst into a pile of books. When he wasn’t reading about space, Mars, or how to get there, he was calling up the world’s leading aerospace experts and hounding them with questions.
He turned to NASA. Makes sense, right? The National Aeronautics Space Agency was synonymous with all things space. After all, this was the agency that put humans on the moon.
“I was trying to figure out why we’d not sent any people to Mars. Because the obvious next step after Apollo was to send people to Mars.”67
Scouring NASA’s website, he found nothing.
And that really shocked him.
But to understand why NASA wasn’t running full throttle on a crewed mission to Mars, you have to revisit moments like what happened on January 28, 1986. Seven crew members waved as they boarded the space shuttle Challenger in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The world was particularly fascinated because one of the crew members was a schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe.
Across the country, televisions were rolled into classrooms on carts, so students could watch the liftoff. None were as excited as Christa’s own students, who gathered in the school auditorium to witness their teacher make history.
You can imagine the applause and cheering as the shuttle’s engines ignited, the thrill of watching the spacecraft climb toward the heavens.
Then one minute and thirteen seconds into flight, the Challenger exploded. The space shuttle broke apart on live television. News reporters fell silent. Students watched in shock and confusion. But the violence of the explosion left little doubt. No one could have survived.
The painful and dramatic disaster gave the public and the U.S. government a sobering example of the inherent risk of space travel.
As the grim reality sunk in, it was tough to keep people excited about space exploration, and that made it harder to keep the space agency well-funded.
Though NASA’s space shuttle program resumed after a two-year hiatus, the fervor and focus on space travel waned. No longer united by the no-holds-barred desire to beat the Russians in space, the nation moved on.
But some fifteen years later, Elon was convinced Americans should be pushing the envelope, reaching for Mars. So Elon and Justine packed up and moved to Los Angeles, to the heart of America’s aerospace industry.
Writing a check for five grand, Elon attended a fund-raiser for the Mars Society, where he met other space fans and sought out as much information as he could. He broke down the humans-stuck-on-Earth issue into smaller problems to solve. At the top of the list: getting the public’s support. As his reading, research, and connections began to coalesce, he formed a plan.
“I came up with this idea to do so-called Mars oasis, which was to send a small greenhouse with seeds in dehydrated gel that upon landing, you hydrate the gel. You have green plants on a red background,” he explained. “The public responds to precedents and superlatives. So it would be the first life on Mars. The furthest that life’s ever traveled, and you’d have this money shot of green plants on a red background.”68
Despite being an engineer, an Internet guy, an entrepreneur who could rattle off obscure details about any subject he studied, Elon also had the gift of finding ways to rally the public behind his goals. And he understood the power behind an image.
A single image could change the public’s mind, focus, and fill their courage reservoir. And with those horrifying and spectacular space disasters, there would be no going to Mars without tremendous courage.
Now he had to look at his bank account and figure out if he could afford it, using his own money. He decided that he was willing to spend half of it, even if the whole thing failed.
Elon knew it was a gamble. After all, the aerospace industry chokes down millions of dollars as a midmorning snack. It was a crumb, a token. But if the result was that the public started thinking about space exploration again, getting excited about it, he would count that as a win. And if the worst that could happen was losing money, he could stomach it.
So he got to work.
First, he needed to buy some rockets. And they weren’t cheap.
“The Boeing Delta II would have cost sixty-five million dollars each,” Elon said. And he wanted two. “And then I was like, whoa, okay, that breaks my budget right there.”69
The Boeing Delta II rocket carrying the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, April 7, 2001. (Photo by NASA/KSC.)
THE WAY
Thousands of miles from California, Elon found himself sitting in a room with padded walls. It was not a mental hospital. This is where the Russians had brought him to talk rockets.
“You talk to people, who know people, and pretty soon you are talking to the Russian rocket forces,”70 he said.
Elon had boarded a plane and flown to Russia to buy a couple of ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles). Not just any ICBMs, but the largest ones in the Russian fleet. He hoped to snap them up for $10 million apiece.
“They thought I was a bit crazy. But then they read about PayPal and said, ‘Okay, he’s crazy, but he has money,’”71 Elon said. He brought Adeo Ressi along as well as a space expert he’d gotten to know while studying Mars.
“This was when it was still the Wild West over there,” Adeo explained to Esquire. “I mean, there were like dead people on the side of the road. We got pulled over multiple times, at gunpoint, and had to bribe the police. No reason. Just ‘Give us money.’”72
The negotiations required a second and third trip to Russia. But in February 2002, that third meeting changed Elon’s course. One of the Russians began shouting at Elon, spit flying out of his mouth as he yelled. “It was a strange experience,”73 he said, laughing at the memory.
But that moment, bathed in flying spit, is when it hit him. The price of the rockets was silly, made up. That number had nothing to do with the cost of actually making them.
Why not just build a rocket, a world-class rocket, and build it for less money?
It also hit him that America’s will was not the problem.
“I was actually wrong about my first premise, that there was a lack of will. In fact, I think there is a tremendous amount of will in the United States for space exploration. Because the United States is essentially a nation of explorers,” he explained. “What really matters is having a way … I need to work on the way.”74
As Elon flew back to the United States, he took all the information he had consumed about rocketry, space, propulsion, and started tapping away on his computer. He was building a spreadsheet to figure what it actually cost to build a rocket. First question to answer: Why are rockets so expensive?
Then, what are the materials I need to build a rocket?
What’s the most cost-effective way to do it?
How should it be designed?
Where are the parts made?
If you say a rocket is made of aluminum, titanium, copper, carbon fiber, Elon explained, “you can break it down and say, what is the raw material cost of all these components? And if you have them stacked on the floor and could wave a magic wand so that the cost of rearranging the atoms was zero, then what would the cost of the rocket be?”75
Elon had just crossed over from buying a rocket to building a rocket. And that meant he needed to quickly become an expert in rocket science. Rocket. Science.
Sure, he’d blown up model rockets as a kid. And then received a grown-up physics degree. But it was not a degree in aeronautics or astronautics. Once again, Elon found himself eyeballing a massive learning curve—and jumping right in.
Adeo was taken aback. “I was like, ‘Whoa, dude. Let’s use the Socratic method. I got screwed by the Russians doesn’t equal Create launch company.’”76
Adeo and some of Elon’s other sincerely concerned friends gathered to convince him not to do it. Too much money. Too much risk. A rocket company? You? Nope.
“A friend of mine made me watch a video of rockets blowing up,”77 Elon said. He thanked his friends and let them know he was moving forward with his plans.
In the middle of all this professional excitement, Elon found himself completing a decade-long journey. Taking his place with thirty-five hundred other immigrants at the Pomona Fairplex, Elon rose from his seat. With Justine there to cheer him on, Elon placed his right hand over his heart and took the oath of citizenship. He no longer just lived in America. Now he was an American.
And in May 2002, Justine gave birth to a baby boy, Nevada Alexander Musk.
As the couple settled into life with a newborn, Elon continued devouring book after book about rockets, space, aeronautics. The new father continued talking to experts. Immersing himself in every piece of information he could get his hands on, he also assembled a top-caliber team to help him with the next step.
In June 2002, to the sound of a celebratory mariachi band, Elon launched Space Exploration Technologies, SpaceX for short, with the mission “to revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.”78
Soon the spoils from PayPal would fund this multistep mission. First, SpaceX had to build a rocket, then use the rocket to launch paying customers’ satellites into space. That revenue would fund more research and development, with the hope of getting the company closer to its ultimate goal of reaching Mars.
“It may seem odd that I would start SpaceX with an expectation of failure. But bear in mind that my initial thing was essentially to do essentially a philanthropic mission with zero percent chance of success from a financial standpoint,” Elon explained, referring to his photo idea of green plants on a red background. “It would have effectively been a donation to the cause. So anything better than that is a win.”79
Three months after SpaceX opened its doors, a mechanical engineer named Gwynne Shotwell stopped by to see a buddy who worked there and get a tour of the place. That tour turned into a job. Gwynne was quickly hired and became employee number eleven.
Her job was to sell SpaceX’s services, like ferrying satellites to orbit, only this was years before SpaceX built its first rocket.
“Selling rockets is all about relationships and making a connection with these customers. When you don’t have a rocket to sell, what’s really important is selling your team, selling the business savvy of your CEO—that’s not really hard to sell these days—and basically, making sure that any technical issue that they have or any concern you can address right away,” Gwynne explained during a TED Talk interview with Chris Anderson.80
Elon’s efforts were no longer about drumming up support for NASA. This was now about getting to Mars his own way and bringing the public with him, first in spirit and ultimately in the flesh. And that required successful technology and successful sales.
LOSS
In 2002, as the PayPal sale was announced and Elon worked to solve the problems of making a rocket from scratch, Elon’s home life took a devastating turn.
Elon and Justine faced an unspeakable tragedy. At ten weeks old, their son died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). They had put Nevada down for a nap in his crib, carefully putting him on his back. And when they returned to look in on their napping boy, he wasn’t breathing. Nevada was rushed to the hospital. After three agonizing days on life support, there was no hope. He could not be saved.
The medical team placed Nevada in Justine’s arms so she could hold her son as he passed away. The loss was crushing.
For Elon, the only way to cope was to immerse himself in work and the complexities of engineering a rocket and building a company.
“He doesn’t do well with dark places,” Justine explained, while describing this part of Elon’s personality to Esquire magazine. “He’s forward moving and I think it’s a survival thing with him.”81
Elon made himself available to SpaceX 24-7, personally weighing in on engineering problems and even rolling up his sleeves and physically doing some of the work or testing when required. He now understood the technology and the problems well. His expertise, ideas, and hypotheses were essential to research and development, as well as production.
PAGING TONY STARK
One of the perks of putting your rocket factory in a huge industrial space is the building comes with huge cargo bays. They meant Elon didn’t have to stop at simply driving his (repaired) McLaren to work. How pedestrian! No, he could drive his car into the factory! Now, that’s much more of a statement.
Elon’s goal when he started SpaceX was to launch the first rocket in fifteen months, um … you know, from scratch to fully baked rocket in fifteen months.
His plan went something like this. Approach rocketry from square one, a clean slate, a blank page—well, you get the picture. Rethink everything about what a rocket is and how it comes to be and then settle on the best path forward. Which leads to starting a rocket company in June 2002! Then, he needed to assemble a team of top-notch engineers, computer scientists, machinists, welders, electricians, a sales team, and other employees who would work side by side to solve very hard and complex engineering problems and then launch said rocket by November 2003 to worldwide acclaim!
All in fifteen months. Whoa. Make no mistake about it, this was an aggressive goal that would demand a punishing schedule. Elon and his team were going to work nearly around the clock.
That being said, Monday through Friday, at 8:00 p.m., the team stopped work, took up positions at their computers, and blew off a little steam with the boss—trading reality for first-person shooter games against each other, Quake III Arena and Counter-Strike. Despite their best efforts to duck the rain of virtual fire, they often lost to Random9, also known as Elon Musk.
COWS IN SPACE
Setting up the web cam, the SpaceX team wanted to be sure to capture every move.
They were testing rocket engines at a three-hundred-acre test site, in a remote part of Texas that happened to be surrounded by cattle farms.
And the cows were captivating. Sure, an unbelievably loud and fiery rocket engine is cool too. But the cows.
It happened every time. Engine ignites, cows start herding. Nudging, pushing, urging their calves together into a clump—then the adult cows formed a ring around around them, standing guard. Every. Time.
A little levity helped with the incredibly tedious task at hand. Developing rocket engines requires firing them regularly so engineers could observe and measure things like vibration, temperature, power, and other performance variables. Analyzing the data, they pinpointed what needed to be retooled back in California, and the engines would be tested again in Texas.
SpaceX was working on the Merlin engine for the booster, which provides the power to lift the rocket off the launchpad, and the Kestrel engine, which powers the second stage of the booster.
Close-up of Merlin engines (© SpaceX).
As SpaceX worked on manufacturing a fairing, fuel tanks, and the rest of the rocket, that ambitious launch date sailed on past without an actual launch.
In February 2003, NASA suffered another space shuttle disaster. The space shuttle Columbia broke apart over Texas on reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. The shuttle program was put on hold for two years, but the disaster spelled the end of the program. In 2004, the president announced that once the International Space Station was completed, the remaining space shuttles would be retired. (The last shuttle flight was July 2011.) Supplies for the space station would be delivered on unmanned cargo ships operated by European and Japanese space agencies, and astronauts would have to hitch a ride on Russian spacecraft. That is, unless SpaceX could help.
A successful rocket launch would have created a marketing and media frenzy. But SpaceX simply wasn’t ready yet.
Still, Elon came up with a plan to get the government’s attention. After all, the United States government was a critically important potential client. Never mind that SpaceX had launched exactly zero rockets. This was a sales issue, and Elon understood that. Have a demo!
So, in December 2003, Elon parked a prototype of his rocket outside the Federal Aviation Administration’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., introducing the world to Falcon 1, a rocket named after Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon in Star Wars.
The follow-up to his big trip was an even bigger announcement. SpaceX would begin work on a second, more powerful rocket.
Justine Musk. (Photo by PatrickMcMullan/Contributor/Getty Images.)
NAME: Justine Musk (née Wilson)
DATE OF BIRTH: September 2, 1972
HOMETOWN: Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
JOB: Author of science fiction, fantasy, and horror for young adults and adults
WEBSITE: JustineMusk.com
PUBLISHED BOOKS: BloodAngel (2005), Uninvited (2007), and Lord of Bones (2008)
AWESOME GIFT: As an author, Justine adores books. One year, Elon gave her a nineteenth-century copy of Pride and Prejudice.
The Musks went on to have five more boys: twins Griffin and Xavier in 2004 and triplets Damian, Saxon, and Kai in 2006.
The couple divorced in 2008. While sharing custody of their five boys, Justine continues writing, giving TED talks, and blogging about her work, life, and realizations along the way.