Elon Musk and Space X: actually, it is rocket science
Whenever I read stuff about people like Elon Musk, I can’t help wondering about those moments when they made key decisions, and I realize that, to get to where they have, you have to be made of very special stuff.
For me, there is a moment in this man’s life story when, after the sale of PayPal to eBay and with a lot of cash in his pocket, he decides to invest it in a new company dedicated to space exploration. If I try to imagine what would happen if I were in a similar situation, and I told my friends and family: “you know, now that I’m rich, I’m going to start a company to launch rockets into space.” I guess most would say something like “you’ve lost your mind.”
They might be right: taking on huge aerospace companies with seemingly bottomless resources in a sector that depends on the confidence you are able to inspire in public agencies such as NASA seems beyond risky and instead just downright crazy.
And yet, nineteen years later, here we are: SpaceX is the absolute leader in space exploration, having also triggered a dimensional change in our relationship with the cosmos. Today, the cost of putting a kilogram into orbit is ten times less than it was just a decade ago, and all of that efficiency gain is entirely thanks to SpaceX. The company is going to launch up to 52 rockets over the course of…
