Elon Musk: CEO of the Future

Elon Musk, the visionary founder of Tesla and Space X, is about to change life as we know it on earth—and beyond

- Bill Saporito

There are no small mistakes when you’re in the business of launching rockets. One mechanical glitch, one wrong computer input and your exquisitely crafted, $60 million engineering marvel becomes a highly unsatisfying fireworks display. Yet on the afternoon of September 28, 2008, as SpaceX’s Falcon 1 rocket sat on the pad at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific, the risks extended well beyond the impending launch itself. Elon Musk had boldly—foolishly, some of his own friends thought—sunk much of his Internet fortune into a commercial space company, which from an entrepreneurial perspective has a degree of difficulty right up there with nuclear fusion. Now, after three consecutive RUDs (as in “rapid, unscheduled disassembly”), Musk was almost out of money. And he was certainly out of rockets. A fourth disaster would not only doom Space X but would likely take out Tesla, the electric car company Musk had also started. Tesla shared technology and overhead, not to mention Musk himself, with Space X and was hemorrhaging money.

As Falcon 1 roared off amid the palm trees of “Kwaj,” a parallel roar of jubilation and relief emanated from SpaceX’s HQ in Hawthorne, California. Minutes after the flawless ascent to orbit, an emotional Musk turned to his rocketeers and said, “That was freakin’ awesome.” The successful mission would realize SpaceX’s strategy of utilizing low-cost, reusable rockets to launch satellites, deliver space cargo and ultimately carry humans to Mars. “There were a lot of people who thought we couldn’t do it. A lot, actually,” he told his employees. “But as the saying goes, the fourth time’s the charm, right?”