Three Explosions. Then He Built a Fourth. — Elon Musk Part 4
Three Explosions. Then He Built a Fourth.
SpaceX, 2002 to 2008 — the most dramatic chapter in modern business history.
In Part 3, he was removed from his own company during his honeymoon — and still walked away with the most money in the room.
Now he takes that money and bets everything. On rockets. On a dream the world called impossible. And in 2008 — the worst year of his life — we find out exactly what kind of person he is when there is nothing left to lose.
Why He Went to Russia — And Got Spat On
Before SpaceX, Musk checked the NASA website to find their plans for sending humans to Mars. There were none. He was genuinely shocked. He traveled to Moscow twice — in 2001 and 2002 — trying to buy decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missiles to repurpose for a Mars mission.
The meetings were chaotic and contemptuous. Russian engineers didn't take this young American seriously. In one meeting, a senior engineer — after listening to Musk explain his plans — spat on the shoes of Musk and his delegation.
The price was also insulting: $8 million per missile. Musk offered $8 million for two. They refused. He boarded the plane home.
During the flight, while his colleagues were still recovering, Musk opened his laptop and started typing. By the time the plane landed, he'd completed a spreadsheet proving he could build a rocket himself for less than Russia was charging to sell him one.
The day he was spat on — SpaceX was born. Being dismissed was always the trigger. It always had been. From the schoolyard to Moscow, the response was always the same: I will do it myself.
The People He Hired — And Why
Musk personally interviewed the first several thousand SpaceX employees. He specifically sought recent graduates without families — people who could work extreme hours.
Think about what this reveals.
Having no family also means having nowhere to go when things get hard — and no one depending on you either. My read is, he knew exactly that when he chose people. Someone with no place to retreat to and no one tying them down eventually has no option left but to push forward.
The early launch team worked 90-hour weeks on a Pacific atoll — Kwajalein, one of the most remote places on earth. When food ran out and workers threatened to strike, Musk sent chicken wings by helicopter.
My read is, this isn't cruelty. It's closer to a man who genuinely couldn't register that what his workers needed was acknowledgment of how hard things were — not just a caloric solution. He'd been that worker himself. Nobody sent him chicken wings. He just kept going. That was the only model he had.
2006. 2007. 2008. Three Failures.
According to people close to him, Musk was waking from nightmares during this period — screaming, in physical pain.
Here's what I want to say about that.
The boy who learned to survive by going inward, going forward, refusing to stop — that boy was still there. And 2008 was the moment that boy, and the man, were most visible. Not in the success. In the refusal to stop when every rational signal said stop.
Honestly, this is an impressive person. There's something admirable in it too.
But I think the terrain this boy walked was so extreme that ordinary hardship got worn down to nothing inside him along the way. Which may be why he doesn't seem to register other people's hardship very well — not because he's a bad person, but because his own baseline sits somewhere so far out.
The Speech After the Third Failure
After the third explosion, Musk gathered his 500 employees. Most had been working extreme hours for years. Many were ready to leave. He stood in front of them and said:
"I will never give up. Never. SpaceX will succeed, or I will spend my last dollar trying. And if we do have to wind down operations, I will make sure that everyone gets a severance package."
His HR VP, Dolly Singh, described it as one of the most powerful things she had ever witnessed. People who were ready to walk out stayed.
What made it work wasn't the words. What made it work was that everyone in the room knew he meant it literally.
A man willing to go to zero has nothing left to be afraid of. That isn't courage — it's a specific kind of freedom that only comes from having already survived the worst.
September 28, 2008 — The Fourth Launch
They had enough money for this attempt and nothing more.
Falcon 1 lifted off at 4:26pm from Kwajalein Atoll. First stage separation — clean. Second stage ignition — successful. The rocket climbed through the atmosphere and into orbit.
This moment moved even me, someone with no stake in any of it, enough to leave my chest aching. It's one of the few scenes that's stayed carved into me. Five hundred employees' dreams, pushed up through every kind of hardship that made them want to quit, standing straight and breaking through into the sky.
Which is exactly why it stung more. If only he'd been a true leader, I keep thinking...
For the first time in history, a liquid-fueled rocket built entirely by a private company reached Earth orbit. Before SpaceX, only six governments had managed this: the United States, Russia, China, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
Three months later, on December 23, NASA announced a $1.6 billion contract with SpaceX. On December 24th — Christmas Eve — Tesla's investors came through with emergency funding. Both companies survived by days.
The climax of a play is the moment of maximum pressure — when a character has nothing left to hide behind and has to become exactly who they are.
My read is, 2008 was Musk's climax. No money. No marriage. Rockets burning. Everything at once. And what he became in that moment was probably exactly what the eight-year-old boy had been — someone who survives by going inward, going forward, and refusing to stop.
The child who had nowhere to go learned to keep moving. The man had nowhere to go. He kept moving. That's probably the one real continuity in this whole story — from the boy in Pretoria to the man on the Pacific atoll. The same survival mechanism. The same refusal. The same cost.
He Became a Father. Exactly Like His Own.
"14 children. 4 women. His daughter called him a pathetic man-child." →
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