[TAG0][TAG3]
- Elon Musk founded SpaceX a year later, in 2002. He invested $100 million from PayPal.
- The company almost failed before it received a NASA contract worth $1.5 billion in 2008.
- SpaceX's value has risen to almost $140 billion due to Musk's leadership style.
Elon Musk is CEO of many companies, but SpaceX may be the most interesting given its ambitious goal of colonizing Mars using reusable rockets.
Musk was the father of SpaceX. Twitter, Tesla and PayPal all existed before Musk got involved.
He invested $100 million in his new space exploration firm after receiving $175 millions when eBay acquired PayPal in 2002.
SpaceX began working on the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 with 160 employees, and NASA provided $278 million to fund its efforts. The fledgling firm looked to be on the verge of collapse after its three first launches failed.
NASA then saved SpaceX in late 2008 by giving it a $1.6billion contract.
In 15 years the company now has 12,000 employees, a value of $137 billion, according to a CNBC article published earlier this year. It has also launched 240 Falcon Rockets. Musk has been the driving force behind this success.
[TAG1][TAG4]
Elon, good and bad
Walter Isaacson's biography of Musk, which will be published this September, says he saw the billionaire enter "demon mode", with "brutal moments" of anger that were meant to promote productivity, but also lacked empathy.
Jim Cantrell who was instrumental in the founding of SpaceX told Insider's Kiera Felds that Musk would call at 3 am and tell him to come into his office.
He added, "Working with Elon is like working with two people: The good Elon and Bad Elon. You never know which one you're going to get."
Former SpaceX employees said they often worked 12-hour shifts and pulled all-nighters. "We used to say a lot that you are your own slavedriver."
Nine employees were terminated last summer after calling on the company denounce Musk's Twittering. They called it "a constant source of distraction and embarrassment" for them.
SpaceX was also fined $18,475 after an engineer was left in a comatose state for months due to a skull injury.
Musk also built his own town in Texas called Snailbrook for SpaceX and Boring Company employees. Musk has bought at least 3,500 acres in the last few years. Some homes are already built.
[TAG2][TAG5]
Mars in a decade?
Musk, the richest man in the world, has sold properties worth over $100 million dollars to fund his dream of colonizing Mars.
The date keeps moving further and farther away. Musk predicted in 2017 that SpaceX would be sending humans to Mars before 2024. Musk's prediction for 2024 was changed to 2026 four years later. Then it went up to 2029 and then finally settled on an "optimistic", 2033 prediction.
His most ambitious goal — to have a million people living on the red planet in 2050 — would require launching three Starship Rockets each day.
Starship is the tallest and strongest rocket in the world. The rocket's maiden flight in April was successful, but it exploded three minutes after takeoff.
NASA plans to send astronauts to the Moon by 2025.
—————————————————————————————————————————————
By: psyme@insider.com (Pete Syme)
Title: Elon Musk’s SpaceX: How the world’s richest person leads the space exploration pioneer
Sourced From: www.businessinsider.com/spacex-elon-musk
Published Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2023 18:35:01 +0000
Leave a Reply