News & Analysis
Elon Musk: Gazing at the stars
George Leopold
11/16/2012 11:11 AM EST
Paypal co-founder Elon Musk admitted recently that he was wholly unprepared for the immediate success of the groundbreaking electronic payment service. When he and his partners turned on the switch for PayPal in 2000, the startup was immediately deluged with far more transactions than his small staff could handle. He immediately called in a fulfillment service in Kansas to deal with the huge volume of orders. He now admits that those Kansas workers saved his bacon in the early days of PayPal.
Since then, the serial entrepreneur and audacious Big Thinker has never looked back. Musk sold PayPal to eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion and used the funds to launch a batch of startups, including electric car maker Tesla, solar installation specialist SolarCity and, grandest of all, Space Exploration Technologies Inc., or SpaceX.
While Tesla has had its ups and downs, and SolarCity is a decidedly low-profile enterprise by Musk’s standards, SpaceX has propelled the South African-born entrepreneur to the status of a visionary in the nascent U.S. commercial space industry.
Click on image to enlarge.
Elon Musk
Musk thinks big, talks big and, so far, has backed it up with two successful flights by his Dragon cargo ship to the International Space Station. The latest was the first official resupply mission under a 12-mission, $1.6 billion NASA contract. The cash infusion has provided Musk and SpaceX with a needed cushion as company engineers ready a “man-rated” version of the Dragon spacecraft that could someday carry as many as seven astronauts into orbit.
Next: Tech business transfer
|
|
|
|
|
Navigate to related information
zhaphod
11/19/2012 11:50 AM EST
Linux torvalds once said - "Talk is cheap, show me the code". I think this applies to critics of Elon Musk in general and SpaceX in particular. Everyone acknowledges that getting rockets right is hard. Hell SpaceX will have a spectacular blow out sooner or later {I hope it doesn't}. But it should not be used to bury them and kill the dream of reusable rockets and mars.
Sign in to Reply
bcarso
11/19/2012 12:16 PM EST
So true. I am delighted at their success.
Sign in to Reply
walken1
11/20/2012 11:51 AM EST
Agreed. I'm puzzled by Pike's reference to "random success". Success is success, period. It's unfortunate that there's an entrenched group that refuses to believe that private enterprise has a role to play in space exploration and is hoping to see SpaceX fail to prove themselves right.
Sign in to Reply
george.leopold
11/20/2012 4:29 PM EST
John Pike holds aerospace companies to a very high standard because manned spaceflight remains a very dangerous business. In the Apollo days, engines were tested well beyond their operational limits so engineers had a better understanding of how to design safety into a vehicle. This involved the blowing up of a lot of rockets. Obviously, things have changed since the 1960s, and SpaceX has so far done an excellent job with incremental advances. As stated, the real test comes when humans are strapped into the Dragon spacecraft. That won't happen until NASA managers are satisfied that the SpaceX spacecraft and rocket are "man-rated."
Sign in to Reply
Judge
11/21/2012 7:42 PM EST
Elon Musk is a Hero too a lot of us.
And a well deserved one I heartily admit.
I pasted this from the top
""The company designed and built in-house the Merlin engines that power its Falcon 9 rocket. It also developed key components like the guidance and rendezvous technologies needed to reach the station.""
This is all there is since Armadillo and Masten and a few others have remained small,,Musk has the ball$$ to Go for It.
Every Single time those Merlin-9's start screaming,,,
,The above phrase starts ""The company"".
Everything proofed after this. Company is proven when the candle is lit.Give them the credit they deserve!!!
Go SpaceX!!!!!
Go-Cowboys!!!!!
Happy Thanksgiving to all the World!!!!!!
a joe in Texas
Sign in to Reply