Title - Invention vs. Convention Tags - writing draft
In 1999, Elon Musk received $22 million from the sale of Zip2.
In 2002, he received $180 million from the sale of PayPal.
Suddenly, Musk was at a cross-roads, with considerable wealth at his disposal, which he saw as a means to chase lofty goals.
But $200 million wasn’t enough.
Building on a childhood interest, Musk began researching space exploration. He discovered that little progress had been made since the Apollo missions. And he concluded that the aerospace industry had lost its ambition to push the boundaries to Mars and beyond.
Musk began to think about what it would take to revive public interest in Mars and space exploration.
But U.S. companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin were charging up to $120 million per rocket launch.
So he travelled to Russia to negotiate the purchase of refurbished Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that could be repurposed for space missions. He thought this would be more affordable. It was. But the Russian officials didn’t take him seriously, and quoted as much as $8 million per rocket.
Musk flew back to the U.S. with a bold realisation: he could build his own rockets for a fraction of the cost.
At the time, rocket manufacturing was complex and expensive. Different parts of the process were completed by a network of specialised suppliers and subcontractors.
Musk realised that doing most of the rocket manufacturing process in-house could result in much faster and much cheaper production.
Since then, SpaceX has launched rockets for around 100 million to £120 million for a traditional rocket launch.
In 2020, it completed 26 successful launches, a record for any commercial company, and the number of launches has risen every year since.
By controlling the manufacturing process, SpaceX is less dependent on external suppliers and global supply chains. This has allowed them to maintain steady production, and innovate rapidly. For example, since its first launch in 2010, different versions of Falcon 9 have been launched over 220 times since 2010, improving after every launch.
When Musk began this journey, he had more money than most people. But, relative to the cost of space exploration, he had very little. $200 million was enough for 1-2 rocket launches. Nowehre near enough to achieve his goal of life on Mars.
He found a way to make this work by inventing a new process for space exploration.