SpaceX's Plant-to-Mars Evolution
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A story about how Elon Musk's initial vision for SpaceX was much smaller than its current mission.
"When SpaceX started, his initial vision was to do a test demonstration sending a plant in a rocket into a certain height. That's all he wanted to do - just take a plant out there. He thought 'I'll just fund this, it'll take me $20 million, but it'll inspire people towards science and hopefully NASA will then fund real Mars missions after that.'
Then only along the way he said 'you know what, screw this plant thing, let's actually do it ourselves. We don't need to inspire NASA, let's just do the whole thing ourselves.' He got progressively more ambitious."
The story illustrates how SpaceX evolved from a simple demonstration project to send a plant to space into a company aimed at making humans a multiplanetary species.
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.