Friends showed Musk rocket explosion clips to talk him out of SpaceX; he gave it 10–20% odds anyway
XFreeze · x · 2026-10-10
XFreeze recounts SpaceX's founding: a close friend sat Elon Musk down to watch a compilation of rockets exploding to talk him out of starting the company.
The industry joke then: "How do you make a small fortune in rockets? Start with a large one." Musk gave SpaceX just a 10–20% chance of success — and proceeded anyway.
The first three Falcon 1 launches failed; the fourth reached orbit. Today SpaceX routinely lands and reuses orbital rockets, flies astronauts on Dragon, operates 11,000+ Starlink satellites, and Starship has reached orbit for the first time — while launching most of the world's mass to orbit and building the ship intended for Mars.
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