How a $1.5B NASA contract rescued SpaceX when Musk was nearly broke in 2008
MatthewChang · x · 2026-10-19
A viral recap of Elon Musk's 2008 near-collapse: after PayPal he bet his entire $180M fortune on Tesla and SpaceX. That year all three Falcon 1 launches failed, the Roadster hit quality issues, the financial crisis hit, and Musk called it the worst year of his life. The turning point came when NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.5 billion contract, pulling the company back from the brink — a detail the poster notes is rarely mentioned in the usual "Musk bet it all" narratives.
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