Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Tesla Motors Inc., speaks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2011. Musk said SpaceX is developing a reusable rocket.
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SpaceX could still stumble--and stumble badly. Traveling in space will never be easy, and terrible things can always happen. The Apollo 1 spacecraft was not supposed to burst into flames and kill its crew--until it did; a one-in-a-billion multiple-system failure was never supposed to occur on Apollo 13, and that happened too. Orbital Sciences, Musk's main competitor, has its own test flight scheduled for later this year, and the company did not earn a COTS contract by accident. It's been around longer than SpaceX and has already established its ability to launch satellites. A success or two for Orbital coupled with a setback or two for SpaceX could change things completely.
Musk could also get tripped up by his hubris. He's become more press-savvy lately, effusively thanking NASA for its support of SpaceX and taking care not to overstate his successes as he's done in the past. But his humility goes only so far. He has claimed almost no patents on his rocket systems because he believes he's so far ahead of the field that no one would be able to copy him anyway. "Elon's philosophy is, Just move fast enough that no one catches you," says Mueller. That's a nice idea--unless someone actually does catch you.
None of this discourages Musk. Human beings belong in space, he believes, and not just dog-paddling in low Earth orbit. On an otherwise empty wall in the SpaceX offices is an oversize picture of Mars. It's there as inspiration--and destination. "I believe," says Musk, "that I have a design in mind that would enable the colonization of Mars."
Self-delusion? Maybe. Cockiness? Surely. But as Hall of Fame pitcher Dizzy Dean of the old St. Louis Cardinals once said, "It ain't bragging if you can back it up." Musk is hardly ready to go to Mars yet, but he took a significant step off the Earth last month. For now, at least, the bragging rights are all his.
FOR MORE ON MUSK, GO TO time.com/elonmusk