Challenges of Rocket Startup Success

no prior example of really a rocket startup succeeding,

but there've been various attempts to do commercial rocket companies and that all failed.

So again, with SpaceX, starting SpaceX was really from the standpoint

of like, I think there's like a less than 10% chance of being successful,

maybe 1%, I don't know.

But if a startup doesn't do something to advance rocket technology,

it's definitely not coming from the big defense contractors

because they just impedance match to the government and the government just wants to do very conventional things.

So it's either coming from a startup or it's not happening at all.

So like a small chance of success is better than no chance of success.

And so, yeah, so SpaceX started that in mid 2002,

expecting to fail, like I said, probably 90% chance of failing.

And even like when recruiting people, I didn't like try to make out that it would,

I said, we're probably gonna die,

but a small chance we might not die.

And if,

but this is the only way to get people to Mars and advance the state of the art.

And then I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket,

not because I wanted to, but because I couldn't hire anyone who was good.

So like none of the good sort of chief engineers would join

because it's like, this is too risky, you're gonna die.

And so then I ended up being chief engineer of the rocket

and the first three flights did fail. So it's a bit of a learning exercise there.

And fourth one fortunately worked, but if the fourth one hadn't worked,

I had no money left and that would have been, it would have been a curtain.

So it was a pretty close thing. If the fourth launch of Falcon did not work, it would have been just curtains

and we would have just been joined the graveyard of prior rocket startups.

So it was like my estimate of success was not far off.

We just, we made it by the skin of our teeth.