A Russian rocket engineer once spat on Elon Musk's shoes.

At the time, Musk wasn't the world's richest man.

He wasn't running Tesla.

And SpaceX didn't even exist.

He was simply a 30-year-old internet tycoon trying to buy a few old Soviet rockets.

The meeting had gone badly.

The engineer was reportedly offended that wealthy American entrepreneurs wanted to purchase technology that had been designed for war.

So he expressed his feelings the old-fashioned way… by spitting on Musk's shoes.

Most people would've taken the hint and gone home.

Instead, Elon got on the flight back to America and decided something crazy:

He would build his own rockets.

There was just one problem.

He knew almost nothing about rockets.

That decision would eventually lead to the creation of SpaceX, the most valuable private company in the world.

But the road from spat-on entrepreneur to space pioneer is one of the wildest startup stories you've probably never heard.

In 2001, Musk was trying to figure out what to do with his life after PayPal.

Most people forget that Elon wasn’t riding high as the beloved tech icon we know today.

Just a year earlier, he had been replaced as CEO of PayPal by Peter Thiel while on his honeymoon in Australia.

Yes, really.

Musk remained the company’s largest shareholder and still made a fortune when PayPal sold to eBay in 2002, but professionally, he was suddenly in an odd spot.

He was rich, young, ambitious, and searching for something bigger than another internet startup.

Most people in his position would’ve retired on a beach somewhere.

Instead, Elon became obsessed with Mars.

Specifically, he wanted to inspire humanity to become a multi-planetary species.

And oddly enough… the original idea had nothing to do with starting a rocket company.

Musk’s initial plan was actually to send a small greenhouse to Mars with plants growing inside.

The idea was to place a camera on the greenhouse and livestream footage back to Earth.

He believed seeing life growing on another planet would reignite public excitement around space exploration and pressure governments to increase NASA funding.

So Elon started making cold calls.

One of those calls went to aerospace consultant Jim Cantrell, who had worked with NASA and Russian space programs.

The call was memorable to Cantrell for several reasons.

First, Cantrell could barely understand Musk because he was driving with the top down on his car.

Second, Elon immediately launched into what Cantrell later described as an overly rehearsed sales pitch.

“I’m Elon Musk, I’m an internet billionaire, I founded PayPal and X.com. I sold X.com and I could spend the rest of my life on a beach drinking Mai Tais, but humanity needs to become a multi-planetary species and I need Russian rockets.”

It sounded ridiculous.

But Musk was dead serious.

So Cantrell agreed to help him.

Together, they traveled to Russia to explore buying old Soviet rockets.

As you've already learned, the meetings did not go well.

But on the flight home, Musk started doing back-of-the-napkin calculations.

And that’s when he realized something important:

Rockets were absurdly expensive.

Not because physics demanded it.

But because the aerospace industry had become bloated, inefficient, and dominated by government contractors.

Space agencies at the time were using decades-old equipment that somehow was becoming more and more expensive every year.

Musk believed rockets could be built for a fraction of the cost.

That realization changed everything.

Instead of buying rockets… Elon decided he would build them himself.

There was just one problem.

He knew almost nothing about rocketry.

So he went into full obsession mode.

Musk borrowed college textbooks from Cantrell and devoured them.

He studied propulsion systems, orbital mechanics, launch systems, and rocket design relentlessly.

People around him said he absorbed information like a sponge.

Then came the moment that truly changed his life.

Cantrell brought Musk to watch a small group of engineers testing a homemade liquid-fueled rocket built with what Cantrell described as basically “leftover beer money.”

The rocket exploded.

But Elon loved it.

He suddenly realized that if a tiny team working with limited resources could build rockets in a garage… then a larger, elite team with enough money and talent could potentially revolutionize the entire industry.

That realization eventually led to the founding of SpaceX in 2002.

Yes, this is before Tesla was founded (2003), and before Elon invested in Tesla’s first funding round (2004).

What came next at SpaceX almost sounds impossible in hindsight.

The company’s first three Falcon 1 launches failed.

One rocket exploded 30 seconds after launch.

Another failed to reach orbit.

The third failed during stage separation.

By 2008, SpaceX was nearly out of money. At the exact same time, Tesla was also burning cash and sitting on the edge of collapse.

Most people expected both companies to fail.

Then came Falcon 1 Flight 4.

Against all odds, SpaceX finally reached orbit.

It became the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket company in history to do so.

That single launch changed everything.

Soon after:

• NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract, saving the company from collapse

• Falcon 9 became the first orbital-class reusable rocket and dramatically lowered launch costs

• Dragon became the first privately built spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station

• SpaceX became the first private company to send astronauts into orbit with Crew Dragon

• Starlink became the world’s largest satellite constellation and transformed global internet access

• And SpaceX eventually became the most valuable private company in the world

All because an internet billionaire got obsessed with Mars… made a few cold calls… got spat on by Russian rocket engineers… and decided rockets were too expensive.

Thanks for being along for Space Week.

Today was the history of SpaceX.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about what SpaceX is today.

And whether you should invest…