From breakup to billions: How Musk and SpaceX survived 2008

On December 13th, Wall Street was flooded with news that exploded like a Falcon Heavy rocket: SpaceX, in its latest stock sale round, was valued at $800 billion. According to leaks, Musk is preparing an IPO for 2026, aiming to raise over $30 billion, with a target company valuation reaching an astronomical $1.5 trillion. If successful, SpaceX will become the largest public offering in human history, and Musk will be the first trillionaire ever. But to understand how far this man has come, you need to go back 23 years, when an inexperienced entrepreneur seemed like a suicidal dream.

Market observers are thrilled by the numbers, but few see the dramatic reality behind them. The path to this success was paved with chasms Musk nearly fell into. Especially in a year when everything was collapsing simultaneously.

When the programmer started building rockets

In 2001, 30-year-old Musk had just pocketed over $100 million from PayPal shares, standing at the typical “Kaleidoscope of Freedom” point of Silicon Valley. He could have taken the route of Marc Andreessen—becoming an investor, advisor, or doing nothing at all. Instead, he chose a scenario that all industry experts considered madness: he wanted to build rockets and go to Mars.

After reading countless engineering textbooks, Musk laid out a spreadsheet. His analysis revealed something shocking—traditional space giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin artificially inflated costs by dozens of times. Every screw cost hundreds of dollars. Musk asked himself a question that proved to be revolutionary: “How much do aluminum and titanium really cost? Why does the final component cost a thousand times more?”

Relying on this simple logic—the so-called first principles—Musk, along with two friends, went to Russia to buy a refurbished Dnepr rocket. The meeting with the Lavochkin Design Bureau ended in disgrace. The Russian engineer spat on the nouveau riche American, and the team heard: “Fly away if you have no money.” On the return flight, the mood was bleak, but Musk was tinkering on his laptop. After a moment, he turned to his companions and showed the spreadsheet: “Hey, I think we can do this ourselves.” That was the birth of SpaceX.

2008: When everything collapsed

In February 2002, Musk founded SpaceX in an old warehouse in El Segundo near Los Angeles, investing $100 million from PayPal profits as initial capital. The image was simple—become the “Southwest Airlines of the space industry,” offering cheap and reliable space transportation. But reality was brutal. Building rockets required astronomical investments, and SpaceX faced a monopoly of aging giants who had not only technology but also deep government ties.

The first Falcon 1 rocket exploded after 25 seconds. The second attempt in 2007 ended in control loss. The third, in August 2008, was the worst—first and second stages collided over the Pacific, and just weeks earlier Musk’s family had fallen apart.

2008 was a hellish year for Musk. The financial crisis engulfed the world, Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy, and his wife of ten years left him. SpaceX had funds only for one—final—launch. If Falcon 1 failed, the company would collapse, and Musk would lose everything he had built.

Then came a message that cut him to the core. His childhood idols—Neil Armstrong, “the first man on the Moon,” and Eugene Cernan, “the last man on the Moon”—publicly expressed doubts about his project. Armstrong sharply said: “You don’t understand what you don’t know.” Remembering that moment, Musk broke down in tears on camera. He didn’t cry during rocket explosions or when Tesla was nearing bankruptcy. But his heroes’ words from childhood broke his resistance. “It’s really hard,” he said. “I really wish they could see how hard I work.”

The last launch, the last chance

On September 28, 2008, silence reigned in the control center. Everyone knew this was the last shot. No dramatic declarations, only the breath of employees and focused eyes on screens. The rocket launched, and a fiery dragon lit up the night. This time, it didn’t explode. After nine minutes, the engine shut down as planned, and the payload entered the planned orbit.

“Success!”

Joyful shouts erupted in the control center, Musk raised his hands, and his brother Kimbal burst into tears of happiness. SpaceX became the first private company in the world to successfully launch a rocket into orbit. This news saved not only the company but also restored Musk’s hope for the possible.

On the same year, December 22, Musk received a call from William Gerstenmaier, head of NASA’s space program. Good news: SpaceX secured a $1.6 billion contract for 12 cargo flights. “I love NASA,” Musk exclaimed, even changing his computer password to “ilovenasa.” After teetering on the edge of disaster, SpaceX survived.

Reusable rockets change the game

A technological breakthrough was still ahead for Musk. Almost all engineers opposed his next crazy idea: rockets must be reusable. Experts argued it was economically irrational—“nobody reuses paper cups.” But Musk insisted. His logic was different: if airplanes are thrown away after one flight, no one could fly. Space would never be accessible to all if rockets remained single-use.

On December 21, 2015, this vision became reality. Falcon 9, carrying 11 satellites, launched from Cape Canaveral. After ten minutes, the first stage returned to the launch site and landed vertically on Florida, like in science fiction movies. The old rules of the space industry were shattered. The era of cheap spaceflight began thanks to this once “losing” company.

Stainless steel instead of fantasy fibers

When SpaceX started working on Starship, capable of colonizing Mars, it fell into the trap of “advanced materials.” The industry guessed that a lightweight rocket required expensive carbon fiber composites. SpaceX invested huge sums in molds for production. But slow progress worried Musk, who returned to his first principles and calculated: carbon fiber costs $135 per kilogram, while 304 stainless steel—the same used for pots—costs just $3 per kilogram.

When engineers protested that steel was too heavy, Musk pointed to a key physics fact: melting temperature. Carbon fiber poorly withstands high temperatures and requires heavy, costly thermal insulation tiles. Stainless steel has a melting point of 1,400°C, and at low temperatures of liquid oxygen, its strength increases. Considering the entire insulation system, a rocket made from ordinary stainless steel weighs the same as one from carbon fiber but costs 40 times less.

This decision freed SpaceX from the constraints of precise manufacturing. They didn’t need clean rooms—just set up a tent in the Texas desert and weld rockets like water towers—if it cracks, clean up, and weld again tomorrow.

Starlink: The money-making machine

A technological breakthrough contributed to a valuation jump. From $1.3 billion in 2012, to $400 billion in July 2024, and now $800 billion—SpaceX “hitched a ride on a rocket.” But the secret isn’t just in rockets, but in Starlink.

Before Starlink, SpaceX was a spectacular TV spectacle—sometimes exploding, sometimes landing. Starlink changed everything. This constellation of thousands of satellites in low orbit is becoming the world’s largest internet provider, turning “space” from spectacle into infrastructure as basic as water or electricity.

Whether you’re on a ship in the Pacific or in a war-torn area—just a box-sized receiver, and the signal comes from hundreds of kilometers above Earth. It has not only transformed the global communication landscape but also become a steady revenue source for SpaceX.

By November 2025, Starlink had 7.65 million active subscribers worldwide, though actual users exceeded 24.5 million. The North American market accounts for 43% of subscriptions, while Korea, Southeast Asia, and other emerging markets make up 40% of new users. Wall Street values SpaceX not for the frequency of launches but for the recurring revenue from Starlink.

Financial data shows SpaceX forecasts revenues of $15 billion in 2025 and $22–24 billion in 2026, with over 80% coming from Starlink activities. SpaceX has undergone a spectacular transformation—from a space contractor to a global telecom giant.

Before the IPO: Fuel for Mars

Before Musk changed his mind about going public, he publicly spoke against it. At the 2022 SpaceX conference, he told employees: “Going public is an invitation to suffering, and the stock price only distracts.” Three years later—what changed?

The answer is simple: Musk’s ambitions are growing faster than his resources. According to the schedule, within two years, the first Starship should perform an uncrewed landing on Mars. Within four years, humans will set foot on the red planet. His ultimate vision—to build a self-sustaining city on Mars with 1,000 ships—still requires astronomical investments.

In many interviews, Musk openly stated: the sole purpose of accumulating wealth is to make humanity a “multi-planetary species.” From this perspective, hundreds of billions of dollars from an IPO are not the end but the beginning of an even more ambitious chapter.

If SpaceX raises $30 billion from the IPO, it will beat Saudi Aramco’s 2019 record ($29 billion). Some investment banks predict the final valuation could reach as high as $1.5 trillion—allowing SpaceX to challenge Saudi Aramco’s leadership (valued at $1.7 trillion) and enter the world’s top publicly traded companies.

Behind these astronomical numbers, the most excited are the workers in Boca Chica and Hawthorne factories, who slept on Musk’s floors and survived the “production hell”—they will become millionaires, even billionaires. For Musk, this isn’t just “profitable exit” in the traditional sense, but costly “refueling” before the final sprint.

Everyone is now eagerly waiting to see if the largest IPO in human history will become more than just another billionaire record. Will it turn into yachts and mansions, or become what Musk promised—fuel, steel, and oxygen that will pave the way to Mars.