Interesting to watch him talk about SpaceX only days after their successful mission. In this clip (http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=382) he says based on historical data it is unlikely the mission will stay within the 15 billion dollar development cost and 2012 timeline. Not sure about the budget, but they made their deadline. Makes their recent success even more impressive.
Elon once said: "I always knew that there was a chance of failure in all my endeavors. But I felt that they were important enough that I had to try, even if I thought the probability of success was less than 50%."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjuvIlskUf4#t=7m20s
Just look at Elon's excitement at the 9:36 mark of this video as well as all of SpaceX employee's enthusiasm. This was truly a huge success despite the challenging odds.
It's an amusing contrast of how Elon was like "Yeah that's pretty cool I guess." when director Jon Favreau based Iron Man on him and donated an Iron Man statue to SpaceX headquarters signed by the whole cast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CECAda_XCDU
Thanks for that first link! The first few minutes of the video after the cue are nearly as inspiring as the site of the launch and docking itself. THAT is one radiant group of human beings!
I hope Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan will show their support for Elon now that the mission was a success, partly due to collaboration with NASA. This is also NASA's victory, really, since they can save millions in the future by contracting with an American company instead of relying on the Russians.
Yeah, wow. He looks like he's about to cry. It really shows how much he wants this to succeed. I'm really rooting for the guy now, even though I don't know much about him and the SpaceX project. It makes me even happier to know that there was success.
He must feel on top of the world turning around a successful mission in the face of being rejected by his heroes. I know I want to feel like that.
SpaceX so far has spent roughly a billion dollars developing the Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and the unmanned Dragon capsule. They will spend a bit more developing the manned Dragon (a few hundred million) and are continuing to develop other hardware such as revisions of the Falcon 9 launcher (Block 2, and an upgraded version 1.1 with considerably greater payload), the Falcon Heavy launcher (with over 50 tonnes of payload, based on the Falcon 9 1.1 core), and a fully reusable Falcon 9 launcher as well as Dragon capsule.
Pretty sure that wasn't SpaceX he was talking about, but rather a spaceplane reminiscent of the X-37 (possibly actually it, from what I've heard in the past).
