It was the early 21st century, about 25 years ago, when Anteo Reisi, a former roommate of Elon Musk at the University of Pennsylvania, was begging the then young “tech freak” entrepreneur not to found the rocket company that had become “fixed” in his mind.

Musk had just made a few million dollars from the sale of PayPal—of which he was a co-founder—to eBay for about $1.5 billion. Together with Reisi, they were exploring ideas for sending earthly plant life to Mars. They had a budget of $50 million available, but they soon realized it was not enough to build the necessary rocket. At that point, Musk told his friend that he would build it himself.

The experts told him “no,” he did not listen
Reisi recalled that he had gathered a panel of space experts in a hotel room in Santa Monica, California, and brought Musk to hear why his plan was doomed to fail. Private spaceflight was extremely expensive and the economic logic for its implementation did not hold, the 12 experts said. Musk, however, (luckily for him, in the end) was not convinced.

“I really want to congratulate him for his incredible persistence,” Reisi later said in an interview, adding: “He ultimately managed to make his goal a reality.”

The colossal $2 trillion valuation
Since then, Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, has come a very long way from that failed intervention by Reisi. On Friday, it made its debut on the stock market with the largest initial public offering in history, a colossal $2 trillion valuation, having launched hundreds of rockets into space, operating the dominant satellite internet service Starlink, and overseeing Musk’s artificial intelligence activities as well as the social network X. The public listing was so massive that the South African-born entrepreneur became the world’s first trillionaire.

However, what is remarkable is that SpaceX’s success was never a given. Musk and his team of executives and engineers overcame multiple obstacles, solving problems ranging from rocket physics to the interconnection of many satellites in orbit.

“Less than 10%, it will probably fail”
Musk himself acknowledged how unlikely SpaceX’s success seemed at its beginning. On Friday, at the company’s headquarters in Starbase, Texas, he said he initially gave his effort less than a 10% chance of success. “I was telling my people the following: ‘It will probably fail. But we have to try it,’” he has admitted.

Musk’s space plans began much more modestly, aiming to send seeds to Mars inside a small greenhouse through the “Life to Mars” initiative, which he had created together with Reisi. He believed that if people on Earth saw green shoots growing on Mars, they would become so enthusiastic that they would pressure Congress to increase NASA funding for his ambitious plans.

The Russians’ “door shut”
So he decided to travel to Russia, hoping to find an old intercontinental ballistic missile that could carry—at cost price—his greenhouse into space. The Russians shut the door on him, and on the return flight to the United States, those expecting to see him disappointed heard him tell Jim Cantrell and other collaborators that he would build his own rocket. “It’s an impressive story,” said Cantrell, who became the fourth employee of SpaceX. “Today we see what it has become, but back then it seemed insignificant.”

In the early years of SpaceX, its trajectory was marked by failures that drew attention, followed by impressive successes. The first Falcon 1 rocket was small, and its first two launches from the Marshall Islands failed. The company began running out of money.

At that point, Musk said he would make one more attempt to make the rocket work, as aerospace engineer and longtime friend Robert Zubrin recalled.

The third attempt also failed. However, the persistent entrepreneur announced he would try again. If he failed a fourth time, he would likely quit, Zubrin said. “It would have been the end of SpaceX,” he noted.

The milestone launch of September 2008
In September 2008, the fourth Falcon 1 launch reached orbit. The same happened with the fifth, nearly a year later.

By then, SpaceX had secured a crucial contract from NASA to develop the larger Falcon 9 rocket and the Dragon capsule for cargo transport to the International Space Station (ISS). The first Falcon 9 launch in 2010 also reached orbit, as did the second six months later. In 2014, the company won another major contract to transport astronauts to the ISS.

With lower launch costs, SpaceX dominated the rocket market. From 2019 it began developing Starlink satellites, providing high-speed internet almost anywhere on the planet for every possible and impossible use. This system, which did not end up bankrupt like previous ideas, is today the company’s largest business activity.

Plans for Mars
At the same time, Musk—who simultaneously leads the car company Tesla—turned his attention to colonizing Mars with a massive rocket capable of carrying human settlers. In 2016 he presented the first Starship designs at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, having previously stated that the company would attempt a mission to the “Red Planet” by 2025.

Since then, Starship tests have included both failures and progress, rarely matching Musk’s promised pace.

In March 2024, the entrepreneur announced that Starship would reach Mars “within five years.” A year later he revised the timeline, speaking of a mission “by the end of next year.” NASA, for its part, estimates—in a more pragmatic approach—that the first crewed mission to Mars is possible in the mid-2030s.

In May, the 12th test flight of Starship was largely considered successful, as the upper stage of the spacecraft traveled a large portion of the planet and performed landing simulation maneuvers. However, the first stage experienced a malfunction during its return, temporarily freezing the progress of subsequent flights.

Still, even if further failures occur, Musk—who has learned to survive and continue after them—has already created a new generation of space enthusiasts, especially after SpaceX’s impressive public offering this week.

“What SpaceX is doing is essentially building the infrastructure that can support and sustain this new promise of a space economy,” independent journalist and podcaster in Qatar Ryoiden DeSousa told the New York Times. “When you build a road to space, you create the possibility for entire new economies to develop.”