Elon Musk Quotes on Space (3 Quotes)

What Space X ultimately contributes to space travel might please the government in other ways. One of the significant innovations of Falcon V is that because it's got five engines on the main stage, it can actually lose an engine and reach orbit safely, ... If the space shuttle were to lose one of its solid rocket boosters the people on the shuttle would be doomed.

Today it costs over a billion dollars for a space shuttle flight. The cost is fundamentally what's holding us back from becoming a space traveling civilization and ultimately a multi-planet species.

He'd better be, because the new space race already is under way and competition is shaping up as fierce. Rutan's chief rival may ultimately be Elon Musk. A former Internet mogul who in 2002 sold his online payment company, PayPal, to eBay for 1.5 billion in stock, Musk now runs SpaceX in El Segundo, Calif., which is developing an orbital space vehicle. Musk notes that making it into orbit requires going eight times faster and producing 65 times more rocket energy than a suborbital vehicle like SpaceShipOne. Musk has already put more than 50 million into SpaceX and says he is prepared to invest 50 million more. He expects it to take at least five years to get passengers into orbit. In the meantime, SpaceX is generating revenue by booking orders to launch satellites its first such launch is scheduled for January. Our earned revenue will be 35 million after a little more than two years of operation, ... By comparison, the X-Prize was a one-off of 10 million, and it took Burt something like five years to do it.