I Don’t Need These Russians.
Elon and his former housemate Adeo Ressi went on a trip
to Long Island, just outside of New York. Ressi’s girlfriend
and Elon’s wife were also with them.^350 Ressi was now a
wealthy man after he had sold his own Internet company
Methodfive to Xceed for $88 million.^46
On the way back from the trip, they were stuck in
traffic on the Long Island Expressway. The rain poured
down. Elon, who by now was tired of glorified features,
began daydreaming together with Ressi. “What would the
next-next thing be?” they wondered. The new idea had to
be something big. “I pointed my hand out the window, and
I was like, ‘space,’” Ressi said. “It was almost a joke at first.
We debunked the idea no one can do anything in space. The
more we debunked the idea as being impossible, the more
it made us interested in how we could do it. Why does it
take a billion dollars? Why is it so complex? It’s just metal
and fuel.”278,301They continued talking about space and in
particular going to Mars. But Elon thought NASA already
covered this area, and space also seemed too complicated
and expensive.
When they came back from the trip, Elon visited NASA’s
website. He searched for information on when an astronaut
would set the first small step on Mars. But he couldn’t find
anything on the website about the topic. “I thought there