Halfway to Anywhere
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistressby Robert Heinlein was one
of the two first books in the International Space Station’s
library. The other book wasFaust by Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe.^171 Heinlein, who was one of the young Elon’s
favorite authors, said that once you reach orbit you are
halfway to anywhere.^301 SpaceX was still far away from
anywhere, but their customers believed in them. “The
important thing is that none of our customers left SpaceX,”
Elon said. “They all sort of held the faith. We actually
worked closely with our customers, gave them full disclo-
sure. They knew everything we knew as far as the nature
of the problem. They knew we weren’t trying to give
them a snow job or hide anything. I think that was really
important.”^22
To survive, SpaceX raised outside capital for the first
time. “As a precautionary measure to guard against the
possibility of flight three not reaching orbit, SpaceX re-
cently accepted a significant investment,” Elon said. “Com-
bined with our existing cash reserves, that ensures we will
have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue
launching Falcon 1.”
One of the investors was Elon’s former co-worker
Peter Thiel with his Founders Fund, and the other was
Steve Jurvetson with the venture capital firm Draper Fisher
Jurvetson. “Musk called me around the darkest times,”