Halfway to Anywhere 259
SpaceX, use knowledge from that time. “We’re standing
on the shoulders of giants,” Tom Mueller said. “With the
Apollo program they learned so much. And we can get
access to all that. We use that tremendously. A private
company in a vacuum could not do what we did.”^288
NASA and SpaceX are not competitors and Elon thought
NASA is not responsible for the state of space being at the
same level as in the 1970s. “The public is asking NASA
often to have a perfect track record and a perfect safety
record,” he said. “By driving this private space mission
forward, I hope for changes for NASA, for it to receive a
clear and pressing mandate for a human base [on Mars].”
Because the government is not good at innovation and cost
optimization, it’s better if NASA sets the goals. According
to Elon, NASA should say, “This is what we need to
achieve,” and then it’s up to private companies like SpaceX
to figure out the best solution to achieve the goal.^286
It’s no longer possible to purchase payload on the
Falcon 1 - SpaceX replaced it with a larger rocket. It may
sound strange to first work for six years and spend all your
money, and then just scrap the rocket when it’s finally
ready. But SpaceX’s goal is not to just launch rockets – they
want to do it cheaply. And to do it cheaply, they needed a
larger rocket that could carry more cargo.
SpaceX planned to develop a Falcon 5 rocket with
five engines in the first stage, thus the 5 in the name
Falcon 5. But the Falcon 5 had the same size as another