I Don’t Need These Russians 121
If one of these parties was delayed, the entire mission
had to be postponed 26 months. When you launch a rocket
to Mars, you want the shortest possible travel distance
from Earth to Mars. The distance to Mars from Earth is
constantly changing because Mars and Earth orbit the sun
at different speeds. Earth is closer to the Sun and gets
around the Sun more quickly than Mars, and both planets
have elliptical orbits. Because of these factors, you have a
launch window of one month every 26 months.365,395
“I think we can build a rocket ourselves,” Ressi said.^278
Elon had thought this thought before. He wondered why
they had to buy rockets from Russia when we don’t buy
anything else from Russia – except Vodka. “If you look at
Russian rocketry, since the fall of the Soviet Union, there’s
really been no significant developments,” Elon said. “The
technology has barely progressed.”^351 Why were the Rus-
sian rockets so cheap? Elon did some engineering calculations.^364
“I looked at it and said, I’ll be damned – that’s why
he’s been borrowing all my books,” Cantrell said. “He’d
been borrowing all my college textbooks on rocketry and
propulsion. You know, whenever anybody asks Elon how
he learned to build rockets, he says, ‘I read books.’ Well, it’s
true.”^278
They realized that the only reason why the Russian
rockets were less expensive compared with the US rockets
was that the Russians had already manufactured them. If
they needed more rockets, the Russians had to build new
rockets where each one became more expensive compared
with those already manufactured. “I don’t need these Rus-