All language subtitles for In.Their.Own.Words.2015.S02E05.Elon.Musk.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-BTN_track3_[eng]

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Spike Feresten:
What is it about Elon Musk?

He's at once a
genius and a fool.

(audience cheering)

Narrator: He is
quite possibly the most

polarizing public figure
in business today.

Elon Musk: Doing a startup is,
at the beginning,

it's like eating glass and
staring into the abyss.

Tim Higgins: It depends on the
day, he's either the hero

or the villain.

And that's why he's such
a complicated figure.

Narrator: Love him or hate him,

Elon Musk is in a
relentless pursuit

to change life on Earth

by giving us a chance
to leave it behind.

- Lift off!
- And lift off!

Elon Musk: I've thought about
what are the things that are

most gonna affect the
future of humanity?

And the three things I came up
with were the internet,

transitioning to a sustainable
energy economy,

and the third was
space exploration.

Eric Berger: He feels as long as
humans are on one planet,

we're vulnerable to all
sorts of catastrophes.

- Three...Two...One...Zero!

- We're at Stage One!
- Good lift off indication.

(rocket roaring)

We have liftoff!

Tim Urban: To Elon, it is so
obvious that you have to try

to keep the light of
human consciousness alive.

And it would be so sad, so
utterly heartbreaking if it,

if it went out like a candle.

Narrator: Bullied as a teen,

young Elon escaped by
immersing himself

in fantastical stories
about the future.

Anna Crowley: It becomes
part of a bigger inquiry

into where we are
as a civilization,

as humanity, and where
we should be going.

Narrator: His drive to succeed,

coupled with a sharp mind,

would propel him to early
success in the tech world.

Higgins: It's almost as if he
delights in showing the world

that he can do something

that people said was impossible.

Narrator:
As the money rolled in,

Elon set his sights
on the future

he had read about years before.

But like all disrupters,

his path hasn't been easy.

No one could stand in the way

of his boundless vision
of a new world.

Higgins: Elon Musk
is all about defiance,

he's not gonna hold back.

Tim Fernholz: I think that's
a very interesting

blind spot for Elon,

the suffering of his
employees sometimes.

Narrator: But Elon Musk
remains unapologetic...

Garrett Reisman: He's so
determined to accomplish

those goals that if it
hurts somebody's feelings,

that's not gonna stop him.

Narrator: ...and ever driven
to reach beyond

what anyone but him
thought was possible.

Higgins: Building
rockets to go into space,

building sports cars,

dating actresses,
appearing on TV.

He is living every
nerdy boy's dream life.

♪ (triumphant music) ♪

♪ ♪

(explosion)
♪ (dramatic music) ♪

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

Tim Fernholz: The first three
rockets were paid for

by about a hundred million
dollars out of his own pocket.

♪ ♪

And there was a point
where he thought

that was all gonna
go down the drain.

♪ ♪

2008 was a year where

SpaceX was in trouble,
Tesla was in trouble--

Tim Urban: Both
starting to fail.

Crowley: At the same time,
personally,

he is going through
a high profile,

expensive divorce.

♪ ♪

Tim Urban: That was probably
the worst year of his life.

Berger: So for SpaceX,

they had one final chance.

They had the parts
for a fourth rocket,

but they were out of money.

Like they were...weeks away
from missing payroll,

so Elon said,
you have six weeks.

♪ ♪

We gotta build this rocket,
and launch it to orbit,

or we're done.

Controller: Five...four...

Crowley: This is it,
this is do or die.

Controller: Three...two...
one...zero.

♪ (dramatic music fading) ♪

♪ (gentle music) ♪

♪ ♪

Crowley: Elon Musk was born in
Pretoria, South Africa.

♪ ♪

When he was 8 years old,
his parents divorced,

and Elon was desperately
unhappy at home.

♪ ♪

Tim Urban: Elon was picked on,
and beaten up

as a teen in school.

♪ ♪

He read a ton of sci-fi,
and still does.

I think he, like a lot of
people who are building things

for the future, whether it's
in science or in tech,

they find sci-fi to be
an inspiration,

because the sci-fi writers are
professional imagination people.

♪ (upbeat futuristic music) ♪

Kurt Knutsson: The fantastical
escapism of these novels

is what sparked a
life-long interest

in the trajectory of the
human race.

Crowley: It becomes part of
a bigger

investigation and inquiry

into where we are
as a civilization,

as humanity, and where
we should be going.

And he started to see
this pattern,

that an unlikely hero

come out from last place,
and save the world.

Berger: He grew up
in the 1970's and 80's...

with the Jetsons, the Space
Shuttle was coming online,

it was gonna open up
the solar system.

He could envision this
bright future of humans

as a multi-planetary
space-faring species.

How I would react to that,
I'd go watch Star Wars

or just something like
that to give me

that kind of adrenaline burst.

But his mindset is,
well, this is a problem,

what can we do to solve it?

Knutsson: But for Elon,
it wasn't all fantasy,

he had a natural aptitude
for math and science.

It was off the charts.

Higgins: They called him
'encyclopedia,'

because he memorized
the encyclopedia

and you can imagine
a situation,

where you got this kid who's
got a lot of intelligence,

he has talked about how at
times he felt like perhaps

he was crazy, because he had
all these wild ideas,

and he realized other
people didn't have

the same kind of thing.

♪

Musk: I actually had a computer
and it was a Commodore Vic 20,

then I got some books on how to
teach yourself programming.

And this was like the coolest
thing I'd ever seen.

♪

Maye Musk: He'd spent most of
the time on the computer,

and then he wrote his first
computer program at 12.

He showed it to me and
I was at the university,

then doing my Master
of Science degree,

and I showed it to the
engineering students

and they said "Oh, he knows
all the shortcuts!"

So, I said to Elon
you should submit it

to a computer magazine,
and he did!

Matt Pressman:
He actually programmed

a video game called Blastar
by himself

and he sold that video game
for $500.

So his first
entrepreneurial venture

was when he was 12 years old.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

Knutsson: When Elon was 17,

his genius earned him
a scholarship

to Queen's University in Canada.

♪ (upbeat dramatic music) ♪

♪ ♪

Crowley: When Elon is at
Queen's University in Ontario,

he gets an internship at
the Bank of Nova Scotia.

And as is typical with Elon,

he spends the summer learning

everything he can about banking.

♪ ♪

Knutsson: After two years
at Queen's, Elon heads off

to the University of
Pennsylvania for a dual degree

he earns in both physics
and economics.

Four years later, he's off to
Silicon Valley,

where he's at
Stanford University,

and he's pursuing a Ph.D.
in energy physics.

♪ (upbeat dramatic music) ♪

♪ ♪

Crowley: Being at Stanford
at that time in the 90's

was like a golden ticket.

Knutsson: This thing
called the internet,

it was so far-fetched
to most people,

but it wasn't for Elon Musk.

♪ (upbeat dramatic music) ♪

♪ ♪

Crowley: He decides to
leave Stanford on day two.

Urban: When it comes to school,
he sees it as a data download.

It's a way to...

get knowledge, right?

But there's lots of ways
to get knowledge.

And one of the things
he said is that he thinks

school is a slow data download,

like an incredibly inefficient

way to get that data.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

Knutsson:
In 1995, Silicon Valley

was full of 20-somethings.

They had dreams and ideas,

and what they were doing
is creating the digital age.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

♪

Crowley:
There is so much happening

in terms of developing
technology

to be used on the internet.

Man: The Valley is where it's
all happening at the moment

in terms of the internet, and

the companies and the things
they're doing over here are six,

six months to a year ahead of
what we're doing in the UK.

Elon Musk: At the time in '95,

nobody was making any money
on the internet.

And in fact, when we
tried to get funding,

more than half of the venture
capitalists we met with

did not know what the internet
was and had not used it.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

Crowley: When you think of
internet tech startup,

you might think of like
Google's headquarters,

hanging out, gaming together.

This was not that situation.

Knutsson: They weren't
thinking about

what money they'd
earn from this.

They wanted to
change the future,

and that's what
was important.

Crowley: Kimbal and Elon
were living

in their tiny office,

and it was very
cramped quarters.

They were across the street
from a fitness club,

so they could go there

during the day
and have a shower.

It was bare bones.

Urban: You know, the classic
scrappy startup story.

Knutsson:
For just about four years,

they're on the phone,

trying to teach internet 101

to just about any
customer or investor.

Crowley: It was a huge hurdle

to overcome explaining that.

♪

Knutsson: Newspapers
saw the potential,

early adopters at
digitizing articles,

so Elon sells them on it,

they pay him a bunch of money.

Elon takes some of that money

for R&D of his next idea,

digitizing phone books.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

Crowley: If you think back to

that period of time,

if people wanted to
find a business,

you had to open something

called the Yellow Pages,

which were paid ads in this

paper, physical book.

So, what Elon figured out is

what if you used the internet

to give you the listing
of your business,

and turn by turn directions
to get there?

Knutsson: Elon, along with his
younger brother Kimbal,

who he'd convinced
to join him from Canada,

created Zip2.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

Crowley: This was
revolutionary thinking.

It was a brand new idea.

♪ ♪

Knutsson: Compaq Computers
understood the value

of digitizing information like
phone books,

so they end up buying Zip2.

Crowley: Elon sold that company

for $307 million dollars.

And he personally made

$22 million from
the sale of Zip2.

♪ ♪

Knutsson: This is the beginning
of a process

that Elon Musk would
use for success.

Make it, and then sink it all
into the next venture.

Feresten: People say that he
sunk all of that money

into his company. No!

He bought a million dollar

McLaren F1...
(chuckles)

first!
(laughs)

Which I admire. I like that!

Elon Musk: Wow, I can't
believe it's actually here.

It's pretty wild, man!

There are 62 McLarens
in the world,

and I will own one of them.

(engine revving smoothly)

It's just a moment in my life!

(laughter)

Knutsson: After the McLaren,

he goes all in
on his next mission.

Crowley: So Elon decides to

take this windfall,

and invest it in a new startup,

which he called x.com

Knutsson: In 1999, the idea
of telling somebody

that their money is gonna be

online in some form,

was outrageous and
completely foreign.

Crowley: If you wanted
to buy something,

that was in California, and
you're sitting in New York,

you had two options.

You could send a paper check
in the mail

and they would wait,

or you could call them
over the phone,

and give them your
credit card number

and hope that you are working
with a reputable person.

Those were your options.

Elon began to think
about his internship

for the bank of Nova Scotia
and what he learned there,

and he realizes that
the internet

is a perfect vehicle for
moving money around

in a digital way.

Knutsson:
On Thanksgiving in 1999,

Elon launches x.com.

Despite it being way
ahead of its time,

a hundred thousand people
sign up within 30 days.

- A big, big X.

Elon Musk: Exactly! X.com!

Knutsson: Around the same time
there's another

digital payment startup
called Confinity,

a tech entrepreneur named
Peter Thiel is behind it.

What Elon loves is

how easy to use
their interface is,

so he merges x.com
with Confinity.

Crowley: This company goes
through a name change

and becomes PayPal.

It was rough going,
getting the two teams

who had been die-hard
competitors

on the same page.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

Higgins: Meanwhile,
his girlfriend Justine,

she eventually comes out
to Silicon Valley

where he has started
his companies,

she's there alongside him,

they tie the knot,

and on the way to the honeymoon,

his colleagues at PayPal
felt like

he was making things
overly complex,

and they didn't like his,

his management style in general.

And so, while he was heading
towards his honeymoon,

there essentially was a coup,

and he was booted
from the role as CEO.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

He flies back, deals with that.

So ultimately, then they
try to take another honeymoon,

and on this honeymoon,

he gets malaria that

by all accounts,
nearly does him in.

♪ ♪

And on his near death bed,

he is thinking about
what he's done with his life

and what he could do next,

and this is where you kind of
see the origins

of kind of the next chapter
of his life.

He wants to take big chances

and try to have an
impact for the world.

Crowley: So he's out
of the company as CEO,

but stays on as an advisor.

When eBay buys PayPal,

Elon makes $180 million
from that sale.

Fernholz: If I had
$100 million dollars,

I would retire to Tahiti.
It would be great.

Elon Musk: The idea of lying
on a beach as my main thing,

just sounds horrible to me.
I would go bonkers.

I would have to be
on serious drugs.

Fernholz: Elon took it all
and put it into

the riskiest business
imaginable.

Crowley: Space exploration.

Urban: Conventional wisdom says
starting a company is scary.

Conventional wisdom says,
when you sell PayPal,

and make over
$100 million dollars,

you definitely need to make sure

you're rich for the
rest of your life.

Elon doesn't care what
conventional wisdom says.

He said, what's the worst
that's going to happen,

if I put all this money
down on something,

that I think is
incredibly important?

Then I lose it!
In the end,

is it really
the end of the world?

And so, Elon has the same
appetite for risk

that the rest of us have,

it's just that he
defines risk very differently.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

♪ ♪

After PayPal, he took a sharp
turn and never looked back.

And that turn was towards

how can we reduce
existential risk

and give humanity the best shot
of a good and long future?

Knutsson: I think if you
look back at his childhood

and the fantastical stories in
these novels about

how the world would come to
an end and he thought,

'Hey, how do I fix that?'

So it should come as no
surprise, really

that he aimed towards
saving mankind.

Elon Musk: I always thought that

we would make much more
progress in space.

When we went to the moon,

we were supposed to have
a base on the moon,

we're supposed to send
people to Mars.

And that stuff just,
it just didn't happen.

We went backwards.
It was really disappointing.

♪ (music fading) ♪

(rocket engine roaring)

Miles O'Brien: Now, those of us
who grew up in the Apollo days

and were sprinkled by moon dust,

expected we would have

colonies on Mars
by the mid 1980's.

Well this never happened.

NASA had not put Mars

on its agenda.

♪

Reisman: In the early days
of Apollo,

NASA was very forward-leaning
and innovative

and trying all kinds of
new things.

I think what's really changed
NASA were the tragedies.

♪

We had first, Apollo One.

♪

Then we had Challenger...

♪

...and then we had Columbia.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

Berger: At NASA, one of the most
famous mottos of the agency is

'failure is not an option'.

So when people are in space,

you can't really afford to fail.

The problem is that mindset

transcended everything
the agency did,

and it reinforced this
risk-averse culture.

O'Brien: NASA became
much more entrenched,

much more bureaucratic,

and took bold destinations,

bold journeys, frankly,
off their agenda.

Berger: Elon Musk worries a lot

about the fate of humanity.

He feels as long as humans
are on one planet,

we're vulnerable to
all sorts of catastrophes.

Crowley: There could be
an incoming asteroid

that could eliminate life on
Earth as we know it.

That we cannot solve
climate change

and that our planet is

no longer habitable for humans.

Reisman: The reason
he wants us to be

a space faring civilization

is for survival of the species.

There's nothing less
important than that.

Higgins: In a lot of ways he's
the world's greatest prepper.

Tim Urban: To understand
why he does what he does,

you need to take that
huge step back

and understand how he
sees humanity.

The big, big picture.
And once you understand that,

it's actually very obvious why
he's doing what he's doing.

To Elon, it is so obvious

that you have to try to

keep the light of human
consciousness alive.

And it would be so sad,
so utterly heartbreaking

if it went out like a candle.

♪ ♪

Berger: And so he started
thinking about

what's the best option
in our solar system.

And Mars as imperfect as it is,

is the best place for us

to start learning to
survive on other worlds.

♪

The end of 2001, he began
looking in to see

what NASA was doing about
sending humans to Mars.

Urban: Elon actually went to
the NASA website and was saying,

'what's the Mars
effort look like?'

And he realized, there was
no Mars effort at all.

O'Brien: Elon realized
first of all,

that getting anything into space

was ridiculously expensive.

Crowley: Keep in mind
at that time,

the only really
big players in space

were government funded.

Berger: The way it had
worked for decades was

that NASA and the
Department of Defense

would decide that they needed
a particular rocket

or a particular satellite
or a particular spacecraft.

And then they would
go to industry

and they would
put out a request,

how much could you do it for,

and how soon could you do it?

O'Brien: The government
owns everything.

They're hiring a contractor
to build it

precisely to their specs.

And the contractor is charging
an hourly rate

to build, this case, the rocket.

Well, you don't have to be a
rocket scientist to realize

that the slower it goes,
the more you make.

How perverse is that?

So there was no incentive

up to that point,

to make it any cheaper.

Elon saw the niche right away,

as it's not so much
a lack of vision.

It's a lack of
affordable rockets.

Crowley: During this
process of exploring that,

Elon thinks,
"what if I bought a rocket?"

And he realizes the only way
to do that

is to buy some ICBMs

or Inter-Continental
Ballistic Missiles.

O'Brien: So he thought, well,
the cheap way to do it,

we'll go to the Russians,
who need some money

and we'll buy an ICBM.

But he discovered
that the Russians

drive very hard bargains

and did not take him
seriously at all.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

Matt Pressman: On the
plane ride back to the U.S.,

they saw him reading

a Russian rocket manual

translated into English.

And he just decided,
I'm gonna do this myself.

Urban: I'm just gonna
start a company

that colonizes Mars,
we don't need NASA.

We don't need
the U.S. or Russia.

I'm gonna do it.

O'Brien: Then he
starts thinking,

"well, why don't I just
build my own rocket?"

Elon Musk: We're looking
for great people

of all kinds to join the
company,

so if you're interested,
please send us your resume.

O'Brien: This is a classic tale

of a disruptive
force in a market.

It almost seemed
insurmountable to most of us,

and that's why we
all laughed at him.

♪ ♪

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

Pressman: At the same time
as he's starting SpaceX,

he was very interested
in this idea

of launching an
electric car company.

Higgins: Tesla in its
early stages was an idea.

It was a business plan that

thought there might be a market

for an electric sports car

and had some ideas
on how to do it,

but it needed funding.

Pressman: The original founders
had this idea

to create an electric car using

computer batteries.

Elon became very
interested in this concept.

And soon after that, he became
an initial investor

and a founder in the business.

Elon Musk: I mean, fundamentally
we have a delayed gratification

issue, collectively
as a species, like,

are we willing to

sacrifice the near term for
the long term?

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

Urban: The goal was
to start Tesla,

and have someone
else be the CEO.

And so he never intended to
be the CEO of two companies.

Uh, but that's what
ended up happening.

♪ ♪

Feresten: Before Tesla, electric
cars were pretty much dead.

It was pretty much an idea
that had failed before

and was going nowhere, fast.

Crowley: They were dorky,
they didn't go very far.

I mean, you would be
kind of embarrassed.

You wouldn't show up
to a job in that,

and you certainly wouldn't
show up to a date

driving an electric vehicle.

♪ ♪

Urban: The goal of Tesla
was never to become

a giant car company.

It's to become a company that is

a catalyst for a paradigm shift.

Pressman: It really
started with him

trying to figure out a way
in which he could capture

the world's attention
with electric cars.

Elon Musk: Their idea of an
electric car is something

that doesn't look good,
isn't fast,

it doesn't have high
performance, has low range.

We wanted to break the
mold of all of that.

And so do something
that was beautiful,

had high acceleration,
incredible handling,

had tons of capability,
lots of room,

and really was better
than any gasoline car.

Crowley: Elon sees
this potential,

to come in at the
extreme high end,

with a luxury electric vehicle.

And that if you made
driving them cool,

if they were reliable, if they
actually went a distance,

he could see a way forward
for this company.

And that a company like that
could help the world

get off of its
dependence on oil.

Urban: He's trying to
create a car so good,

that everyone wants it,

every car company has
to start making it,

and eventually it's the
car that everyone drives.

Then it's like the
iPhone of cars.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

♪ (music fading) ♪

Elon Musk: Doing a startup is,
at the beginning,

it's like eating glass and
staring into the abyss.

It's not fun."

Higgins: Elon Musk's
attention was at SpaceX,

but as the Tesla
went down the road,

it was becoming
clearer and clearer

that it was going to be a lot
harder to make the Roadster

than everybody
originally thought.

Costs were getting
out of control,

deadlines were being missed,

and Elon Musk starts to

wonder about what's happening.

Crowley: At the same time

Tesla is developing
the Roadster,

SpaceX, they were now
developing a rocket.

Reisman: Up until this point,
NASA had only used

expendable rockets and it was
just not affordable.

Fernholz: He really believes
reusable rockets

are the only path forward

for cost effective space access.

Elon was saying, you know,

I'm gonna make a reusable rocket
to go to Mars.

And everyone was saying,
'this is impossible.'

So SpaceX began

creating a small rocket called
the Falcon One.

♪

Elon Musk: It's not
a question of will,

it's a question of showing
that there's a way.

Berger: No one's paying SpaceX
to build that rocket.

Crowley: This wasn't money
from other investors.

This was his personal
fortune in the game.

Interviewer: So you had a budget
of about a hundred million?

Something like that?

Elon: Well I was hoping it would
be less than that, but, uh,

I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't
spend much more than that.

Astronaut: Okay, Houston,
I'm gonna change lenses on you.

O'Brien:
"Failure is not an option"

is the famous NASA phrase.

And...it is absolutely
the opposite

of the way Elon Musk thinks.

Berger: Failure is an option
at SpaceX.

And while he didn't
like to fail,

he realized that failing

was part of going fast.

Fernholz: It is a willingness
to accept risks

and to iterate quickly,

to test hardware,
to accept failure,

that is not part
of NASA's culture.

Elon Musk: And there should be
an expectation that,

that failure is highly likely.

Urban: When SpaceX started,

you know, it was funded by Elon

and, you know, he had money
from PayPal, but not that much,

and rocket launches are
really expensive.

So they had to show

that they really were
a real company

that could truly launch
something

into space successfully.

So they could get a contract
from NASA,

so that they could actually have
funding to keep going.

Fernholz: NASA's deputy
administrator at that time,

Lori Garver, she saw how

NASA was just not living up
to what it could be.

♪ (soft dramatic music) ♪

Lori Garver: I believed
in the concept,

that the private sector,
properly incentivized,

could do something
better and cheaper,

more efficiently for sure,
than the government,

Because we had been doing it
for 60 years.

O'Brien: Lori Garver said,
"the fastest way for Americans

to get back into space
on a rocket,

is to rethink
how we do business."

So she's a crucial
player in all of this.

Certainly, we would not see
Elon where he is now,

if Lori Garver hadn't
been in that job.

Garver: Elon didn't
play the game.

Like, these are big
aerospace companies.

These are defense contractors,

and it's a club, and it's
a very exclusive club,

a hundreds of billions of
dollars a year business.

And they weren't going to
go quietly into the night.

Reisman: There was a big
difference in corporate culture

between the entire aerospace
industry and SpaceX,

no question about it.

The aerospace industry had
a certain way of doing things.

And then you had this upstart,
you know, this SpaceX,

that really had
Silicon Valley in the DNA,

that was out there with the
status quo as the enemy.

Garver: There were a lot of
things about Elon and SpaceX

that the aerospace
community didn't like.

That combination of being
y'know, not from here,

he's South African,
he's Canadian, he's young.

And the aerospace community
in my view,

used those things

to try and put more negativity

on him and SpaceX.

They were scared.

Reisman: I remember once we had
this meeting with some

NASA officials, some very
high level NASA officials,

and they were
talking about

how we don't have
enough meetings

at SpaceX, and Elon said,

"why do you think we need to
have more meetings?"

They said, well, at NASA,

in meetings, that's how
we make decisions.

That's how we get stuff done.

And I sat there and I cringed,

you know, having been a former
NASA guy, I just knew

what was going through Elon's
mind hearing this,

losing respect
by the nanosecond.

(laughter)

♪

Garver: I was in meetings
in the Pentagon for years,

where they would make fun
of Elon and me,

for even pushing for NASA

to invest in these new ways

of doing space transportation.

And they believed that
they would never,

never trust their very precious

military satellites to...
'that kid.'

And they like to believe what
they do was so hard

and so special,
and maybe even secret,

that no one else could do it.

♪

Urban: Elon predicted
they had, you know,

three, maybe four tries,

before he ran out of money.

♪

Berger: The first
launch attempt

was in March
of 2006.

(rocket rumbling)

At that point, the company
was not quite four years old.

They'd built their first rocket,

(rocket blast roaring)

and the engine caught on fire

seconds before the launch,

because there was a fuel leak.

The rocket went up
for about 30 seconds

and then the engine petered out

and it came crashing back
to Earth.

O'Brien: We would look at that
and say, oh, that was a failure.

And he was like, "no, that
was actually 80% success!"

And if you're not at that
kind of ratty edge

of what's possible,

how are you gonna know,
until you have a failure?

And this is the insight which

Elon Musk, of course, embraced.

Reisman: At SpaceX, Elon
would tell us things like,

"take 15 minutes every day
and sit down at your desk

and think about something
you've been doing

the same way, for like
a year or longer.

You've probably missed an
opportunity to do it better."

(rocket roaring)

Berger: After the first launch,
they matured a lot.

and they made improvements
to the rocket.

And so, they were more confident

by the time they got to the
second launch, a year later.

Controller: Three, two, one--

(rocket roaring)

We have lift off!
- We have lift off.

Berger: The first stage
performed normally,

it burned for more than
two minutes,

got up into space.

And the second stage
pulled away.

- Separation!
- Stages are separated!

Berger: Things were going great,

but then the second stage
started oscillating

and then spinning,

due to a fuel sloshing issue
in that upper stage.

And that rocket almost
made it to orbit.

Fernholz: Everyone has seen
the videos of Elon

trying to make the reusable
rocket work,

blowing up again and again,
as it crashes into the ocean.

And that would
never fly at NASA,

y'know, NASA would have a
congressional hearing

and they would be saying,

why are you blowing up
these rockets?

We're canceling the program,
stop it!

And that's a problem
for NASA's culture.

It makes it hard for
them to innovate.

Whereas for Elon, you know,
he blows up a rocket,

and he makes a joke on Twitter

about rapid unexpected
disassembly.

And that is a huge culture clash

between the space establishment
and Elon Musk.

Berger: And so,
that sets the stage

for the third launch of
the Falcon One rocket

in early August of 2008.

♪ (upbeat dramatic music) ♪

(rocket engine roaring)
♪ ♪

They were counting on success.

And what happened was

right when the second stage was
supposed to take off

and pull away, the first stage
engine shut off,

but then it restarted, and it
bumped into the second stage.

And so they lost that vehicle.

At that point they were
almost out of money,

and it was devastating.

Crowley: That was
a very difficult year.

Fernholz: Those first three
rockets were paid for by

about a hundred million dollars
out of his own pocket.

And there was a point
where he thought

that was all gonna go
down the drain.

Urban: That was probably
the worst year of his life.

Fernholz: 2008 was a year where

SpaceX was in trouble,

Tesla was in trouble.

Higgins: There's a debate about
what Tesla should become.

Some think the company

perhaps is more valuable

being an automotive supplier,

selling the battery technology
to other companies.

Elon wants to ensure

that it is an
electric car company

to usher in that new world.

Urban: SpaceX and Tesla
are both starting to fail.

Higgins: I remember talking
to some people who were,

would watch him on the phone

with his money manager saying,

"we gotta raise money,
I gotta make payroll."

Urban: He actually was getting
divorced the same year.

Knutsson: Elon had married
his college girlfriend.

The marriage lasted eight years.

They had six children total,

including triplets
and twins, all boys.

One of those boys
passed away of SIDS.

Berger: It was an
enormously stressful time

in terms of emotion,

in terms of finances,

and both of his companies
were basically failing.

Well, for SpaceX, they
had one final chance.

They had the parts
for a fourth rocket,

and the team to assemble it
and launch it,

but they were out of money.

Like they were, they were weeks
away from missing payroll,

and so Elon got his team
together the day after that

third failure of the
Falcon One and said,

"You have six weeks.

We've gotta build this rocket,

get it to Kwajalein and launch
it to orbit, or we're done.

Elon Musk: Late 2008, there was
some bad news board meetings.

Look, if we did just one
and it didn't work,

then that could have like
the opposite effect.

Like, look how dumb it is to,
to try to send this to Mars.

Journalist: Right, look at all
this money down the drain.

Elon Musk: Yeah! What an idiot!
(chuckles)

That was one of the toughest
things we wrestled with.

♪ ♪

Crowley: In
September of that year

comes that last opportunity,

the fourth rocket launch.

And this is it.

This is do or die.

Urban: He thought, you know,
if we don't get it

on this fourth try, I don't
think we're going to be able

to keep going, because we're
going to run out of money.

And, you know, this huge moment
for SpaceX and...

and really for,
for space travel.

Controller:
Three, two, one, zero.

- We're at Stage One!
- We have lift off indication!

Berger: The launch is perfect.

Controller: We have lift off!

SpaceX Falcon One
launch vehicle,

Falcon has cleared the tower.

Crowley: The rocket takes off
and it's a success.

Berger: It gets into orbit, and

it's an enormous moment
of success for SpaceX.

Controller: Firing separation
confirmed.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

♪ ♪

Berger: It was a relief,

but it just meant that SpaceX
was not going to die that day.

Garver: NASA was
clearly impressed,

and in the end of 2008,

awarded them
$1.6 billion dollars,

to take cargo
to the space station.

♪ (uplifting music) ♪

Crowley: Now they have
a huge customer,

and this is
incredibly important.

And then he also learns
on Christmas Eve,

that Tesla has now received

a new round of funding

and that company
will also be saved.

Knutsson: It was a
Christmas miracle.

After being close
to their death,

both companies were
back in the game.

But they were both
costly ventures.

Elon might have to choose
which one to save.

I like to call it a
billionaire's 'Sophie's choice.'

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

Crowley: You see it all the
time, oh, now he's done it.

This is too far.

This is too crazy.

This is too different.

And then he pulls it off.

He's a game changer,

willing to go out on a limb,

and show all of his critics,

that he is the one laughing
at the end of the day.

Feresten: Elon Musk
kind of took the model

for how to run a business

and threw it out the window,
into a wood chipper and said,

"let's make it more efficient."

Tesla is, in my opinion,

single-handedly
responsible for this

paradigm shift in,

in how we power cars.

When you walk into SpaceX,
it's this giant hangar,

this beehive of activity,

with workers coming in

on 12 hour shifts,
other workers leaving and

sometimes sleeping in
RV's in the parking lot.

But this kind of
universal drive,

that we have to
get this stuff done,

get it done quickly,

and then get our asses to Mars.

Crowley: There has been
controversy

about the amount of
work and devotion

that he expects from his team.

Berger: He's extremely
demanding.

Reisman: He has a tremendously
strong work ethic

and he expects you to live
up to those expectations.

Berger: He has a temper.

And if a project is
not done on time,

he wants to know why,
and who screwed up.

Reisman: And if you fall short,

he will tell you, okay?

To him, your esteem

is completely measured by

your technical aptitude.

And if you demonstrate
a weakness,

you'll be shown the door.

Fernholz: I think it's a very
interesting blind spot for Elon,

the suffering of his
employees sometimes.

In part, because he will suffer
alongside of them

and work those 80
or 90 hour weeks.

And he sort of feels like,
'if I can do it, you can too.'

This is just the cost of
achieving greatness.

Higgins: And on one hand,
they talk about how

just an incredible
experience it is.

He's charming, he can be funny.

He's just super
inspiring in a way

that they just
haven't had before.

On the other hand,

he's a nano-manager
who has a temper

that can be triggered by
seemingly random things.

Crowley: From Elon's
perspective,

it's a race against the clock.

Berger: He realizes that

to actually get humans to Mars,

it's going to take
most of his adult life.

And he has a finite
amount of time.

He doesn't know how
long he's gonna live,

he doesn't know how long
funding will be available.

Crowley: Those are the stakes.

That's the pressure,
that's the timeline.

And Elon has intimated
several times, that you,

you can't do it on
40 hours a week.

Berger: His response to that
is going as fast as possible.

Reisman: He said several times
to the entire staff,

if you're in a meeting,
and you feel like your time

is not being well spent,
get up and leave.

Do not apologize, do not make
excuses, just walk out.

He's so determined to
accomplish those goals,

that if it hurts
somebody's feelings,

that's not going to stop him.
He'll do it.

Higgins: Elon Musk
is all about defiance,

whether he's fighting
rivals or regulators or,

you know the media,
he's not gonna hold back.

And Twitter is his
most potent tool.

He's a guy that likes drama,

he's a guy that likes attention,

he likes the thrill of it all,
it would seem.

If somebody is attacking
him on Twitter,

he has a very hard time
letting go.

Urban: People get upset about,
"why are you

acting this way on Twitter,

why are you, you know,
doing things that,

you know, you shouldn't?"

Well, they're trying to get
him to be more conformist,

to conform to the kind of
'way people are supposed to be,'

which is the direct opposite of

what has gotten him where he is.

Elon Musk: Look, I know
I sometimes say or post

strange things, but that's
just how my brain works.

To anyone I've offended,
I just wanna say,

I reinvented electric cars

and I'm sending people to
Mars in a rocketship.

Did you think I was also going
to be a chill, normal dude?

Higgins: If he thinks that

Tesla or any part of his empire

is in danger,

he's going to defend himself.

♪ (slow dramatic music) ♪

♪

Elon Musk: A future where we are
a space-faring civilization,

and out there among the stars

is infinitely more
exciting and inspiring

than one where we are not.

You basically, I think,
have to hate humanity

if you don't like that future.

Knutsson: The vision for SpaceX
was simple.

You need to first send up cargo

and then deliver people safely.

And if he's gonna colonize Mars,

he's got to send lots of cargo,
and then people.

Berger: The Falcon One rocket
is not big enough

to send cargo to orbit.

And so they had to build
a much larger rocket,

which became the Falcon Nine.

Fernholz: The Falcon Heavy
is the largest rocket

that any private company
has ever built.

It is a complex rocket

that a lot of people were
worried would not work.

It would blow up
on the launch pad.

For a normal rocket company,

they would use something
called a mass simulator.

They'd just put a big metal box
on top of the rocket and say,

this weighs as much
as a satellite,

we've proved that it works.

But Elon Musk is a showman,

and so instead of a metal box,

he put a Tesla with
a mannequin inside,

and launched it on a trajectory

to pass by Mars.

(rocket engine roaring)

Knutsson: I remember being in
the newsroom that day.

Even the most jaded news people

were glued to the TV set,

to watch this rocket go up,

with a Roadster inside,

it makes it to space!

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

Berger: The image of a mannequin

sitting at the wheel of a Tesla

in space was incredibly iconic,

and like, was shared
around the world,

because it was just
so wild to look at.

♪ ♪

Fernholz: It was
not enough to say,

we're doing what a space company
has never done before

and launching this huge rocket.

We're also going to, by the way,

show off, my electric car.

And then you'd see
the rocket come down

and actually land
on a landing pad,

folding out its little feet.

It looked like
something out of a

science fiction film
from the 1960's.

This was actually
rocket reusability.

Elon Musk: I've thought about
what are the things

that are most gonna affect
the future of humanity.

And the three things I came
up with were the internet,

transitioning to a
sustainable energy economy,

and the third was
space exploration.

Pressman: When everybody said
Tesla was gonna go bankrupt,

there wasn't a lot of faith that
Tesla was going to make it.

And it turns out that
there was something there.

Elon Musk: The strategy
I had was to

start off with a high price,

low volume car,
being the sports car,

and then Phase Two
was the Model S,

and that's mid-price,
mid-volume.

And then Phase Three is the

high volume, low price car.

Higgins: There's so many
reasons why they should fail,

or why, questions on why
haven't they failed?

And people are, you know, not
wrong when they point to

the shortcomings of the company.

They do have some problems,
their service is not very great,

they've got quality issues.

On the other hand, they have
a car that you can go buy

and people are buying
and are being attracted to.

They've created a brand,

that resonates with people
around the world.

Pressman: Somehow he can
come up with really unique,

and interesting, often
disruptive solutions.

That's what he's
done with Tesla.

That's what he's
done with SpaceX.

Berger: The first step
was cargo, but then NASA

started planning seriously about
a commercial crew program

to use private vendors to get
astronauts into space.

And SpaceX was among
several bidders for that.

SpaceX was the upstart,
the new space,

the commercial space company,
and Boeing was very much

the blue-blood
traditional provider.

Boeing got $4.2 billion
from NASA

and SpaceX got $2.6 billion.

♪ (dramatic music) ♪

And SpaceX,

this nimble, fast moving,

y'know, upstart company,
lo and behold,

beat Boeing by a couple of
years, with far less money.

Knutsson: The Dragon launch,
this wasn't a car,

these were humans.

Fernholz: So, as the
first flight on SpaceX's

crew Dragon approached,

nerves were through the roof.

Controller: Three, two, one,

zero, ignition.

Lift off of the Falcon 9

and crew Dragon, go NASA!

Reisman: And lo and behold,
it actually worked.

It cost the taxpayer

more than ten times less money,

than they projected
it would have,

if they did it the
traditional way.

And it turned out to
be a huge success.

Fernholz: The jubilation
at SpaceX and at NASA

was just through the roof,

that they had accomplished
this technical goal

and proven that this model of
public-private partnerships

in space can succeed.

(computers beeping)

Garver: Human space flight
for NASA has been sort of

the heart and soul
of the agency.

And launching the astronauts

to the space station

was an amazing achievement.

When they returned safely,

was when I finally could

let out a breath
and there is no doubt,

it is a game changer.

James L. Green: This is
a huge step for us.

And I think it's important
for the world to realize,

that we're going
into space to stay,

and we're going to continue on

to then the Moon,

and then onto Mars.

♪ (upbeat dramatic music) ♪

Berger: He's made space flight
cool again.

And I think he's had
an enormous impact

in changing the mindset

of what is possible.

Knutsson: Just look at
the Starship,

the rocket that's going to
take us to Mars.

It's as if it's ripped
right out of

the fantasy books
he used to read.

Tim Urban: It is a
36-story skyscraper,

that goes into space.

That thing...goes up in the air

and then 16 stories of it

gets pinged off

into space to head to Mars.

It lands on Mars,

it can then take people,
launch off Mars,

and come back to Earth
and land on Earth.

This is the new 1960's.

We're about to have a

new Neil Armstrong of some kind

land on Mars.

Berger: You know,
SpaceX has never lost

that founder's mentality.
It's gone from starting with

three employees,
to now almost 10,000.

I mean, they are now the
establishment

in the space industry.

They're probably NASA's most
important contractor now,

and certainly will
be in the future.

They launch far more rockets
than any company

or country in the world.

But, they're not resting
on those laurels.

There's still this
underlying culture

that is driving them to be

the upstarts, the renegades.

And you have to put that
all back on

Elon Musk and his personality.

Elon Musk: Human space flight
is the, is the reason

that SpaceX was created.

Crowley: It will be
interesting to see

what this next
half of his life is like.

Higgins: Elon's talked about how
he probably has too many ideas.

I've talked to people who say,

y'know, you'll be in
one of these moments

and you just kind of
see that light kind of go on,

where he's coming up
with an idea.

Knutsson: Tell me
one other person

that has reinvented
space travel,

created the first
all-electric car company,

figured out transportation
underground,

put satellites in the air,

providing the internet
to everybody,

solar panels on the roof.

Who's done all this?

Higgins: There is no
Tesla-tomorrow.

Elon Musk and Tesla
have won the day.

You see General Motors,
Volkswagen, Mercedes,

all these companies racing

to invest their fortunes

in bringing out electric cars.

Tesla and Elon Musk have
convinced the world

that the car should be
electrified.

Berger: He did the same thing
with the space industry.

He completely disrupted Boeing,
Lockheed Martin,

Northrop Grumman, Russia!

Just completely upended
their entire businesses.

No one was sitting around,
inviting him in.

He had to sort of,
be a bull in a china shop.

Knutsson: He brought a
rock and roll swagger

to the world of business

like the business
world has never seen.

Reisman: Elon will view himself
as a failure

if he doesn't fundamentally
change the course

of human history of,
of how we all live our lives.

Garver: He made more money
than I'm sure

he envisioned in his life.

And what does he want to do?

Expand humanity and
take those first steps.

That's an unbelievable thing
for an individual to do.

Fernholz: If you were to
ask Elon, he'll tell you

he'll end up in history
as the first man

to build a city on Mars.

Crowley: For anyone out there,
whether you like him

or you don't like him,

that's not taking him seriously,

they're missing an opportunity
to understand

one of the greatest minds
that is

shaping life on Earth
and maybe elsewhere.

♪ (triumphant uplifting music) ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Announcer: To order
In Their Own Words

Season Two on DVD

visit ShopPBS or call

1-800-PLAY-PBS

This program is
also available

on Amazon Prime
video.

♪ ♪

In Their Own Words
was made possible in part

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Thank you.