Biographer Walter Isaacson followed Elon Musk for two years, from successes at Tesla to a failed rocket launch.

And that was a metaphor for Elon Musk. He does amazing things, but leaves a lot of hot rubble in the wake.

It's Monday, October 30th. but deep inside, it's Science Friday.

I'm Cyfry producer Charles Bergquist. Admire him or despise him, it's hard to escape

hearing about the entrepreneur Elon Musk. Ira Flato talks with his biographer, Walter

Isaacson, who's profiled other people,

he calls disruptors, from Apple's Steve Jobs to CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Dowdn.

Isaacson talks about what he believes really makes Musk tick.

About 17 years ago, way back in 2006, I had a guest on the show, an entrepreneur, an engineer,

struggling to get recognition for a new idea, a spaceship, not made by NASA, but a private company,

a radical idea in its day with a radical man behind it.

The company was called SpaceX, and the engineer, not quite a household

name, Elon Musk. Elon, is there a barrier for the privatization of space?

I don't think there is a barrier in the sense of there being, say, some law against it or something

like that. There's a barrier of execution, which I think has not been exceeded.

It is extremely difficult to do.

There's a reason why there's an idiomatic expression about something being very difficult being, you know,

or something being easy not being rocket science.

It is really difficult, and it's a problem which is both a problem of

technical execution and business execution, and nobody's really been able to solve that yet,

and we're aspiring to do so with SpaceX. But it's really up to us. I think if we fail,

it's our fault, not anyone else's.

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