In 2001, Elon Musk was involved in a nonprofit called the Mars Society.

He was interested in raising plants in a growth chamber on the surface of Mars.

It was a crazy idea, but that had not stopped him before. The problem was he needed a rocket to carry the payload to Mars.

He began looking where any reasonable person would look to Russia for refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The Russians viewed Musk as a space novice and didn't take him seriously.

They were so insulted by his confidence in bravado that one Russian chief engineer spat on him.

After returning to Russia on another attempt to purchase an ICBM, he was offered a rocket for $8 million.

Musk decided the Russians were not serious about doing business with him.

He stormed out of the meeting.

On the flight home, his team was having a drink to celebrate the fact they made it out of Russia,

but Musk was busy typing on his computer.

Suddenly he looked up and said,

I think we can build this rocket ourselves.

It was then he decided he would not be subject to outside sources.

He would have control of his product through vertical integration.

He started a company known as SpaceX and he built his own rockets.

It was such a risky endeavor. He wouldn't even let his friends invest in the company

because he said everyone would lose their money. He put 100 million dollars of his own money on the line.

Musk could not attract engineers with the right expertise to this project because of the risks involved.

He said that there was no point in hiring bad engineers, so he became the chief engineer, even

though he only had bachelor's degrees in economics and physics.

After three failed launches,

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