@heyshrutimishra: Elon Musk started SpaceX because Neil Armstrong inspired him. Years later, his hero went to Congress and testified agai…
Summary
A story recounting how Elon Musk's spaceflight heroes Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan testified against his SpaceX efforts, yet he persevered through failures to make SpaceX the first private company to reach orbit and now the sole American means of transporting astronauts to the ISS.
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Cached at: 06/16/26, 01:09 AM
Elon Musk started SpaceX because Neil Armstrong inspired him.
Years later, his hero went to Congress and testified against him.
Three rockets exploded. SpaceX was running out of money. He bet everything on a fourth launch in 2008, and it worked, making SpaceX the first private company to reach orbit.
In 2010, the two men who made Elon dream about space in the first place, Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, told the US government that commercial spaceflight was a mistake.
Watch his face in this interview. He’s not angry. He’s hurt. His voice breaks when he says “those guys are heroes of mine.”
He didn’t quit. SpaceX now launches more rockets than any country on Earth. The same program Armstrong said would fail is the only American way to get astronauts to the ISS today.
Your heroes won’t always cheer for you. Sometimes they’re the reason you need to keep going anyway.
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