This Is What Inspired Elon Musk To Get Into The Modern Space Race

This adapted excerpt is taken from a new book, How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight, by Julian Guthrie, with a foreword by Richard Branson and an afterword by Stephen Hawking. (Penguin Press, Sept. 20, 2016) The new book tells the story of entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, his idea for a $10 million space prize, and the group of dreamers, engineers, rocket enthusiasts and aviation designers from across the globe who entered the race to become the first team to privately build and fly a rocket to the  start of space. June 2001 Peter Diamandis arrived at the Skybar, a rooftop watering hole on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, with the idea of meeting two young guys who had struck it rich in the dot com boom. Peter, whose lifelong dream had been to get man and machine to space without the government’s help, had heard these Internet entrepreneurs were interested in space. Peter had never heard of the men before the meeting was arranged by a mutual friend, so he wrote down their names: Adeo Ressi and Elon Musk. Peter usually approached pitch meetings with great enthusiasm, but tonight he felt subdued. He spotted Adeo by the Skybar pool, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the gold and glimmering Los Angeles sunset. He was tall and thin, a Giacometti walking man figure, and immediately affable. Adeo said Elon was running late but on his way. Elon was working on getting his pilot’s license and was flyi...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news