-It is a fantastical voyage,
the first launch of NASA
astronauts from US soil
since the Space Shuttle stopped
flying almost 10 years ago
and the first flight
to orbit carrying people
by a private company,
not a government.
That company -- SpaceX --
and the billionaire behind it
is a 48-year-old native
of South Africa named Elon Musk.
-This thing is the turbo pump.
This is the chamber, nozzle.
-He has this incredibly driven,
incredibly smart, brash,
and unfiltered personality
that's really driving
several different industries
all at once.
My name is Chris Davenport.
I'm a reporter at the Washington
Post covering space.
I'm also the author of a book
titled "The Space Barons."
-Musk made his fortune
in software, starting PayPal,
the online payment site.
From there, it was onto
electric vehicles and Tesla,
solar energy, a tunnel company
for hypersonic speed,
and rocket maker SpaceX.
-I mean, the very early days
when, you know --
like, way back --
you know, 2002, 2003 --
I'd have meetings with NASA,
and they'd be like,
"Oh, yeah, whatever.
Internet guy," you know.
"PayPal, whatever.
Just some rich guy's
gonna lose all his money,
and rocket's not gonna work,"
which is totally fair.
I mean, we hadn't proven
anything.
I hadn't proven anything.
-There's so much at stake
with this upcoming flight.
They've just got
to get it right.
-Dragon, separation confirmed.
-Space flight, long
a fascination for Musk,
and not just a way to reach the
International Space Station --
-Houston, station's phase
to round two.
ISS thrusters enabled.
-The station where this
first mission is going.
-I really want to get
especially the youth excited
about future in space
and get us thinking about
the future in exciting ways,
that the future is gonna be
better than the past,
that we'll be out there
as a spacefaring civilization,
that we'll be
having cities on Mars,
having cities on the moons
of Jupiter and Saturn.
-Elon Musk founded SpaceX
with the ultimate long-term goal
of sending humans to Mars
and building a city on Mars.
Mars, in his view,
is the backup plan
so that humanity would survive
in the event
of some sort of a catastrophe.
-But to get there,
you have to start here.
-Launch countdown.
Pad is clear.
Go for launch.
-And SpaceX is first
at the launch pad
to this mission
in a spirited race with Boeing,
that iconic aerospace giant.
Along the way, setbacks like
exploding rockets
and smoke of a different kind --
When Musk took a hit
of marijuana on this podcast --
-It's tobacco
and marijuana in there.
-It was behavior
that so alarmed NASA,
it prompted
a safety review of SpaceX.
-He will ruffle a lot of
feathers,
but he doesn't really care.
-Now, the SpaceX Dragon is about
to leave Earth
and make history --
the stuff of childhood dreams
made real.
-Stage separation confirmed.
-Impact ignition.
-I read every sci-fi/fantasy
book I could get my hands on
and some pretty esoteric ones.
It's like, "Wow, this sounds
like a really exciting future
that we can look forward to."
And then, I kept thinking we'd
go back to the moon, go to Mars.
-Elon Musk joins other
space barons
also in the hunt
for interstellar glory.
-An incredible opportunity
is reusability.
Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos,
who also owns
the Washington Post;
Richard Branson
and his Virgin Galactic;
and a longer line
of American inventors --
Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs,
plus a certain
other aerospace dreamer
with riches and celebrity
status, Howard Hughes.
-Elon, in many ways,
fits the role of one
of the defining characters
of his time,
for good and for bad.
This is a big moment for SpaceX.
Elon is nervous.
Probably every single person
who works at that company
and at NASA are nervous,
as they should be,
because this is really a big
thing.
