2008: The year Elon Musk almost lost everything – how a family tragedy and four disasters nearly halted the path to $1.5 trillion

Winter evening of 2008 brings reflection on a life that could have gone differently. Elon Musk, right after his divorce and personal upheavals, stands on the brink of financial ruin. SpaceX — that “crazy” vision into which he poured $100 million — turns into a nightmare of four consecutive failures. But before bankruptcy, disappointment, and tears over former idols, something happened that forever changed the course of technology history. Today, in 2026, Elon Musk is preparing for the biggest IPO in history — a plan to raise over $30 billion to catapult SpaceX to a valuation of $1.5 trillion, surpassing Saudi Aramco’s record from 2019. This is not just an ordinary business success story. It’s an epic saga about a man whose wife left him, idols disappointed him, and rockets exploded — yet he refused to give up.

When a programmer decides to build rockets to Mars

2001. Elon Musk, then just 30 years old, has just allocated over $100 million from his PayPal earnings into his personal account. In Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs usually invest in the next social media or app, Musk chose a different kind of madness. “I wanted to build rockets and go to Mars,” he recalled years later. That idea drove him to Russia, where he and friends tried to buy a refurbished Dnepr rocket. A meeting at the Lavochkin Design Bureau turned into humiliation. A Russian designer spat at Musk, saying that this American nouveau riche “knows nothing about space technology.” He offered an absurd price and dismissed the group. On the return flight, Musk sat quietly, writing on his laptop. Then he turned around: “Hey, I think we can do this ourselves.” That simple sentence gave birth to SpaceX.

When the company was officially founded in 2002 in a modest warehouse in El Segundo near Los Angeles, industry giants — Boeing, Lockheed Martin — smiled condescendingly. SpaceX was a joke to them, a mockery of themselves. But Musk felt something that traditional corporations had lost — an obsessive need for change. His vision: “The Southwest Airlines of the space industry” — cheap, reliable space travel for everyone. Reality, however, was about to teach a lesson.

Four failures that nearly destroyed everything — and his wife left amid the storm

2006. Falcon 1, SpaceX’s first rocket, stands on the launch pad. After 25 seconds of flight — explosion. Media flooded SpaceX with ridicule. “You think software can be patched in space?” they sneered. 2007 brought a second disaster. Early 2008: a third failure. The first and second stages collide over the Pacific, disintegrating in flames. This time, the atmosphere changed completely. Engineers lost sleep, suppliers demanded cash, media turned hostile.

But that wasn’t the worst part. 2008 was also the year Tesla was on the brink of bankruptcy, and the global economy was plunging into the depths of the financial crisis. For Musk, it became personal — his wife, after ten years of marriage, decided to leave. Family shattered, empire collapsing, rockets exploding. SpaceX had only enough money for one last attempt. If the fourth try failed, it was all over. SpaceX would be dissolved, Musk left with nothing.

In this hardest moment, the most painful psychological blow came. Armstrong — the first man on the Moon — and Cernan — the last man on the Moon — publicly expressed doubts about Musk’s vision. “You don’t understand what you don’t know,” Armstrong told him directly. On camera, Musk had tears in his eyes. He didn’t cry when rockets blew up. He didn’t cry when his wife left him, or when the company was on the verge of failure. But the words of childhood idols — that broke him. “They were my heroes. It’s really hard. I wish they could see how hard I work.”

September 28, 2008: The night everything could have changed — but didn’t

Before the fourth launch, no one was talking about Mars or big ambitions. The Boca Chica factory was silent. Everyone knew: if Falcon 1 failed, SpaceX simply ceases to exist. Elon Musk lost his wife, faced the company’s collapse, and his idols mocked him. This was the last chance.

September 28, 2008. No spectacular announcement, no boastful speeches. Just a group of people in the control center, silently watching screens. The rocket launches. The fiery dragon lights up the night sky. Seconds 9… 8… 7… This time, no explosion. After 9 minutes, the engine shuts down as planned, and the payload enters orbit.

“Success!”

Chaos erupts in the control center. Cheers, shouts of joy, Musk raises his hands, his brother Kimbal dissolves into tears. Falcon 1 enters history. SpaceX becomes the first private company in the world to achieve what no innovative startup had managed.

December 22, 2008. Musk answers a call. William Gerstenmaier from NASA has news that changes everything: a contract worth $1.6 billion for 12 missions between Earth and the space station. SpaceX survived. “I love NASA,” Musk shouts, then changes his computer password to “ilovenasa.” The year he nearly lost everything ends with triumph.

Musk’s obsession: rockets that must return

After surviving, came the hardest part. Musk was stubborn about a vision industry considered madness: reusable rockets. Nearly all internal experts opposed it. “No one reuses and reassembles disposable paper cups,” they argued. But Musk looked further. If airplanes could fly once and be discarded, no one could fly. If rockets weren’t reusable, space would always be a toy for the elite.

This was his first principle — “first principles” — going back to the basics of physics and economics. Going back to 2001, Musk analyzed rocket costs in Excel. He concluded that traditional space giants artificially inflated prices by tens of times. Aluminum, titanium on the London Metal Exchange — how much do raw materials cost? Why does a finished component become a thousand times more expensive?

SpaceX chose a path of no return. Repeated launches, explosions, analysis, more attempts. December 21, 2015 — that day entered astronomical history. Falcon 9 with 11 satellites launches from Cape Canaveral. After 10 minutes — the first stage returns to the launch site and lands vertically on Florida, like in science fiction movies. Old industry rules shattered completely. The era of cheap space travel was opened.

Stainless steel instead of graphene — the genius of simplification

Another Musk madness was building Starship. The initial plan relied on expensive, complex carbon fiber composites. But Musk returned to first principles and did the math. Carbon fiber — $135 per kilogram. 304 stainless steel, used for pots — $3 per kilogram.

“But steel is too heavy!” protested engineers. Musk pointed out a physical detail everyone ignored: melting point. Carbon fiber poorly withstands high temperatures; it needs costly ceramic tiles for insulation. Stainless steel has a melting point of 1,400°C and withstands cryogenic liquid oxygen. After considering insulation systems, steel costs 40 times less, yet weighs the same.

This decision completely freed SpaceX from the constraints of precise manufacturing. Instead of clean rooms and advanced tech, they set up tents in the Texas desert and welded rockets like water towers. If something exploded — they cleaned up and welded again tomorrow. Doing top-tier engineering from cheap materials — that was the real competitive advantage of SpaceX.

Starlink: 24 million users as a weapon in IPO

A technological breakthrough led to a rapid increase in valuation. From $1.3 billion in 2012 to $400 billion in July 2024, and now around $800 billion — SpaceX “boarded the rocket” of valuation. But it wasn’t spectacular rocket landings behind this. It was Starlink satellites.

Starlink — a constellation of thousands of satellites in low orbit — proved to be the world’s largest internet provider. It turned “space” from spectacle into infrastructure as fundamental as water or electricity. On a ship in the middle of the Pacific or in war-torn ruins — a receiver the size of a pizza box, and the signal comes from 100 kilometers above Earth. It became a money-making machine.

By the end of 2025, Starlink already served 7.65 million active subscribers, with a total user base over 24.5 million. North American market accounted for 43% of subscriptions, while emerging markets — Korea, Southeast Asia — made up 40% of new users. Wall Street believed these numbers. Projected revenue for 2025 was $15 billion, and for 2026 — $22-24 billion. Over 80% came from Starlink. SpaceX transformed from a space contractor into a global telecom giant with a monopoly position.

IPO and Musk’s second chance: from bankruptcy to a billion dollars

When Elon Musk considers an IPO, it’s not a traditional “exit with profit,” but an expensive “refueling” for big ambitions. At the 2022 SpaceX conference, Musk dampened employee spirits: “Going public is an invitation to suffering, and the stock price only distracts.” But three years later, the situation changed.

Musk has a concrete schedule. According to his plan, within two years, the first Starship will perform an uncrewed landing on Mars. Within four years, humans will set foot on the red planet. The ultimate vision — a city on Mars in 20 years, powered by 1,000 Starships — still requires astronomical investments.

If the IPO succeeds and SpaceX raises $30 billion, it will beat Saudi Aramco’s 2019 record ($29 billion). With a final valuation of $1.5 trillion, SpaceX will enter the top twenty largest publicly traded companies in the world. For engineers in Boca Chica and Hawthorne — those who slept with Musk at the factory — a share price of $420 means they will become millionaires, even billionaires.

But for Musk, this isn’t the end of the story. It’s fuel, steel, and oxygen paving the way to Mars. It’s an escape from a collapsing marriage in 2008, from idols who disappointed him, from rockets that exploded. The IPO is a second chance — not for money, but to fulfill an impossible vision. Hundreds of billions of dollars from the IPO are an interplanetary toll. The biggest IPO in human history could become the moment Elon Musk — the man whose wife left him and who was mocked by the industry — opens a new era for all humanity.