There has been nothing more fun than watching Elon Musk’s 2002 pie-in-the-sky, wonks-in-a-warehouse space dreams become a reality, and a working one at that.
By 2008, built on Musk’s hand-picked initial crew of 160 employees, SpaceX had successfully launched its first Falcon 1 rocket and faced down the US government after protesting a NASA contract award to another firm.
…Kistler was not among the companies selected for the so-called Alternate Access to Station contracts. But Kistler the year before made an unsolicited proposal to NASA offering to sell data from a series of K-1 demonstration flights. Such a contract would give Kistler credibility with the prospective financial backers while giving NASA an opportunity to leverage private-sector investment to resupply the space station.
NASA officially bought into the idea in early 2004, awarding Kistler a $227.4 million contract…
