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Of Mice And Musk: A SpaceX Odyssey
Elon Musk has dreamed of a human colony on Mars since he was a young man. Today, his SpaceX company is taking the first steps toward achieving that dream.
As Ashlee Vance tells it, one wall of Elon Musk’s office at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, contains two posters of Mars. On the left is Mars as it exists today – a frozen, lifeless orb. On the right is Musk’s vision of Mars as it could be — a happy place inhabited by humans who frolic on verdant continents surrounded by oceans.
“I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future,” he tells Vance while eating cookies and cream with sprinkles on top. “If we can solve sustainable energy and be well on our way to becoming a multi-planetary species with a self-sustaining civilization on another planet—to cope with a worst-case scenario happening and extinguishing human consciousness— then I think that would be really good.” No one has ever accused Elon Musk of thinking too small.
At the turn of the 21st century, Musk had two Martian fantasies. One was to send a colony of mice to the Red Planet and bring them back again, along with their interplanetary babies. The other involved building a greenhouse on Mars and letting Earthlings see the plants inside grow over the internet. Each venture required at least one if not two rocket ships.
He and a coterie of friends traveled twice to Moscow, once in 2001 and again in 2002, trying to purchase surplus Russian rockets that could be refurbished for the Martian missions. The first time did not go well. Recalls Jim Cantrell, one of the team that traveled to Moscow with Musk, “One of their chief designers spit on me and Elon because he thought we were full of shit.” On the second excursion, Musk became convinced the Russians he was meeting with were only interested in fleecing a gullible American with too much money and too few brains.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk inside the Dragon V2 [Source: SpaceX]
On the way home from the second failed mission, Musk astonished his team by announcing, “Hey, guys, I think we can build this rocket ourselves.” In June 2002, Space Exploration Technologies, popularly known as SpaceX, was formed to build a cheaper rocket that could carry small payloads into space for paying clients on an average of once a month. The only problem? It had no rocket.
Such trifles were never matters to hold Elon Musk back. He assembled a team of committed rocket engineers and set about accomplishing, with millions, what NASA spent billions doing. Musk’s principle talent, apart from concocting outrageously impossible dreams, is finding people to work for him who are ready, willing and eager to give up all semblance of a normal life in exchange for insane working hours in remote locations. One test launching area was set up in the middle of Texas and another on far away Kwajalein Island, the largest island in an atoll between Guam and Hawaii that is part of the Marshall Islands.
“I would like to die thinking that humanity has a bright future”
SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk
Musk is not a man without a sense of humor. He dubbed his new rocket Falcon 1, paying homage to the Millennium Falcon of Star Wars fame. On its first flight on March 24, 2006, it crashed back to Earth after only 25 seconds. SpaceX employees dutifully donned scuba gear to retrieve some of the pieces from the ocean and set about rebuilding for another attempt.
Musk responded by hiring more engineers and starting work on a brand new rocket, the Falcon 9, that featured one large central rocket surrounded by 8 smaller rockets. Despite the failure of Falcon 1, Musk was already busy positioning the company to bid on NASA contracts to resupply the International Space Station.
On September 1, 2008, Falcon 1 flew its first successful mission. SpaceX was a viable commercial company at last but one that was rapidly going broke. At the end of 2008, Musk knew he would have to choose between SpaceX and Tesla. Alone, one of them might survive. Together? The odds were, both would fail. Musk worried that Tesla would be bought out by one of the Big Three automakers and become just a small part of a giant company.
Later in 2008, Tesla was within hours of defaulting on its payroll obligations. If that happened, Musk’s personal fortune would be gone, along with Tesla and SpaceX. He asked for help from venture capital group VantagePoint but was rebuffed. That’s when Musk put all his chips on red and let them ride.
Source: SpaceX
With all of his dreams and aspirations on the line, Musk executed a colossal bluff. He told investors he would put in $40,000,000 of his own fortune to keep the business going — $40,000,000 he didn’t have. Based on his assurances, other investors agreed to put up $20,000,000 more in financing and the crisis passed. A few weeks later, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to do twleve ISS re-supply missions.
Antonio Gracias, a Tesla and SpaceX investor and one of Musk’s closest friends, watched all of this at close hand. He says 2008 told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias says. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray. Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets.”
Today, SpaceX launches an average of one rocket a month, carrying payloads for many companies and several nations. Its prices undercut those of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Orbital Science by a wide margin. Many of its competitors rely on Russian and other foreign suppliers but SpaceX makes its machines from scratch in the U.S.
Its clientele includes Canadian, European, and Asian customers and it has more than 50 flights planned over the coming years worth more than $5 billion. The company remains privately owned, with Musk as the largest shareholder. SpaceX is profitable and is estimated to be worth $12 billion.
Falcon 9 discovery launch from Feb. 2014 at Cape Canaveral, FL [Image credit: SpaceX]
The Falcon 9 has gone from a fantasy to SpaceX’s workhorse. Painted pure white with only an American flag and the SpaceX logo adorning its sides, there’s nothing particularly flashy looking about the Falcon 9. It’s just an elegant, purposeful machine. And to think that for a period of weeks just a few years ago, it’s ability to lead mankind into the dawn of commercial space travel almost died before it was ever born, thanks to a bluff so bold and so daring, it would leave most of us breathless.
Jimmy Buffett once sang, “Read dozens of books about heroes and crooks, and I learned much from both of their styles.” Which one is Elon Musk? Read Ashlee Vance’s book and make up your own mind.
Source: Bloomberg
SpaceX plans to attempt what will be a defining moment in rocket reusability on Starship Flight 15.
As Elon Musk announced in a recent X post, SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy Booster and the Starship upper stage during the upcoming orbital flight. If successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact, a breakthrough Musk has called essential to making life multiplanetary.
SpaceX will attempt to catch both the Super Heavy booster and Starship on the upcoming flight.
If both are successful, it will mark the first time that all parts of an orbital rocket return to Earth intact.
This is the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2026
Previous flights have demonstrated the tower-catch technique with Super Heavy. SpaceX has successfully caught V1 boosters three times (on Flights 5, 7, and 8), with some even reflown. The Ship upper stage has never been caught.
Returning from orbital velocity after deploying payload makes it a significantly harder challenge due to higher energy, heat loads, and the need for precise belly-flop reentry, a flip maneuver, and a final landing burn to settle between the Mechazilla tower’s chopstick arms.
Flight 15, using Booster 22 and Ship 42 (both Block 3 vehicles), is targeted for no earlier than Friday, November 13, 2026, from Orbital Launch Pad 2 at Starbase, Texas. The 75-minute window opens at 4:45 p.m. CT, pending regulatory approval. After hot staging and separation, the booster is planned to return for a catch roughly 6 minutes and 35 seconds after liftoff.
The Ship will insert into a roughly 275 km orbit, deploy 26 advanced Starlink V3 satellites, complete about 14 orbits over more than 22 hours, and—if systems check out—perform a deorbit burn, reentry, flip, and landing burn for a tower catch at approximately T+22 hours 32 minutes.
SpaceX confirms Starship 15 launch window with massive ambitions
A simulation shown during SpaceX’s October earnings call depicted the Ship descending in a belly-flop attitude, flipping upright with a short engine burn, and being captured by the arms:
From simulation to reality
SpaceX is just ONE WEEK away from attempting its most ambitious Starship catch yet https://t.co/nHrxSX6DSz
— X Freeze (@XFreeze) November 6, 2026
Contingency splashdown zones exist in the Gulf of Mexico (booster) and Pacific (Ship) if a catch is not viable. SpaceX has stressed rigorous health checks before committing the Ship to a return-to-launch-site trajectory.
Musk has described the odds of success on this first dual-catch attempt as “more likely than not,” noting a steady stream of additional flights is already scheduled if needed. Full recovery would enable rapid inspection, refurbishment, and reflight—slashing costs and supporting the high launch cadence required for Starlink expansion, lunar missions, and eventual Mars settlement.
As Musk put it, this is “the critical breakthrough needed to make life multiplanetary.”
Tesla Cybercab is going to get some pretty substantial updates, including improvements to efficiency and a new color.
CEO Elon Musk said in a post on X on Saturday that Tesla would be working to refine the Cybercab even more, following the announcement during the week that the company would eliminate the Cybertruck lines within Giga Texas for more Cybercab manufacturing capacity.
“There are efficiency improvements coming that will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack,” Musk posted on X. “We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous.”
There are efficiency improvements coming that will allow for a 40kWh Cybercab pack. We will make this in liquid silver, so the colors are not too monotonous.
The biggest thing most people fail to understand is that there are a very limited number of smart, dedicated people! They can only do so many things.
If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can’t use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2026
A new, more efficient model of the Cybercab will be engineered, which will only help Tesla’s profitability and margins, and it also boosts the argument for why the Cybertruck should be discontinued, at least from a business perspective.
The current Cybercab that operates in the Robotaxi platform in Austin, Texas, has a 48 kWh pack, and it sounds like Musk believes Tesla is on its way to introducing a version that has fewer cells but can manage the same workload thanks to engineering efficiencies.
Credit: Tesla
Musk also doubled down on the decision to prioritize Cybercab production over Cybertruck, which is a decision that has been extremely polarizing within the community, and many fans have made it abundantly clear that they are not particularly pleased with the plans.
“If we have to maintain a complex production line, supply chain, and allocate engineering for Cybertruck, we can’t use those people or factory space and machinery for scaling Cybercab, which is the vehicle that will PROFOUNDLY transform the world of terrestrial transport,” Musk said.
A good look at Tesla’s new Liquid Silver Cybercab, planned with a 40 kWh battery pack following new improvements
😍 https://t.co/IUYsUcCBMs
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 8, 2026
Cybercab is obviously Tesla’s path forward in an automotive sense. It seems that Tesla is less concerned about catering to the passenger vehicle market and is more prone to focus on transforming passenger transportation in a way that prioritizes autonomy. However, this requires some sacrifice on Tesla’s end, and the Cybertruck is unfortunately a victim of this.
Cybercab holds an extremely crucial part of Tesla’s future. With the company already revolutionizing passenger transportation once, this is the next phase, and Cybercab is the path forward.
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Tesla Robotaxi app update now tells riders if Cybercab is the better choice
Tesla’s Robotaxi app now shows ETAs, wait times and availability for Cybercab and Model Y.
Tesla has rolled out a new vehicle selection screen in its Robotaxi app, and it puts the numbers riders care about most in front of them before they book.
Version 26.11.0 of the app shows the estimated arrival time, the expected wait and current availability for each vehicle option on a single screen, according to a video shared by @gheeunit on X on November 7. Riders deciding between a Cybercab and a Model Y Robotaxi can now compare those figures side by side instead of picking a car first and learning how long it will take afterward.
Tesla first gave riders that choice on September 3, the day paid Cybercab rides began in Austin. The original version of the screen listed the Cybercab, which seats two, next to the Model Y, which seats four. A later build, 26.8.2, added a seating capacity indicator so groups knew which car would fit them. What it did not show was whether choosing the Cybercab meant standing on the curb a few extra minutes.
Newest version of @robotaxi app has a new vehicle selector UI for choosing between Cybercab and Model Y and shows you the fare for both simultaneously! https://t.co/7qoDQ0vACX — mantequilla 🧈 (@gheeunit) November 7, 2026
That question matters more now than it did two months ago. Tesla had 45 Cybercabs on the Texas DMV roster when rides started. By late October the state listed 573, alongside 631 Model Ys, and community trackers logged a record 1,576 Cybercab sightings across Austin on Halloween alone. With two large fleets sharing one service area, the closest car and the quickest pickup are not always the same vehicle.
Inline availability also changes what happens when demand spikes. If no Cybercab is free nearby, the rider sees that on the selection screen rather than after trying to book one.
For now the comparison is mostly an Austin feature. Riders in Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and the Florida markets are still matched with Model Y vehicles, though Tesla said on its third quarter earnings call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas this month.
The update follows a steady run of smaller changes to the rider experience. Late last month Tesla brought a quiet mode that blacks out the cabin screen to Model Y Robotaxis after first testing it in the Cybercab, and it has stretched Austin service to run from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.
The Cybercab side of that selection screen is about to get much busier. Elon Musk said this week that Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of 2027 to make room for more Cybercab output, and Tesla has said it is aiming to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of this year.
Tesla has not published official release notes for version 26.11.0.
SpaceX will perform Starship double catch attempt with Flight 15
Tesla Cybercab is set to get some massive improvements
