Most people assume SpaceX began because Elon Musk wanted to build rockets, but the original idea was smaller. Around 2001 he looked for the date of NASA's Mars mission, discovered there were no plans to send people at all, and came up with Mars Oasis, a little greenhouse with seeds in dehydrated gel that would land on Mars and send back an image of green plants against red soil, just to get people excited about space again and help NASA get a bigger budget. Then he realized the real obstacle was the cost of rockets: "I was wrong… there actually was plenty of will if people thought there was a way. So then I decided, okay, well, I need to work on the way." SpaceX was born to serve the dream of exploration, not to compete with it 🩵