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Elon Musk was thinking about rockeTS. Justine Musk was thinking about whether her parents’ basement had room for five kids.
In her 2017 TEDxUIUC talk, “Visionaries Are People Who Can See in the Dark,” Elon’s first wife recalled reading a profile in which he was quoted telling a friend that SpaceX was worth risking everything for.
“I recently read a profile on Elon and he’s quoted as saying something to a friend — and this happened during the time we were still married together — and he says something to this friend that he never said to me,” Justine said.
“And he was saying that he was prepared to sacrifice everything, his entire fortune, to get a rocket into orbit.
And he said, ‘I don’t care if Justine and the kids and I end up living in Justine’s parents’ basement.
I’m going to make this happen.'”
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Her response had less to do with saving humanity and more to do with household logistics.
Justine said she wished she could go back, take him by the shoulders and ask, “Have you seen my parents’ basement?”
It got a laugh.
But it also captured the all-or-nothing drive behind Elon’s early SpaceX years, before rocket launches became livestreams and before the company became one of the most valuable businesses on the planet.
The Basement Bet Became a $2 Trillion Giant
At the time, SpaceX was a long shot with a large fuel bill.
Elon was trying to build rockets while Tesla was also fighting for survival. During the 2008 financial crisis, SpaceX suffered failed launches, Tesla was short on cash and Elon was putting much of his remaining personal wealth into both companies.
The bet did not come with a safety net.
It came with the possibility that the whole thing could collapse.
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Instead, SpaceX survived, won key NASA contracts and grew into a private-space powerhouse.
It launched astronauts, built Starlink into a global satellite internet business and made reusable rockets a normal part of the space industry.
Then came the public-market payoff.
SpaceX raised $75 billion in its recent IPO, the largest in history.
The debut briefly gave the company a market value above $2 trillion, turning SpaceX once tied to a hypothetical basement move into one of the world’s most valuable public businesses.
