Elon Musk:

I'd never built anything physical. I'd never had a company that built anything physical. So, I had to figure out how to do all these things and bring together the right team of people. We did all that and then failed three times. It was tough, tough going.

Because the thing about a rocket is the passing grade is 100%. And, uh, you don't get to actually test the rocket in the real environment that it's going to be in.

So I think-so the best analogy for rocket engineering is- is, like, if you want to create a really complicated bit of software, you can't run the software as an integrated whole, and you can't run it on the computer it's intended to run on. But the first time you put it all together and run it on that computer, it must run with no bugs. That's basically the essence of it. We missed the mark there.

The first launch, I was picking up bits of rocket near the launch site. We learned with each successive flight, and were able to, with, uh-eventually, with the fourth flight, in 2008, reach orbit. And that was also with the last bit of money that we had. Thank goodness that happened. Fourth time's the charm?

Elon Musk:

I'd never built anything physical. I'd never had a company that built anything physical. So, I had to figure out how to do all these things and bring together the right team of people. We did all that and then failed three times. It was tough, tough going.

Because the thing about a rocket is the passing grade is 100%. And, uh, you don't get to actually test the rocket in the real environment that it's going to be in.

So I think-so the best analogy for rocket engineering is- is, like, if you want to create a really complicated bit of software, you can't run the software as an integrated whole, and you can't run it on the computer it's intended to run on. But the first time you put it all together and run it on that computer, it must run with no bugs. That's basically the essence of it. We missed the mark there.

The first launch, I was picking up bits of rocket near the launch site. We learned with each successive flight, and were able to, with, uh-eventually, with the fourth flight, in 2008, reach orbit. And that was also with the last bit of money that we had. Thank goodness that happened. Fourth time's the charm?