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Elon Musk retired successful rockets like Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 because they couldn't reach his real goal: making humanity multiplanetary. Each rocket was a stepping stone, not an endpoint. Vision drives the decision to blow up what works.
Elon Musk retired successful rockets like Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 because they couldn't reach his real goal: making humanity multiplanetary. Each rocket was a stepping stone, not an endpoint. Vision drives the decision to blow up what works.
Here's why Elon Musk blew up his rockets. With SpaceX, he had a couple different rockets. One was the Falcon 1, and then the Falcon 9, and then now he has Starship. The Falcon 1, after 3 sequential failures, the 4th launch, it worked. They launched it into space, and it was able to also bring it back to Earth. But he knew wasn't enough. And so he moved on to Falcon 9. When they launched this one, it was by far the most successful rocket in human history. Still, despite its success, it wasn't able to fulfill the vision that he was looking for. And he's like, you know what, we're gonna have to scrap it. This again. Now the focus is on the Starship, and the vision that he's looking for is to make humanity a multi-planetary species. So if you think about that, what's ultimately important is the vision that you have, and that's the core thing. Because if you don't have a vision or a mission that's driving you, you're not gonna be clear where you're trying to go at the end of the day. It was like, okay, this is nice, this is working, but we have a mission to fulfill, and so we need to go to the next level.
