Musk's Christmas Eve

What actually happened

SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 launches had failed; the fourth, in September 2008, reached orbit on what Musk has said was the last money. Two days before Christmas, NASA awarded the $1.6 billion cargo resupply contract. Musk reportedly answered the call with 'I love you guys.'

Tesla, meanwhile, needed its investors to wire a round on December 24 to make payroll; Musk had put in essentially everything from the PayPal sale and was borrowing for rent. Both wires cleared. Isaacson's account, which the episode follows, is explicit that Musk refused the one move any rational adviser urged: choosing which company to let die.

The refusal is the story. The outcome made it legend, but on December 23 it was just exposure.

The longer arc

The desperation of December 2008 followed years of near-misses: SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 launches, in 2006, 2007, and August 2008, had each failed, burning through most of the roughly $100 million Musk had personally put into the company from his PayPal payout, and a fourth failure would likely have ended SpaceX outright. Tesla, meanwhile, was struggling to get its only product, the Roadster, into customers' hands at all, and the 2008 financial crisis had frozen the venture funding both companies depended on.

The bet paid off on a timeline longer than either company's founder could have promised anyone in 2008. SpaceX's Dragon capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station in May 2012, fulfilling the cargo contract NASA had awarded days before that Christmas. Tesla went public on Nasdaq in June 2010, the first American car company IPO in over fifty years, priced at $17 a share; both companies are now worth, combined, in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Musk's divorce from his first wife, Justine, was finalized that same year, 2008.