# SpaceX & NASA: One Bad Meeting in Moscow Changed Space Forever

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/smile-with-daniel-7904799/spacex-nasa-one-bad-meeting-in-moscow-changed-space-forever.md
Podcast: [Smile with Daniel](https://stenobird.com/podcast/smile-with-daniel-7904799)
Published: 2026-07-17T05:19:38+00:00
Episode link: https://rss.com/podcasts/smile-with-daniel/2998447
Audio file: https://content.rss.com/episodes/390398/2998447/smile-with-daniel/2026_07_17_05_19_29_7d9b9653-1f9b-4111-b843-d5f9cf047cca.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/smile-with-daniel-7904799/episodes/spacex-nasa-one-bad-meeting-in-moscow-changed-space-forever
Duration seconds: 440

## Resource

Daniel wants to know why SpaceX exists if NASA already goes to space. The answer starts with a man who flew to Moscow to buy a rocket -- and came home empty-handed. NASA is a government agency. Funded by taxpayers, answerable to Congress, its job is to push the frontier -- deep space, scientific missions, things nobody has done before. That has always been its purpose. But for decades, getting to space at all was extraordinarily expensive. The main stages of most rockets were used once and then lost. They fell into the ocean or burned up in the atmosphere. Launching to space cost hundreds of millions of dollars in many cases. And everyone accepted it, because that was simply how rockets worked. In 2001, Elon Musk had recently sold PayPal and had a different idea. He wanted to inspire people to care about space again. His plan was to send a small greenhouse to Mars -- grow plants there, show people it was possible. To do that, he needed a rocket. So he travelled to Russia to buy one. The Russians offered to sell him one -- at a price he thought was outrageous. He flew home convinced there had to be a better way. According to Musk, one official made his feelings about the whole visit very clear in a way that left no room for doubt. On that flight home, Musk started doing the math. He realized that building a rocket from scratch might actually be cheaper than buying one. In 2002 he founded SpaceX -- Space Exploration Technologies -- with one goal: make getting to space dramatically cheaper. The answer was the reusable rocket. Instead of losing the rocket stages after every launch, what if the booster flew itself back and landed upright on a pad -- so you could refuel it and fly it again? Imagine throwing away a brand new airplane after every single flight. That is what ro…

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