English Audio Request

Incredibly, however, SpaceX does not feel like a huge operation. It defeats the received wisdom that only major world powers, or gigantic corporations such as Boeing, can truly set their sights on leaving the grip of Earth's gravity. Instead, SpaceX feels like a dotcom company. Inside the factory are all the accoutrements one expects of a booming Silicon Valley enterprise. All the office space is open-plan and even Musk has an open cubicle like everyone else. Employees – who dub themselves SpaceXers – wear casual T-shirts and are not afraid to sport goatee beards and a smattering of tattoos. They often travel around the assembly floor on tricycles and until recently, before SpaceX's employee roster topped 1,000 people, Musk was personally involved in every single appointment. He believes the "all in it together" work culture of a start-up is vital to achieve the firm's staggeringly ambitious agenda. "People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working."
In fact, SpaceX's Silicon Valley-style culture springs from Musk's own background as one of the most successful – and wealthy – figures to emerge from the internet. His interest in technology began early. He bought his first computer at the age of 10 when he was growing up in Pretoria, South Africa, the son of a Canadian model and a South African engineer. Musk taught himself to write computer programs and sold his first commercial software – fittingly, a space game called Blastar – when he was just 12. He left at 17 to work on a relative's farm in Canada, before going to the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with two degrees, one in physics and the other in economics, before winning a place in 1995 at Stanford as a graduate student. He stayed there for two days before fleeing to start his first internet company, Zip2, which produced publishing software. In 1999, he sold it for more than $300m (£193m) and co-founded X.com, which eventually turned into PayPal. It was sold to eBay in 2002 for $1.5bn.