The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos

by Christian Davenport

One of Rutan’s favorite sayings was that it’s not research unless half the people involved think what you’re trying to do is impossible. He urged his engineers to take risks and told them that “a true creative researcher has to have confidence in nonsense.”

But like all of the great dreams, as Superman actor Christopher Reeve said, it would first seem impossible, then improbable, and then inevitable. You just had to believe and see through the dense forest of disbelief to a point in the distance where doubt gave way to an improbable question: What if everything Musk was saying was true?