To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, there’s a difference between a single failure and final defeat.34 A single failure, as SpaceX’s story illustrates, can be the beginning, not the end. Many outside observers called the three Falcon 1 crashes failures—mistakes committed by a team of amateurs led by a rich kid playing with expensive toys. But labeling these crashes failures was like calling a tennis match before it’s over. “I’ve come from behind too often,” the great tennis champion Andre Agassi writes, “and had too many opponents come roaring back against me, to think that’s a good idea.”35 The
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