-It is a fantastical voyage,
the first launch of NASA astronauts from US soil
since the Space Shuttle stopped flying almost 10 years ago
and the first flight to orbit carrying people
by a private company, not a government.
That company -- SpaceX -- and the billionaire behind it
is a 48-year-old native of South Africa named Elon Musk.
-This thing is the turbo pump.
This is the chamber, nozzle.
-He has this incredibly driven, incredibly smart, brash,
and unfiltered personality that's really driving
several different industries all at once.
My name is Chris Davenport.
I'm a reporter at the Washington Post covering space.
I'm also the author of a book titled "The Space Barons."
-Musk made his fortune in software, starting PayPal,
the online payment site.
From there, it was onto electric vehicles and Tesla,
solar energy, a tunnel company for hypersonic speed,
and rocket maker SpaceX.
-I mean, the very early days when, you know --
like, way back -- you know, 2002, 2003 --
I'd have meetings with NASA, and they'd be like,
"Oh, yeah, whatever.
Internet guy," you know.
"PayPal, whatever.
Just some rich guy's gonna lose all his money,
and rocket's not gonna work," which is totally fair.
I mean, we hadn't proven anything.
I hadn't proven anything.
-There's so much at stake with this upcoming flight.
They've just got to get it right.
-Dragon, separation confirmed.
-Space flight, long a fascination for Musk,
and not just a way to reach the International Space Station --
-Houston, station's phase to round two.
ISS thrusters enabled.
-The station where this first mission is going.
-I really want to get especially the youth excited
about future in space
and get us thinking about the future in exciting ways,
that the future is gonna be better than the past,
that we'll be out there as a spacefaring civilization,
that we'll be having cities on Mars,
having cities on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
-Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the ultimate long-term goal
of sending humans to Mars and building a city on Mars.
Mars, in his view, is the backup plan
so that humanity would survive in the event
of some sort of a catastrophe.
-But to get there, you have to start here.
-Launch countdown.
Pad is clear. Go for launch.
-And SpaceX is first at the launch pad
to this mission in a spirited race with Boeing,
that iconic aerospace giant.
Along the way, setbacks like exploding rockets
and smoke of a different kind --
When Musk took a hit of marijuana on this podcast --
-It's tobacco and marijuana in there.
-It was behavior that so alarmed NASA,
it prompted a safety review of SpaceX.
-He will ruffle a lot of feathers,
but he doesn't really care.
-Now, the SpaceX Dragon is about to leave Earth
and make history --
the stuff of childhood dreams made real.
-Stage separation confirmed. -Impact ignition.
-I read every sci-fi/fantasy book I could get my hands on
and some pretty esoteric ones.
It's like, "Wow, this sounds like a really exciting future
that we can look forward to."
And then, I kept thinking we'd go back to the moon, go to Mars.
-Elon Musk joins other space barons
also in the hunt for interstellar glory.
-An incredible opportunity is reusability.
Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos,
who also owns the Washington Post;
Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic;
and a longer line of American inventors --
Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs,
plus a certain other aerospace dreamer
with riches and celebrity status, Howard Hughes.
-Elon, in many ways, fits the role of one
of the defining characters of his time,
for good and for bad.
This is a big moment for SpaceX.
Elon is nervous.
Probably every single person who works at that company
and at NASA are nervous, as they should be,
because this is really a big thing.