Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the Trillion-Dollar Space Race
by
Christian Davenport
Published 6 Sep 2025
He postulated that reality did not exist and that humanity was dwelling in some sort of simulation taking place in a computer-generated metaverse. It was only after all that meandering that Rogan pulled out the joint and basically dared Musk to toke. “Come on, man. You probably can’t because of stock-holders, right?” Musk, who was wearing a T-shirt that read OCCUPY MARS, took a quick hit and arched his eyebrow behind a veil of smoke— a cartoonish image that would soon be broadcast across the Internet and cable news. Rogan was soon wondering, what if there were a million Elon Musks, and Musk was saying, “I don’t think you’d necessarily want to be me.” Musk’s phone started buzzing.
…
The job fair was packed, especially since Musk had tweeted about it to his millions of followers, saying it was to help “staffing up 4 production shifts for 24/7 operations, but engineers, supervisors & support personnel are certainly needed too. A super hardcore work ethic, talent for building things, common sense & trustworthiness are required, the rest we can train.” Local news covered the event. Musk was there in person, wearing a T-shirt that read OCCUPY MARS. With Musk dialed in, production picked up to the “super hardcore” levels he demanded. Soon SpaceX’s engineers were pumping out prototype after prototype, so that when one burst or exploded, the next would be ready to roll off the production line. With so many, SpaceX switched to calling them Serial Number.
Moon Rush: The New Space Race
by
Leonard David
Published 6 May 2019
There is a historical legacy, and we humans need to live up to that heritage. Our Moon, as you can read throughout this book, is a world in waiting. How we utilize Earth’s celestial neighbor to further space objectives is yet to be determined. What I do know is that beyond returning to the Moon, occupying Mars is a task like no other. That undertaking, I firmly believe, can unite the great nations of the world in a cooperative, beneficial way. We can set sail to Mars, eventually putting in place a flourishing civilization step-by-step. This peaceful pursuit is unparalleled in history. It is time to place spacefaring nations on that unified trajectory.
Elon Musk
by
Walter Isaacson
Published 11 Sep 2023
Musk followed up moments later with further details: “One way or another, we are going to put B7 back on the launch mount by midnight tonight or sooner.” In other words, they would do it in one day, not ten days. He had ordered yet another surge. High bay That morning, after a few hours of sleep, Musk went to one of the high bay assembly buildings, wearing his “Occupy Mars” black T-shirt, to watch as Booster 7 was outfitted with Raptor engines. Climbing a steep industrial ladder, he clambered onto a platform beneath the booster. It was crammed with cables, engine parts, tools, swinging chains, and at least forty people working shoulder-to-shoulder as they attached engines and welded shrouds.
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Musk had flown to Miami after the aborted first countdown to speak to an advertising conference and reassure them about his plans for Twitter. He arrived back in Boca Chica just after midnight on April 20, slept for three hours, then had some Red Bull and got to the launch control room at 4:30 a.m., four hours before the scheduled liftoff. Forty engineers and flight operations officers, many wearing “Occupy Mars!” T-shirts, sat in rows of consoles in a heat-shielded building with a view across the wetlands to the launchpad six miles away. At dawn, Grimes arrived with X, Y, and their new baby boy, Techno Mechanicus, known as Tau. A half-hour before the scheduled launch, Juncosa came out to the deck and briefed Musk on an issue that had been detected by one of the sensors.
Breaking Twitter: Elon Musk and the Most Controversial Corporate Takeover in History
by
Ben Mezrich
Published 6 Nov 2023
But he was mostly beloved by the Tweeps, as much as he was revered by the general public as one of the most successful men on Earth, the genius who had revolutionized the auto industry with Tesla and was changing the face of space exploration with SpaceX—where he was presumably calling in from, by the looks of the office behind him. Mark gazed at the billionaire’s vaguely cubic features, his slightly slouched shoulders, his fidgeting hands, his small, bright eyes. Elon’s outfit fit his personality; a hip leather jacket, left open over a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Occupy Mars.” Face-to-face with an enormous digital Elon, Jack began the conversation, obviously as thrilled by the entrepreneur’s presence at the conference as the audience was. The two men seemed to have an easy rapport, and it was clear they shared a lot of respect for one another. “Give us some direct feedback,” Jack began.
The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos
by
Christian Davenport
Published 20 Mar 2018
He was the CEO-cum-wedding officiant—speak now or forever hold your peace. SpaceX’s success had raised expectations, but its brashness had attracted criticism. Its fan base was huge and growing. The SpaceX page at Reddit, the social media site, had ten thousand subscribers in June 2014. More and more people were buying the $22 “Occupy Mars” T-shirts from the SpaceX online store. And Musk had become something more than a business executive; he was now a cult figure, whose legend was growing well beyond Silicon Valley. With Tesla and Solar City, the solar energy company, he had set out to transform American transportation and energy use.
Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets That Launched a Second Space Age
by
Eric Berger
Published 23 Sep 2024
He was told that Iridium was SpaceX’s most important commercial customer, and Musk would likely do almost anything at the moment. When Desch asked Musk, his reply was simply, “Now?” As in, he was ready to depart right at that moment, if needed. Musk did come to the party later in the day. He wore his typical attire, black jeans and an Occupy Mars T-shirt, and posed for pictures with guests who wanted a memento. As he mingled at the party, Musk was fairly quiet. Some of that was no doubt due to exhaustion. But it was also due to stress. During tense moments the levels of cortisol, the primary stress hormone, spiked in his body. Like Desch, he, too, felt mostly relief that on a day when a million things could have gone wrong, his rocket and its payloads had followed the single, narrow path to a successful outcome.
Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century
by
Tim Higgins
Published 2 Aug 2021
Also, if he asked about Unsworth, she pleaded, avoid answering. “Pls, pls, pls, pls if the Thai diver comes up pls just say you think you have gotten into enough trouble on that already and are not going to say more,” she wrote. The live interview, streamed on YouTube, began late on the West Coast. Musk, dressed in a black T-shirt that read “Occupy Mars,” seemed in good spirits. In many ways, Rogan was the perfect interviewer for Musk, allowing him to talk at length about his interests, from space travel to tunnel digging. As the night wore on, Rogan and Musk began drinking whiskey. Near the end of the nearly three-hour interview, Rogan lit what he said was a marijuana-tobacco blunt and asked if Musk had ever smoked marijuana before.
Battle for the Bird: Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and the $44 Billion Fight for Twitter's Soul
by
Kurt Wagner
Published 20 Feb 2024
When the tweet flashed up on the screen in front of the whole company, the crowd went nuts. Teigen had only one rival for the week’s best interview: Elon Musk. Good on his word, Dorsey had invited Musk back to speak with employees, and the Twitter CEO stood onstage in front of the company and called Musk on FaceTime from his iPad. Musk answered from his office, wearing an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt, and his face was projected onto the screen as Twitter’s employees cheered wildly. Musk was already one of Twitter’s most popular and controversial users. By January 2020 he had more than 30 million followers, and his tweeting often got him into trouble. In 2018, Musk was sued by a British cave diver after he called the man a “pedo guy” on Twitter for criticizing Musk’s suggested plan to save a Thai soccer team from a cave using a mini submarine.
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter
by
Kate Conger
and
Ryan Mac
Published 17 Sep 2024
A dial tone blared through the speakers for a few seconds. Then, with a smile and a wave, Elon Musk appeared. There were cheers and applause. “We love you,” one employee shouted. Others whipped out their phones to take pictures and video of the supersize projection of Musk, who was clad in an open black bomber jacket over a T-shirt that read occupy mars. Dorsey had previously called the Tesla and SpaceX chief the most exciting influential person on the platform for “sharing his thinking openly” as he solved “existential problems.” Still, some in the audience wondered if Musk was an exemplary Twitter user, given his history of bombast and legal problems that stemmed from his online activity on the platform.