Emailed on October 16th, 2020 in The Friday Forward

In the summer of 2001, Jim Cantrell received a phone call while he was driving around Logan, Utah.
“Is this Jim Cantrell?” the voice on the other line asked.

“Yes it is, how can I help you?” Cantrell said.

The stranger replied in one breathless answer:

“I’m Elon Musk. I’m an internet billionaire, I founded PayPal and Zip2. I could spend the rest of my life on a beach drinking Mai Tais, but I decided that humanity needs to become a multi-planetary species to survive and I want to do something with my money to show that humanity can do that and I need Russian rockets and that’s why I’m calling you.” 

 

According to The Hustle, and Jim Cantrell himself, the above transcript is accurate. And as you could imagine, the pitch worked.

You can read more about the wild story of SpaceX' beginnings here.