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by toomuchtodo 4055 days ago
I don't have a link to further into that story, but after being screwed by the Russians on the price (they did a bait and switch, increasing the price four fold when he arrived), he asked on the plane ride home "How hard can it be to build a rocket?".

EDIT: To add to this, the US government created sanctions against Russia, causing the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to say "Use a trampoline to get to the ISS then" [1], which prompted Elon to unveil the Dragon Mk2 crew capsule: "Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed" [2].

I would not want to be on Elon's bad side.

[1] http://space.io9.com/russia-to-nasa-try-jumping-to-iss-on-a-...

[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/461279062837968897

2 comments

Ahh! That's it! Thank you!
I love how Russian dishonesty led to SpaceX's success in a significant way. It almost like we've had a people who go about things the absolutely wrong way to for everyone else to learn from (Communism, Stalinism, Putinism, etc).