Elon Musk in 2004: The Dawn of Commercial Space Exploration

Elon Musk in 2004: Future space exploration will be driven by commercial companies more than government.

“Fundamentally, the way we help NASA is by lowering the cost of access to space, allowing us to do more interesting things for a given budget.

I think what we're doing is critical to the future of NASA. At the current prices NASA pays for space transportation, I don't think we'll be able to achieve anything interesting in space. We're starting off with unmanned transportation. As we prove out the reliability, our intention is to move to human transportation as well.

We're definitely in a lull with respect to human space exploration, on the government side. However, what I think we're beginning to see is the dawn of a new era of space exploration. One that is driven by commercial companies as much, if not more, than by government.”

CNN, July 20, 2004