Как Элон Маск ходил в Россию баллистические ракеты покупать

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They went to Russia because Arianespace’s rockets were too expensive, and they’d been told that Russia was selling what Cantrell calls “repurposed ICBMs” for $7 million apiece. A superpower had collapsed, and Musk and Ressi thought they could cash in by buying three of its rockets. “This was when it was still the Wild West over there,” Ressi says. “I mean, there were like dead people on the side of the road. We got pulled over multiple times, at gunpoint, and had to bribe the police. No reason. Just ‘Give us money.’ ‘Okay….’

“Then we started having meetings with the Russian space program, which is basically fueled by vodka. We’d all go in this little room and every single person had his own bottle in front of him. They’d toast every two minutes, which means twenty or thirty toasts an hour. ‘To space!’ ‘To America!’ ‘To America in space!’ I finally looked over at Elon and Jim and they were passed out on the table.

It was no different when the Russians visited Musk and Ressi in Los Angeles. “They came to L.A. to ask us for cash,” Ressi says. “‘We can’t continue unless you give us $5,000 in cash.’ We heard this on a Saturday, because they wanted party money for the weekend. How do you come up with five grand in L. A. on a Saturday? You don’t. So we went to the Mondrian, where I knew the manager. ‘I need all the cash you have… .’ We cleaned the Mondrian out to give the Russians their fee. The final bits of cash were ones… .”

They had two more trips scheduled to Russia; now Ressi decided, as he says, “I didn’t like dealing with Russians,” and told Musk he wasn’t going back. Musk went anyway. On the second trip, Musk brought his wife, Justine — “I think that’s the trip when the lead Russian designer started spitting at us,” Cantrell says — and on the third and final trip he brought his money. He was ready to buy three Russian ICBMs for $21 million when the Russians told him that no, they meant $21 million for one. “They taunted him,” Cantrell says. “They said, ‘Oh, little boy, you don’t have the money?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s that.’ I was sitting behind him on the flight back to London when he looked at me over the seat and said, ‘I think we can build a rocket ourselves.’

Статься на Esquire: http://www.esquire.com/features/americans-2012/elon-musk-interview-1212