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

I remember reading it here: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a16681/elon-musk-interv...

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).

I guess I was so caught up in the fact that he was trying to buy an ICBM. I didn't really think about the timing as well. This would have been within 30 days of 9/11 happening. Hard to imagine even thinking about doing something like that.

It all reads like a wonderful technological suspense thriller.

No.