From The Archives: 20 Years Ago In Aviation Week

SpaceX was a 50-employee upstart when it was first featured on Aviation Week’s cover on March 29, 2004. “David and Goliath: Can Tiny SpaceX Rock Boeing?” the magazine asked. 

SpaceX founder Elon Musk did not interpret that positively. “It’s kind of a comical picture, to be frank, because I think the implied answer is ‘no,’” he recalled in a later interview.

But Craig Covault, the senior editor who wrote the five-page profile at the time, begs to differ.

“Musk was just getting started, and some of my colleagues did not believe he was for real and worthy of significant coverage," says Covault, who is now retired. 

“I felt differently and proceeded to do a major cover story. I was impressed with Musk because he was laser-focused on commercial space and reducing costs versus Boeing/McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin. He had also hired one of the best rocket propulsion engineers in the world, Tom Mueller, who was key to SpaceX’s development of the relatively simple and highly reliable Merlin LOX/RP-1 engines.”

In the article, respected physicist and engineer Michael Griffin explains in detail how SpaceX’s model as a low-cost disruptor could be successful. Griffin later became NASA administrator and is now the Pentagon’s chief technology officer. When Covault paid a return visit to SpaceX, framed copies of the cover were hanging in Musk’s office and at the company’s reception desk.

“Musk was singularly focused on defeating the Boeing Delta IV Medium booster," he says. “And that is exactly what SpaceX did."

See the cover photo from our March 29, 2004 issue.

Read our coverage on pages 48, 51 and 52.

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