When faced without a challenge, make one

What is grit? Grit is refusing to give up. It's persistence. It's making your own luck.

I get demoralized by organizations that start off with a mission and pull back when they find it's risky.

NASA calls stuff nominal instead of phenomenal, like it really is. So I have given up that there is going to be a balance and NASA is going to do certain things and we are finally in a state of existence where small groups of individuals can do extraordinary things, funded by single people.

True disruption means threatening your existing product line and your past investments. Breakthrough products disrupt current lines of businesses.

You have to ask yourself the question, do you have the smartest people in the world working for your company? And if you do, you're lucky. But if you don't, put up the incentive. And have someone who is absolutely brilliant who's a 22-year old in India who says what about this way? And who revolutionizes the way you do business.

I founded a launch company called International Microspace when I graduated medical school in 1989. We were trying to build a microsatellite launcher.