So Musk recruited a rocket engineer named Jim Cantrell, and along with Adeo Ressi — the Founder Institute CEO who's Musk's former college housemate — they arranged a business meeting with a group of unnamed Russian businesspeople to negotiate buying rockets, the book says.
The journey included a stopover in Paris, Isaacson wrote, where a late night of partying left Musk "ragged" upon arriving in the Russian capital.
Then, in the back room of a Moscow restaurant, the lunchtime meeting involved "small bites of food interspersed with large shots of vodka," the biography says. The Russians also gifted the trio a bottle of vodka each with custom labels showing pictures of each recipient on Mars.
"I calculated the weight of the food and the weight of the vodka, and they were roughly equal," Musk told Isaacson.
And then, in the biographer's words, "Musk, who was holding his head up with his hand, passed out, and his head slammed into the table."
[...]
After the Moscow incident, there was said to be another unsuccessful meeting on the trip before Musk returned in early 2002. Isaacson wrote that Musk thought he had struck a deal to buy two Dnepr rockets for $18 million, but that the sellers actually wanted $18 million for each.
And when Musk pushed back, they apparently upped the price to $21 million each. Cantrell told Isaacson the Russian businesspeople then taunted the SpaceX founder, saying: "Oh, little boy, you don't have the money?"
Musk didn't immediately reply to a request for comment from Insider.
www.nytimes.com
