I launched model rockets as a kid and managed to recover at least some of them, so I was pretty excited to see what SpaceX managed to pull off yesterday. But when it comes to understanding the hard requirements of putting a significant payload into orbit, I know pretty much nothing.

And that probably comes close to describing Elon Musk’s situation when he started thinking about SpaceX.

As an entrepreneur though, he didn’t have to know much. In fact, knowing much at all about the space industry and rocket engineering probably would have been a handicap, because all that detailed knowledge would have gotten in the way of looking at how things were currently being done, and asking the most important question. “Why?”

Why does it cost so much to get to space? It’s not the fuel. The basic science around rockets hasn’t changed significantly in decades, so it’s not due to expensive and ongoing R&D. It’s waste. Simple waste. The fact that the booster stages get discarded is the single biggest contributor to the high cost of getting things into space.

Musk’s great inspiration was akin to every great entrepreneur before him; “I can do that, but better.” And better in this case really means cheaper. Musk reasoned that if he could reduce waste, it would allow him to deliver cargo into space at a much lower cost than competitors. Raw capitalism at its finest.

Yesterday was a fantastic demonstration of the fact that SpaceX is very close to succeeding. But check out yesterday’s headlines:

SpaceX launch successful but landing fails
CNN

SpaceX was unsuccessful in its historic attempt to land a rocket
Business Insider

Watch SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket moments before all goes wrong
The Weather Network

Yeah? Well screw you Weather Network and all the rest, here’s what you should have written:

SpaceX Proves the Impossible: You can land a rocket.

Look, they landed it. Sure it toppled over and exploded afterwards, but if I were an investor in SpaceX I’d be ecstatic in anticipation of the massive future profits I’d undoubtedly enjoy. What landing success rate does he have to achieve to realize those massive future profits? Certainly not 100%. Anything significantly better than zero will allow him to undercut competitors and it’ll only get more profitable as their success rate improves over time.

I hope SpaceX is celebrating today. Big time. Because they proved Musk’s hypothesis correct. You can successfully land a rocket’s booster stage. Boom. It’s possible. You can.

For an entrepreneur, this has to be the single, best moment. You can. Great entrepreneurialism is all about testing the bounds of what is possible. When you test the bounds, you recognize that you can fail. When you prove that you can risk all and overcome, it’s completely exhilarating.

There are lessons here for all of us. Important lessons.

In successfully landing a booster rocket, SpaceX is taking advantage of a trend that many entrepreneurs are missing; the incredible increase in machine ability. Just about everyone recognizes the increase in raw computing machine power, but fewer are recognizing what this increase in power actually represents.

Rocket and platform, pole and copter, mostly a difference of scale.

You shouldn’t feel too badly if you’re not seeing it quite yet. Biologically we’re just generally awful at dealing with exponential effects and much better at linear ones. And these days nearly everything has gone exponential. Have a read through The Singularity is Near, or The Second Machine Age to get a better feel for how this is playing out.

For decades, we’ve been building systems that essentially replace paper. They’re nice. Good ones even harness the instantaneous communications network we now enjoy to allow us to collaborate more efficiently. But these systems are now commonplace. By and large we’re all fighting to do a better job of replacing and improving upon paper systems. We can do better, and some are recognizing and capitalizing from this shift already.

In the last few months, the rise of machine intelligence has even been mentioned in mainstream media. Machines now have abilities they just never had before, and we’re all still figuring out what this means.

One thing it means is that the bar is raised significantly with respect to our expectations. We expect machines to do more work for us. For those of us building SaaS businesses (like the one I’m helping to build at Unbounce), we’re being forced to re-imagine how the problem we’re currently solving can be solved better by machines. Machines can write copy. Machines can design web pages. Companies are working on getting machines to do behavioural targeting and automated conversion rate optimization.

If you’re running a SaaS business (or any technology business for that matter), are you looking up and starting to take notice of what machines can do now and how that impacts your business? While we’re terrible at recognizing exponential behaviour, the fact that Elon just about scored a perfect landing with his rocket should be a wake up call for you.

Machines are doing crazy new things, and opportunities are all around you. Like Elon Musk, you can. You can think of ways to bend machines to your will in ways that others don’t yet see. You can amaze and delight your customers by getting machines to do more for them. You can launch your own rocket ship. Will you?

Cover photo (cropped), Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic