On December 21, 2015, SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 rocket carrying 11 satellites and successfully landed the first stage of the rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, making it possibly the most significant event in rocketry since Apollo 8.

On October 22, 2015, Elon Musk, Co-Founder, CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, Chairman of SolarCity had a two-hour dialogue with Professor QIAN Yingyi, Dean of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management at the 2015 Tsinghua Management Global Forum in Beijing, China.

In the talk, Elon Musk shared his reason to enter the space industry and establish SpaceX. He questioned escalating costs of space technology and stated that SpaceX aims to lower the cost of spaceflight by assessing what rockets cost historically, raw materials cost and improving reusability of the rockets. Musk confidently predicted that there was 50% chance that in 10 years, men will reach Mars. And his aspiration is to build a city on Mars in the future.

Elon Musk is an Advisory Board member of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management.