The company that Elon Musk hopes will some day carry him to Mars has been making big strides in recent months, winning contracts to provide the rockets that ferry public and private satellites and other equipment into space. As NASA looks to limit it new launches and collaboration with Russia breaks down, SpaceX is filling the void. The fact that Musk has experience taking Tesla public no doubt helps to give investors confidence that he has a good chance to guide SpaceX to a similar outcome. A study from NASA and Nature found that using Space X could save the agency over $1 billion per rocket launch.