The Spirit Journey of a Space Cowboy
He shut down his 20-year consulting business to help a friend build rockets — then watched a rocket explode, a $16 million deal vanish overnight, and 160 people get laid off. His response? "Nothing is over until I say it's over."
In Episode 8 of America's Angels, Jenny Kaehms and Andrea Kalmans sit down with Eric Salwan, co-founder of Firefly Aerospace, the Austin-based space transportation company that grew from an empty grass field into a $6 billion IPO. Eric shares the unfiltered story behind the Amazon documentary To the Black — from Brexit wiping out half their Series A funding, to the rocket failure caused by a pin the thickness of a pencil lead, to the first successful commercial Moon landing in history (his name is literally on the Moon). He also opens up about the spiritual practices that carried him through a decade of near-death moments, his plans to build a nonprofit psychedelic retreat center, and his experience with experimental gene therapy as part of an XPRIZE trial. This is what building the impossible actually looks like — the pain, the persistence, and the spirit it takes to get there.
Watch the documentary: To the Black on Amazon. Then come back and tell us — what would you have done when they said it was over? Drop your thoughts in the comments or tag someone who needs to hear this story.
