Over the span of little over a decade, SpaceX went from being a space company made up of amateur rocketeers and a dude who helped start an internet banking company to our best chance to set up a colony on Mars. Along the way, it’s managed to create the cheapest rockets we’ve seen yet. Now, when SpaceX says it can launch a military rocket for $90 million compared to ULA’s $380 million, you just kind of nod your head and move on. The reasons the company can offer launches for a quarter the price of competitors are often contained in a throwaway line in an article somewhere: The company does most everything in-house and have little of the bloat common in rocketry today. That quick explanation isn’t inaccurate, but it’s a little bit flip.

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