SpaceX went through a similarly fragile stage where it nearly went bankrupt before it turned things around and managed to get the Falcon 9 going. Elon Musk got

SpaceX went through a similarly fragile stage where it nearly went bankrupt before it turned things around and managed to get the Falcon 9 going. Elon Musk got lucky with securing funding at the last minute. And of course he did take on a lot of personal financial risk at the time. Maybe the difference between Branson and Musk is how far they are willing to go.