Is there a way for a mortal to buy or invest into SpaceX or are we just waiting for an IPO eventually?
Go work for them on a position that has equity as part of the compensation. Otherwise, I doubt it. Elon has been pretty vocal about regretting making Tesla public. Additionally SpaceX as a company is oriented around putting humans on mars. Until that happens, I expect a supermajority of ownership would be against the profit seeking motives that an IPO creates. Short of investing in them, you could look for companies…
Read about the rest of his career and I think you'll figure it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career