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Zusammenfassung von Liftoff

Name: Liftoff
Rating: 4.5 (125 reviews)
Author: Eric Berger

Eric Berger

Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX

4.5 (125 Bewertungen)

21 Min.

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What’s in it for me? Learn about the early days that made SpaceX.

Back in 2000, Elon Musk was a successful entrepreneur. He’d cofounded PayPal, a company which reinvented the way money moves around the world. But that wasn’t the end of his ambitions – far from it. Elon Musk wanted to send humans to Mars.

So he created SpaceX, a scrappy new rocket company. Many in the aerospace industry expected it to fail, just as so many similar ventures had done before. Men with big dreams poured lots of cash into rockets, and, before long, both their money and their businesses were gone.

But SpaceX is still here, and Elon Musk’s dreams have only gotten bigger. In these blinks, you’ll learn about the difficult early days of SpaceX – from its conflict with NASA to the days it spent on a remote tropical island in the Pacific – and you’ll follow the company all the way through to its first successful launch.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

exactly how Musk interviewed prospective SpaceX employees;
about a failed predecessor in the rocket business; and
that SpaceX used the power of spectacle to attract attention.

Elon Musk founded SpaceX because he saw that the US space program was in a sorry state.

Elon Musk wants us to inhabit Mars. As global warming threatens life on Earth, he thinks we should leave our planet – or prepare to fail as a species. Out on Mars, we can engineer a new green world, a new Eden. This is what drives Musk’s company, SpaceX, as it pushes to build spacecraft capable of such a long and dangerous journey.

Though SpaceX is still very young, the company already has a long history. Musk felt disenchanted with the lack of ambition he saw in US space exploration. As he looked around in SpaceX’s early days, he saw NASA and some other big aerospace companies – and thought: is this it?

The key message here is: Elon Musk founded SpaceX because he saw that the US space program was in a sorry state.

The story of SpaceX begins back in the year 2000. Musk was cruising down the Long Island Expressway with a fellow entrepreneur called Adeo Ressi. Musk had recently lost his role as chief executive at PayPal – the company he’d cofounded.

As they drove, Ressi asked Musk what he was planning to do next – and the answer was all about space exploration. But Musk had his doubts: could a private individual really succeed in that field? And anyway, why would the world of space exploration need someone like him? Three decades had passed since the US had sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon. By now, surely, NASA must be close to sending humans to Mars?

Later that day Musk checked NASA’s website for news on its Mars missions. But as he scrolled through the website, he couldn’t find any. He was astonished. To understand more, he began attending space conferences in California. And it was there that he found out the truth: NASA wasn’t planning to send people to Mars anytime soon.

So perhaps a private individual like him could actually make a difference after all? If NASA was so unambitious, then maybe it would be down to entrepreneurs to explore space?

Musk started to dream big. He imagined building his own rocket – and, just two years on, things really got moving. He called a meeting of leading aerospace engineers. As they gathered at the Renaissance Hotel in Los Angeles, Musk explained his plans. Their answer was just a chuckle. One even said, “Save your money kid, and go sit on the beach.”

But these engineers, experienced as they were, didn’t know Musk. If anything, he’d become even more determined. He was going to build his rocket.

From the beginning, SpaceX had an unconventional approach that made it more dynamic.

When Musk gathered leading aerospace engineers at that LA hotel, not all of them were dismissive. Some actually showed enthusiasm – including Tom Mueller and Chris Thompson, both rising stars in the world of aerospace.

Musk set up his new company, Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, on May 6, 2002. The ambition was to build cheap, high-quality rockets quickly. Mueller and Thompson were among the first to join – and very soon, they began to see that, at SpaceX, things were going to be different.

Decades earlier, Musk had a predecessor who failed in his attempt to conquer space.

Why did people who knew aerospace well initially dismiss Musk? Well, many of them had seen people like him come and go. They saw Musk as just another millionaire indulging his space fantasy – and they were sure he’d fail.

And at the front of their minds was one man in particular.

The obstinacy of the US Air Force led SpaceX to a remote tropical island.

When SpaceX asked the US Air Force for permission to launch from California’s famous Vanderberg site, Musk’s team thought it would be a done deal. It did meet all the criteria in its application, after all.

But the Air Force had other ideas. At the time, in the early 2000s, it was using Vanderberg to prepare its own rocket launches. The Air Force had invested $200 million to modernize the site. The plan was to use it for rockets built by the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin. No wonder the Air Force was reluctant to let the upstart company come in and risk damaging all of this new equipment.

SpaceX’s first launch on Kwaj didn’t go as planned.

On Friday, March 24, 2006, nearly six years since Musk founded SpaceX, his fledgling company was ready to launch its first rocket, named the Falcon 1. The launch would take place on Omelek Island.

After a series of tests and aborted launch attempts, came the day when SpaceX would prove itself. The engineers had put their everything into the Falcon 1.

SpaceX wasn’t afraid of confronting the established order.

Throughout SpaceX’s history, there’ve been many times where Musk had to ruffle the feathers of established industry players. As he faced skepticism from big aerospace companies, the government, and the military, his instinct was to deal with trouble head-on. His ambition was to shake things up, to push space exploration further after decades of stagnation.

He certainly wasn’t going to take the easy road.

After multiple failures, SpaceX simply had to deliver.

SpaceX didn’t give up after that failed first launch. Twice more, it tried to send Falcon 1 into orbit from Omelek. Even though it had made progress on both attempts, the rocket never quite made it all the way to space. In the eyes of its governmental and commercial clients, Musk’s company was unable to perform as advertised.

SpaceX desperately needed success on its fourth attempt. And there were more pressing reasons than just reputation and PR: Musk’s money was running out.

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Worum geht es in Liftoff?

Liftoff (2021) tells the story of SpaceX’s beginnings – from the day that Elon Musk resolved to send rockets to Mars, through the first failed launch attempts on the tropical island of Omelek, to the make-or-break fourth flight. From a scrappy new venture to the world-renowned rocket company we know today, Liftoff has the inside scoop on SpaceX.

Bestes Zitat aus Liftoff

Musk wanted nothing less than human expansion into the Solar System, and the settlement of its worlds.

—Eric Berger

Wer Liftoff lesen sollte

Fans of SpaceX and Elon Musk
Tech enthusiasts and budding aerospace engineers
Would-be space explorers

Über den Autor

Eric Berger is senior space editor at tech website Ars Technica. He previously worked at the Houston Chronicle and helped the paper become a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2009 with his coverage of Hurricane Ike. A certified meteorologist, Eric founded the weather forecasting site, Space City Weather, and lives in Houston.

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