In this episode, we relive the high-stakes early years of SpaceX, when Elon Musk risked his fortune, battled repeated rocket failures, and pushed a handpicked team of A-level talent to achieve the impossible. Drawn from Liftoff by Eric Berger, it’s a story of grit, relentless problem-solving, and the moment a scrappy underdog changed the future of space exploration.
In this episode, we dive deep into the raw, high-stakes early years of SpaceX—a story of vision, grit, and a team willing to bet everything on an almost impossible dream. Drawn from Eric Berger’s Liftoff and enriched with reflections on leadership, hiring, and risk-taking, we relive the rollercoaster journey that took Elon Musk from an idea on the Long Island Expressway to the first privately developed rocket reaching orbit.
This is not the story of a billionaire tinkering with a vanity project. It’s the story of a man who risked half his PayPal fortune, faced down near-bankruptcy, and worked shoulder-to-shoulder with a scrappy team of A-level players who shared his obsession with pushing humanity into space. These engineers and dreamers came from all walks of life—farm towns, foreign countries, fresh out of college—and Musk personally interviewed the first 3,000 hires to ensure they shared his relentless drive. The company’s DNA was forged in these years: long nights in a bare-bones factory, ice cream runs, first-person shooter battles after midnight, and the unshakable belief that “done fast and tested hard” was the only way forward.
From failed negotiations in Russia to building rockets in a repurposed El Segundo warehouse, from buying out a machine shop to manufacturing 60% of the rocket in-house, Musk showed a refusal to let bureaucracy or setbacks slow progress. When the Air Force froze testing at Vandenberg, SpaceX didn’t wait—they packed up and built a launch site 5,000 miles away on a remote Pacific atoll. Each launch was a make-or-break event, and each failure—whether from corroded parts, fuel slosh, or stage separation mishaps—was met with brutal honesty, rapid adaptation, and unshakable resolve.
By the time Flight 3 failed in 2008, Musk’s fortune was nearly gone, the economy was in free fall, and even his personal life was unraveling. Most companies would have folded. Instead, Musk gathered his team and gave them one final mission: take the last available parts, build a rocket in six weeks, and get it to orbit. What followed was a period of impossible intensity—engineers sleeping at their desks, a trans-Pacific emergency flight that nearly destroyed the rocket midair, and on-site repairs in tropical heat that bent every aerospace rule in the book.
The result? On September 28, 2008, Falcon 1 soared into space, separated cleanly, and delivered its payload into orbit—the first privately funded, liquid-fueled rocket to do so. Cheers erupted, tears flowed, and within months NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract that secured its future.
Beyond the technical triumphs, this episode distills powerful lessons for entrepreneurs: hire only the best and never settle; be relentless in pursuing resources and knowledge; don’t let bureaucracy choke momentum; embrace a “reasonable strategy” over a perfect one; and set expectations so high that your team rises to meet them. Musk’s early SpaceX years weren’t just about building rockets—they were about building a culture where the impossible became inevitable.
If you’ve ever wondered what it truly takes to will a groundbreaking company into existence—through financial peril, technical disaster, and sheer human exhaustion—this is your front-row seat. This is the untold story of SpaceX before the headlines, before the Falcon 9, before the reusable rockets. It’s the story of how one man and a team of believers lit the fuse on a new era of space exploration.
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys
The men and women who helped Musk bring SpaceX through the darkest days, hailed from farm country in California, from the suburbs of the Midwest, from east coast cities, from Lebanon, Turkey, and Germany. Musk hired them all, molded them into a team and coaxed them to do the nearly impossible. Their path to orbit led from the United States to a small tropical island about as far from landmass as one can get in the world,
out there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The company nearly died multiple times.
This election is from the book Liftoff, Elon Musk, in the desperate early days that launched SpaceX, and it was written by Eric Berger to write this book, Eric was encouraged by Elon himself to talk to everyone that had been involved in the early days of SpaceX.
In addition, Musk provided insights into his thinking [00:01:00] and his leadership style from the birth of SpaceX through their Falcon One Rocket Trial and Errors.
after reading the book and the stories that I saw in my mind's eye, the author, really made me feel like I was personally part of the journey, almost an extension of the team through their many ups and downs.
Was so common that the team would advance, they face setbacks. Most importantly, they learn from their lessons, and then they applied them and they continue to drive forward this is what really made them great. They didn't just sit around and talk about it.
And This is a really high stake gamble that Musk takes here with a huge chunk of his personal fortune. And it left him almost broke on many different occasions and he would continue to take the risk.
He thrived on 'em and he would continue to push forward. He believed in his team, he inspired him, and he really looked for those [00:02:00] individuals that saw his vision and wanted to do great things.
Before we get into the story, if you liked the episode and you found some value, maybe you could just share it with a friend who you think could also benefit. My goal is to develop a meaningful podcast that provides learnings and valuable insights that can be used in your businesses to help make them better and to service your customers at the same time.
And I hope that I can give you a good sense of the early days, the SpaceX over the next hour or so, and the many trials and tribulations that they faced along the way, and how they overcame those and how they kept driving forward. For any books that I referenced today. I'll leave links in the show notes for you.
I highly recommend this book. It's packed with valuable insights and learnings, my friend.
One thing that I've always found interesting. It's how our thoughts, they begin as seeds and then as we water them, they grow and they take on new life. And then in [00:03:00] some cases they become deeply rooted as we keep thinking about them. And this is what happened for Elon Musk around his curiosities and that of space.
If we go back in time, we're gonna find Elon Musk driving on the Long Island Expressway with his friend, an entrepreneur, Adeo Resi. And Rusky would ask Musk, what do you want to do next? and this question comes after he had recently been ousted as CEO of PayPal.
And Elon would say the following, I told Adeo I had always been interested in space, but I didn't think that was something a private individual could do anything about. Musk said, these are the early seeds, and they've been planted and Musk mine as early as when he was
a child. He's been thinking about space for a long time and sensing that something is certainly possible. A following his curiosity later in the day, [00:04:00] he would do the following, Musk still thinking about the conversation, checked out NASA's website.
To his surprise, he could not find any plans for sending humans to Mars. Perhaps he thought the site was just poorly designed. But no, NASA had no such plans and this is gonna spur him to start attending various space conferences. And he got involved in the planetary society that was trying to develop a solar sale at the time, and he is really starting to ingrain himself into the community, learning different things that are going on.
And this propels his excitement and he begins to formulate a plan. And this plan was to help gain support for NASA to develop their plans to further explore Mars. So at this early stage, he really wants to bring in that public curiosity to help NASA fuel their objectives forward. [00:05:00] And he would call this plan Mars Oasis.
I think this plan was pretty cool. And what it was was to develop small biospheres on Mars. They would basically try to mix in Martian soil with earth soil, and then they would plant seeds and water them and watch them grow in this biosphere on Mars through a webcam link.
Now, this idea would lead him to more research. He needs a way to get his payload to Mars, and this is gonna end up taking him to Russia on several different trips. And he's gonna soon find out some grim realities here, because the Russians, they didn't really respect him, and he would say the following in the book, Musk and his advisors twice traveled to Russia to try to buy refurbish intercontinental ballistic missiles for the mission.
The Russians had no respect for Musk
seeing him as a delante. And so they offered him outrageously high [00:06:00] prices for their old boosters. And I think they were asking something like $18 million a piece, and he wanted to buy two of them for two attempts. So that's like 36 million. And each time that he would go back to Russia. He says the price would just keep going up more and more and he is simply not gonna pay that price.
He would say the following, the last trip from Russia, I was like, man, the price just keeps going up. Doesn't feel like this project is gonna be successful. Musk said, I wondered what it would take to build our own rocket. And there we see more seeds are being planted by Musk, and it's at this point that this early rejection fuels this plan.
And we see a really deep drive towards educating himself on the space industries. And he would take the following steps to do this. He had been reading everything he could get his hands on about rockets from old Soviet technical manuals [00:07:00] to John Drury Clark's iconic book on Propellants. And that book was called Ignition.
Now remember, his primary goal was to get Mar's Oasis established to help gain support for more funding for NASA to help them develop their technology and advance their pursuit to get to Mars. but he soon learns of the insane costs that are involved in the industry's lack of technology, quite simply to make this happen.
And in the following statement, this really opened your eyes with how the environment was at the time. He says, I looked at the horses that NASA had in the stable, and with horses like Boeing and Lockheed, you're screwed. Those horses are lame. I knew Mars Oasis would not be enough. And so at this point, we see the seeds starting to grow even deeper about his own rocket.
The first step towards solving the multi-planetary problem was bringing down the cost of the launch. [00:08:00] If NASA and private companies spent less money getting satellites and people into space, they could do more things in space.
This awakening galvanized musk into action. so the seeds are taking root at this point, and this is gonna lead him to call a meeting in the spring of 2002 with about 20 prominent aerospace engineers. And this would happen at the Renaissance Hotel in Los Angeles. Now the book outlines the following, and I have my own kind of view on this in which I'll share in just a minute.
In typical Elon fashion, he kind of showed up a little bit late. , Which clearly annoyed a lot of the older guard aerospace executives that were in the room. He basically walks in and announces that he wants to start his own rocket company and he's just gonna get eaten alive by the room.
There's so many doubters in the room, so much old guard. no one thinks he's really [00:09:00] serious. And the book would say, there was a lot of chuckling, some laughter. People saying things like, save your money kid. Go sit on the beach. And with this musk was not a muse.
And if anything, it gave him more fuel and it engaged him even more.
But however, amongst all those naysayers, there were a few that believed those who embraced the challenge and wanted to run towards it. And I really wonder, this is my own thinking here, if this was intentional by Musk, it was like a secret open interview. He expected to be blasted. He knew he was gonna take a lot of heat, but in reality, he's really looking for those very select few that shared his passions to push the boundaries and to explore new frontiers.
Now like no other, Moss is a genius at building his [00:10:00] team and at hiring as a kid, he was used to taking a beating. And I tend to think that maybe he set himself up here to really flesh out those top notch individuals that followed along his line of thinking. And as we move along here, I'll try to highlight the many ways in what he dug in super deep to hire his team and work with them and inspire them and drive them and make them great.
He is really, really a genius at this. And we can learn so much from Musk. I mean, right here. Look for those A level players that have a deep curiosity and believe in your mission. Out of 100, it's okay to pass on 99. It only takes that one thoroughbred rockstar that's gonna do the work of the 99 that you pass over.
Out of this meeting of 20, he only ended up hiring two. That's like a [00:11:00] 10% higher rate, I guess basic easy math, but they're both super or high functioning, a plus plus level players. And without them, SpaceX probably never would've succeeded. He really needed these two key players on his team.
So I think the lesson here is to always keep your eyes open, my friend, for that top level talent that can make your company great. Now, to start the company, the author would say the following,
Musk had cleared about 180 million from PayPal and figured he could risk half of that on a rocket company and still have plenty left over. Musk brought the cash and wanted his early employees to invest in sweat equity, and his first key employee is that of Tom Moeller, and He would be the VP of propulsion and Tom would be responsible for designing the Merlin engine.
And this would power the Falcon One rocket. And then later on the Falcon nine, [00:12:00] that's still used at SpaceX today. Tom was one of those gentlemen at that very first meeting at the Renaissance Hotel. And Elon's ability to hire top talent here is second to none.
Let's just expand upon this a little bit. One of Musk's most valuable skills was the ability to determine whether someone would fit the mold. His people had to be brilliant, had to be hardworking, and there could be no nonsense. There's a ton of phonies out there and not many who were the real deal must set of his approach to interviewing engineers.
I can usually tell within 15 minutes, and I can for sure tell within a few days of working with them. And then this will lead us to the second hire that he makes from that initial legendary meeting. And this is gonna be that of Chris Thompson, who would be the VP of structures, and Chris would work on the Falcon one [00:13:00] frame, trying to make it as.
Trying to make it as light as possible. And then later on he would work on the Falcon nine frame and structure as well. And at this point, Musk would continue to push forward. And on May 6th, 2002, he would formally found space exploration technologies or set for short. But this name would only last for a couple of months because he would quickly change the name over to SpaceX as we know it today.
So at the beginning, they're a scrappy little team to start with. Molar would be working on the new rocket engine design, and they would soon move into a 30,000 square foot building in El Segundo.
And this would serve as their office in their factory. and when they first moved in, it was just like five or six of 'em and they had this huge, massive building. But over the next couple years, they're gonna pack it. Full Musk would go on and he would hire another gentleman by the name of Hans [00:14:00] Kosman and he would be his VP of Avionics.
And Hans would be responsible for building all of their flight software. Hans was this type of individual that was Elon's ideal candidate. He said the following, what did intrigue me was trying to build a rocket with 200 people instead of 20,000 people to almost build it in a garage.
And that right there was Key Musk, one of those people who shared his vision, people who were willing to put it all on the line. Those who were willing to work their asses off for what they love, those who had a purpose and a deep drive, those were the people that he wanted on his team, and that's what he really looked for.
He didn't hire a lot of PhDs or academics. Most of the folks that he hired were fresh outta college that had that eager drive to get after it and to make things great. And this defines the [00:15:00] early days of SpaceX so well. Another key and critical employee by the name of Brian Bedy. He would be hired and he would be the missions manager, and he's gonna say the following when he arrives on his first day. And this kind of gives us a firsthand look at how things were at SpaceX. Belvy felt the culture shock immediately upon starting work before he could log into a computer at nasa.
Bevy had undergone a detailed security screening process and multiple orientations to operate machines that would steer electron beams. Belt had sat through days of training courses at SpaceX. Back then, there was none of that belt said of his first day on the job. You show up, the door's not locked.
There's no one at the front desk. I met Hans and he gave me a packet that had some materials about benefits and other things. Orientation done. That's so perfect. I love that. [00:16:00] Right here. It really gives you a, a feel for how SpaceX would operate in the early days, and the author goes on to say the following about Elon's tenacity of focusing on hiring the right people for his team.
Musk made hiring a priority. He personally met every single person the company hired through the first 3000 employees. It required late nights and weekends, but he felt it important to get the right people for his company. Again, it's just so important for you and I and we gotta hammer that home, interview people directly.
It may not be comfortable or convenient. I know in my business life, it's been some of the most time consuming and occasionally uncomfortable time that I've spent, but I have learned to embrace it over the years, and I see it as one of the most important things we can do because I know that one person [00:17:00] can help build or destroy our cultures.
So it's just critical that we put our time and our focus into this. I mean, Musk hired his first 3000 employees. I think that's incredible. I mean, if we could hire our first 30 or even 300, that would make a huge, massive difference for us. So focus, focus, focus on hiring my friend now, when Musk saw what he wanted, he's also gonna take great measures to go after them, especially in personnel.
The spring of 2004. He had met a brilliant young engineer by the name of Blue Altan and his wife at the time, she had taken a job with Google up in San Francisco, so he was generally not available to come and work at SpaceX.
So what would Musk do? Well, He's just gonna pick up the phone and call his buddy Larry over at Google, who agreed to let Allan's wife work [00:18:00] for Google down in la. So Musk would walk into a meeting with him and say, well, just talk to Larry Page and they're gonna let your wife transfer down to la.
What are you gonna do? Now? I can only imagine being in Ulta's shoes, having Elon come in and tell me that I, yeah, sign me up, let's go. I mean, what, what, what would you do? I would, I'd be on board. , Musk is relentless, I tell you. I mean, he gets after what he wants in life. And we see this over and over and over throughout the book.
And I think this is another valuable lesson for us to go after the things that we need for our businesses and for our projects. And there's so many people that are willing to help if you just reach out and pick up the phone. I mean, look at Steve Jobs for example. He would say the following, most people never pick up the phone and call.
Most people never ask. That's what separates sometimes the people who do [00:19:00] things from the people who just dream about them. And I love this. When Steve was 12, he needed some computer parts from hp. So what does he do? He looks up Bill Hewlett in the local phone book. Cole calls him out of the blue. And not only did jobs get the parts that he needed, he got a summer job working on the production line.
I mean, what's better than that? 12 years old working on the production line? Imagine how much he learned just in a couple of months. So like Steve and Elon, we can't be afraid to pick up the phone, my friend. Ask for help. Track down the answers to your curiosity. I think this is what makes us great, my friend.
Be curious. Pick up the phone as they say, smile and dial.
And this is such a great lesson for you and I, and I'm really enjoying this discussion with you. Now, let's imagine for a moment that your new engineer at SpaceX, you've just been hired by Elon Musk directly, and you walk [00:20:00] in and you find the following atmosphere.
Employees spent long and often intense days together in close confines. Musk kept a mostly laissez fearattitude towards his workplace. He offered just a few hard and fast rules, no strong smells, no flickering lights, and no loud noises. In the cubicle farm they all shared. Often they worked until after midnight.
The team was so small that everybody knew everybody and each employee pitched in as needed with other departments. There were no silos. Here at SpaceX, each employee took his or her turn
On Friday, ice cream runs after Cold Stone Creamery opened less than a mile away. An office tradition quickly developed. An email would go around with an order sheet, then someone, a new hire this week, or a vice president. The next would take the only SpaceX company credit card down to the store, [00:21:00] place the orders, and return to the company offices.
And Musk would keep all of his soda machines stock with all the free soda you could drink. And he had free lattes available, so he just wanted to keep everyone charged and amped up and working as much as they possibly could. Now, after a long day of working, they would all blow off a lot of steam together in what they would do is they would play first person shooter game by the name of Quake Arena.
And so each person would go and choose a character and a weapon. And then on the virtual battlefield, they would look for targets and they would just have these epic battles that would go on until like two, three o'clock in the morning and Musk would be right there with them playing alongside. And it was said that he was really good at playing these first person shooter games and oftentimes he would end up on top or very close towards the top.
He was super [00:22:00] competitive in video games as he was in his business life. And I think this plays an important role also in what we see a lot in the book is that Musk is right there in the trenches with his team
he is in the open cubicle farm with him. He doesn't have a private office. He's working in the factory, getting his hands dirty. He's at the launch site watching launches. He's helping with the crew. I mean, he basically does everything that all of his employees would do and a lot more. So, I mean, that really builds him a lot of respect with his team, and I think that's important for us as well, to model the way for our employees and for me, I think that's something that I really would've loved.
I always enjoyed working really hard, working those long days, feeling that reward when you're done, like you've put in a solid day's worth of work and then blowing off steam at the end of the long day. So for [00:23:00] me, it's typically going outside to run, but in this situation, video games would've been perfect.
I like to play video games as well, and doing that with a team. I think that just builds those deeper connections and brings everyone together. Now Musk, he is a super demanding leader and at this time he's highly intelligent about the construction of rockets and the engineering that goes into them.
And he was an obsessive reader and he wasn't afraid to dive super deep into any issues or any problems that would arise. And I really admire the way that he interacted with his team, especially in these early days. Let me just read for you here, and this reminds me of Joe Colo over at Trader Joe's that we discussed on, um, episode three.
I believe this was. Musk would convene his different teams in a small conference room, be it his engineers working on propulsion or structures or [00:24:00] avionics, and run down the major issues. If an engineer faced an intractable problem, Musk, one of the chance to solve it, he would suggest ideas and give his team a day or two to troubleshoot and then report back to him in the interim.
If they needed guidance, they were told the email must directly day or night. He typically responded within minutes. Over the course of a single meeting, Musk could be at turns hilarious, deadly, serious, penetrating, harsh, reflective, and a stickler for the finest details of rocket science. But most of all, he channeled his paternal force to move things forward.
Elon Musk just wants to get shit done, and he's gonna use this force as part of an iterative design approach
as they had one end goal in mind. And that would be to build test, find failures [00:25:00] and adapt and repeat
fast was the name of the game,
and the author says that he sucked employees in by offering an intoxicating brew. Vision, charisma, audacious goals, resources, and free lattes and cokes. Now Musk, he is funding this operation out of his own pocket, and when the team needed something, he would write the checks and he was in the trenches with them and he was always asking the question.
What would it take? And one major benefit that SpaceX had right here was that Musk was the chief engineer of the company. So he made all the engineering decisions and he was also the chief financial officer. So we get two in one. He's able to make super fast decisions.
It's showcased many times in the book where he would make a decision within minutes, where a lot of other companies might [00:26:00] take weeks or months to work out engineering in finances, as those two departments typically go back and forth because they're not one and the same and they don't understand each other.
But for Musk, that's one and the same, and he can make those decisions within minutes. And this kept them driving forward very aggressively. And what is their first objective right here as a brand new company? Well, that's to test fire the Merlin engine that Tom Mueller had been working on. Now Tom had a very deep background in rocket engineering and rocket design at TRW, and he brought this with him to SpaceX and Musk realized very early on that Mueller wasn't a good engineer.
He was a great engineer, and I like how the author describes the concept of a rocket engine, especially as someone who doesn't have a lot of background or knowledge about this. This is something the [00:27:00] book does really well, is it simplifies these concepts of how rockets work. And I love the way that Eric Berger describes this.
A rocket's propulsion system is simple. an oxidizer and a fuel flow from their respective tanks into an ejector, which mixes them as they enter the combustion chamber. Inside this chamber, the fuels ignite and burn producing a super hot exhaust gas. The engine's, nozzle channels, the flow of this exhaust in the opposite direction.
A rocket is meant to go Newton's third law of motion. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, does the rest.
And what's Mueller's goal on when to have the rocket ready as prescribed by Elon? As soon as effing possible. He wanted this thing ready to go for testing He would tape test fire dates above the urinals in the men's restroom to keep [00:28:00] everyone up to date with what was happening. And he really pushed and drove this aggressive schedule, and this would put him in contact with a local machine shop.
And this is gonna be critical to Musk in the evolution of SpaceX here. This machine shop was called Mustang Engineering, and they would build a lot of the parts, and they were well known in the aerospace industry. And as part of the iterative design process, Bob Reagan, who was the owner of the machine shop, had a unique perspective in that they wanted a lot of wild crap, but they paid super fast.
And he would say the following, man, those guys sent me some of the wildest crap I've ever seen. SpaceX also paid quickly. Within a day of receiving a purchase order from SpaceX, Reagan would have a check with other companies. Reagan told Musk assistance.He would find a part, submit an [00:29:00] invoice, and receive a check.
30 days later, she was unfazed. SpaceX wanted its parts fast. Reagan got the message and began to prioritize Mueller's orders, and you can almost hear the clock ticking. Tick to tick, to tick to. Let's get the engine on the launch pad already. Now, a few months later, Reagan's gonna have a falling out with his business partner, and he's gonna find himself in a position where he is unable to produce parts for SpaceX.
So what does Elon do right here? Yep. He brings him in for an interview and things are gonna go really well, and Reagan would say the following,Musk agreed to meet Reagan's asking price. He needed the help. 10 minutes later, he returned with a contract. It was Saturday, November 1st at 5:00 PM Musk wanted his new vice president of machining to start working that evening.
Musk is gonna go on and buy out all of Reagan's idle [00:30:00] machines. And he would also bring on six of Reagan's best machinists to help out in the factory. And what this allowed him to do is he was able to cut his manufacturing costs by more than half, and it also dropped his turnaround time even further.
And then another key element here is that Musk really pushed to make all of the components in house. He didn't like going out and paying for expensive parts. He really pushed his engineers to bring things in house. So when he brings this manufacturing into the factory, this really gives him a secret weapon, if you will.
'cause now he's able to manufacture over 60% of the rocket in house. And then from there, he just keeps propelling forward, making more and more stuff in house.
And this is gonna turn out well too from a personnel perspective as Musk and Reagan would have a very good working relationship and they would have a nice level of mutual respect [00:31:00] for one another. And Reagan would go on to describe the relationship in the following way.
His relationship with Musk was simple. He can't stand a liar and he hates a thief. Reagan said, and if you say you can get something done, you better effing do it. Apparently Musk liked what he saw in his new machinist who had began putting in 75 to 80 hour work weeks at the factory. And I just really enjoyed that section.
It's a view into the iterative design nature of how quickly SpaceX moved, especially when they were faced with roadblocks. Elon just bulldozed straight on through 'em. He bought out the machine shop, he brought it in house, and he got shit done.
And I'm currently reading Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson right now, And I can see the youthful days of Elon and the lessons he learned are shining bright right here. Just as a couple of highlights,
he was tenacious when [00:32:00] he wanted something, when he wanted to go to Canada. He filled up the paperwork at the age of 17 and he went when he decided he wanted to go to an American college. He got into Penn and he completed double majors in physics and economics. He moves to California, he starts his first company, zip two with 28,000, sells it for 300 million.
He puts 22 million into his pocket. He plows most of that into PayPal, undergoes epic battles with the other founders, and they eventually sell it for $1.5 billion to eBay. And that would bring in $180 million for Musk. And then he dumps over half of it back into SpaceX. I mean, he doesn't really have a sense of fear and he drives hard.
He thrives on risk. And this is just a super valuable insight for us here, that you and I should go after the things that we need in business. [00:33:00] We shouldn't let bureaucracy hold us back. It's a growth killer.We can learn from Musk and use his tactics to help propel us forward.
Don't let things hold you back.
Drive forward my friend, and be great. Alright, lemme get off the soapbox here and we'll get back to the story. Uh, let's see. So.
At this point, rocket Development is underway and Musk is gonna need a place where he can test them, and where might this lead us? Well, let's find out. Musk decided that day to fly down to Texas to check out the McGregor test site. The site suited SpaceX's need because Beal,
Beal was a failed rocket company that had pulled outta this site, had developed it specifically to test rocket engines as Alan. Alan is the last be employee who's closing down the site, two toward Musk and the others around. He showed them not only the tripod test stand, but also a larger bunker for monitoring engine [00:34:00] firings and other facilities.
The town of McGregor owned everything here and was willing to lease it all because local officials wanted the company as a tenant. There would be minimal interference and no restriction on the size of their engine. Texas two had a much less restrictive regulatory environment than California with more business friendly laws.
Musk hired Alan on the spot and leased the site. I find it interesting in the Elon Musk book , it says that they only paid $45,000 a year for the site, which seems like quite a steal. And it was certainly the perfect site for SpaceX at this time, and I believe they still use it today.
And in another chain of events that I find really interesting is they had just discovered the site earlier in the day than, and that it might be available. And so they just decide to follow the coal[00:35:00] lead and they jump on the jet and they go down there and they check it out and they just turn up the heat and they get the deal done
and they're gonna put this site through its paces with the author saying, over the next two years, Mueller buzzer, Hallman and a handful of others would hammer together the Merlin engine and put it through its phases. they would burn up thrust chambers, blow apart fuel tanks, and raise enough ruckus to bring the secret service to their gates.
But by 2005, they would build something powerful. Almost from scratch with enough thrust to send half a ton screaming towards outer space. And I found it interesting that when they first started using the site, they were just test firing rockets at will.
And on one of those test fires, it was so big that it shook the windows in all the homes in the area. And one of those houses was President George [00:36:00] Bush's home in Crawford, Texas. So that's why the Secret Service had dispatched to the location to kind of shake 'em down and figure out what the hell they're doing over there.
And it says, after that, they would put out more notice to the surrounding communities when they started doing their testing.
And so while this is going on, SpaceX needs to secure a space where they can test fire their rockets, and they're gonna work to secure a site at Vandenberg Air Force Base. And this was perfect for them because it was only 200 miles away from their factory. But unfortunately, their time at Vandenberg is gonna be fairly limited as they're gonna be held back by the Air Force.
The Air Force was really rigid about their testing and all of the things that they were doing there, this really went against the SpaceX loose culture and iterative design process, and was hampering their ability [00:37:00] to get things done quickly.
and the final straw is gonna come when they're basically, they're put on ice by the Air Force.
as they told SpaceX that they wouldn't be able to do any more testing and that they would have to delay any launches until after they had launched a multi-billion dollar by satellite in the Titan four. And when was the time to do this launch? Well, we don't really have a time to do the launch at this point.
You guys are gonna have to just sit and wait. And that was really a drawback for Musk because they had just dumped $7 million into improving that site. They spent the first half of 2005 getting the site ready to go, to start testing the Falcon One Rocket. And he's iced out. But he's not
gonna let this slow his progress down towards his dream. His funds are starting to dwindle at this point, and he has to make a bold decision. He had about a year's worth of resources available, and at [00:38:00] this time, the company was approximately a hundred employees, so he's burning through his cash quite rapidly.
Now, a few years before they had visited a small chain of islands called Qua, and these were located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean near the equator. And the Army had a little base there, and when they went to go visit they greeted them with open arms and they toured 'em around and everything looked really nice.
They had very loose terms and they were super supportive versus that of the Air Force. But the only problem here is the distance is so far away
or so they thought. And Musk is gonna take the following actions after he has been put on ice by the Air Force, knowing he could not wait or sue or protest. Musk took the only option left to him after the conference call with the government officials. Musk phone [00:39:00] buzzer. Uh, Tim Buzzer was their launch director directly we're going to Quas.
He told buzzer, tomorrow we should begin packing. The distant string of tiny islands 5,000 miles away extended a critical lifeline to SpaceX from the air. The islands were stunning. The string of tiny pearls emitted turquoise sea 90 islands comprise the qua angelian atoll, but their combined landmass is just six square miles or about a quarter of the size of Manhattan.
Each of the coral covered islands rises only slightly above sea level, forming a broken chain around the world's largest lagoon. A dozen engineers and technicians would spend almost the entire second half of 2005 in qua commuting daily by boat to Oreck Island where they built their new launch pad.
They had just worked themselves to [00:40:00] exhaustion building one launch site. Now they would have to turn around and build a second one. Qua was far from home. At least no Air Force officials waited there to shut SpaceX down. The Army wanted them. The range was theirs.
You and I discussed Joe Colomon episode three at Trader Joe's. How he radically shifted his small convenience store business when he learned that a competitor a thousand times larger was coming to town, he deployed what he called a reasonable strategy to move forward.
Trader Joe, like Elon Musk, was an avid reader and he describes his reasonable strategy in the following way. As we learned on episode three in 1962, Barbara Tuckman published The Guns of August in account of the first 90 days of World War I. It's the best book on management, and especially mismanagement I've ever read.
The most basic [00:41:00] conclusion I drew from her book was that if you adopt a reasonable strategy as opposed to waiting for an optimum strategy and you stick with it, you'll probably succeed. Tenacity is as important as brilliance. Trying to find an optimum solution in business is a waste of time.
The factors in the equation are changing all of the time, but you've got to have something to hang your hat on. And I just ordered that book a few days ago and I can't wait to read it and learn from the same book that Joe Colom had the privilege to read all those years ago.
And this feels exactly like Elon, and I think that he is iterating his reasonable strategy much quicker than Joe did. But at the same time, he wasn't looking for perfection. and I think if this worked for Joe and Elon, it'll certainly work for us in business. You know your business best, my friend, and what type of reasonable strategy would [00:42:00] work.
Don't get stuck looking for perfection. I love that saying don't major in the minor. Musk could have waited 2, 3, 4 years waiting for the launch site at Vandenberg to become open. It was only 200 miles or so away from SpaceX but he would've died in his own backyard. As it says in the book, he sees that simply as a speed bump, he makes a new reasonable strategy and he heads 5,000 miles away where he has the freedom to launch his rockets.
Because they're ready to fly and he wants to get things moving forward. So the key lesson here,
don't major in the minor, my friends. Focus on what moves your business forward and use your reasonable strategy skills to lead in the arena. You'll have great success. I believe it.
Now, the team doesn't know it yet, but well, maybe
Musk knows it, this little set of islands [00:43:00] is gonna propel them towards greatness. And on the other hand, it's gonna almost destroy them several times, but each time they're gonna rise up from the ashes. And as the engineers are working on the front lines, Musk and his VP of sales who he had hired, Gwen Shotwell, they're gonna be busy selling rocket rides and they're gonna be working on different government contracts that they're really gonna need to keep the company afloat.
And it Shotwell, who today as the president and COO of SpaceX, that was really a perfect compliment to Musk. He would spend 80 to 90% of his time focused on the engineering side of the house, and then she's gonna handle all of the various sales and HR related type of activities. and they really worked well together to help propel the leadership and drive SpaceX forward.
Now in February of [00:44:00] 2004, NASA announced a $227 million contract to Kissler, and the contract was to help them finish their rocket. That was like 80, 85% done, and this rocket would help deliver supplies to the International Space Station. Now, at this point, Musk loses it. He goes ballistic, and he is just super upset.
And the reason being is that the contract was never put out to bid, and he feels that that is extremely unfair. So what he's gonna do is he's gonna end up suing and protesting this award, and many told him not to do it, that his chance of losing was like 90%. But in his eyes, he didn't see this action as ethical.
He thought that this contract should have had been put out to bid. And in addition, he literally [00:45:00] believes that the company is gonna be doomed because if Kissler had succeeded, this would put them into a position to be the primary leader for delivering supplies in this space.
And this is a position that he wants. And quite frankly, he really needs to keep his company alive and growing. So he would issue a protest and he would have success in that protest. And pass that point, NASA would put the contract out to bid, and then this is where Shotwell would step in. And she would be mostly responsible for winning that contract in 2006.
And this would forever change the way that SpaceX operated as a company. And it also provided them with a pretty large cash injection that they really needed at this time. As funds were starting to wind down,
and then also many people in the [00:46:00] industry sat up for the first time and started to take notice of SpaceX and all of the things that they were doing,
and to put additional pressure on the industry. I really love this. Musk is gonna openly advertise the cost to put a satellite into space. Falcon one. Any guesses on what that is? Well, if you guess $6 million, you would be correct. And this was unheard of for a couple of reasons.
The first one was that no Rocket company advertised their prices, and the second was that his closest competition was 26 to $28 million. So he's about what, 25%? Maybe a little less than that of his closest competitor. I mean, that's just wild. And so that's gonna result in some early contracts that come into the company and would bring them about $25 million in sales.
But the only drawback there was that they had to get the satellites successfully [00:47:00] into space to get paid, but it did give them their first commercial and government customers. Now, as we move forward, we'll take a look at each of the early flights, and my goal here is to call out the most important lessons they learned along the way and how those lessons propelled them forward.
In Each of these chapters covering the first four flights is like 25 to 40 pages. And there's really a lot of great details in here. The author really pulls you into the story. It makes you feel connected, and I really felt like I was part of that early team on Qua.
And for that, I would highly, highly recommend you picking up the book. All right, uh, let's jump in and take a look at the first flight from Orek. Now, to get started, the company would have to ship more than 30 tons of materials to the island. They had no infrastructure in place, and they literally had to build [00:48:00] everything.
And to give you a a sense of this, if you go to Google Earth and you type in ek, that's O-M-E-L-E-K ek, uh, you're gonna see in 2023 that it's just like a lush little island and there's a helicopter pad on the island. Then if you use that, uh, back in time feature and you go back to 2005, 2006, you're gonna see all the equipment and the infrastructure that's on place on this little bitty island.
How it looks in 2023 is basically how it looked when they arrived. So that gives you a feel of how much equipment was transported to the, to the island and how much infrastructure they had to build. So simply by using Google Earth, you can get a really quick view of what it was that they had to construct.
And they would amazingly do that in just like a six month [00:49:00] period of time.
Now, in my book, I wrote brilliant to the following paragraph that I'm about ready to summarize for you to move the rocket from the hangar where it was assembled and worked on out to the launchpad. They would design a horizontal cradle called a strong back, and then this would hold the rocket. and instead of using some fancy transporter, that would've cost them millions of dollars.
The engineers simply laid plywood down on the ground, and then they would push the cradle on its wheels with the rocket on top, and they would push it five or six feet. And then they would take the sheets of plywood from the back and bring 'em around to the front, push it five or six more feet. And then they would continue repeating this process until they had reached the launchpad that was about 150 yards away.
And then they would raise the strong back into a vertical position. And I think that was [00:50:00] really ingenious because they were super fast paced moving. They didn't have time to develop and dump millions of dollars into a transporter. And this simple solution allowed them to just continue to move forward.
And I think it's just simple examples like this that are highlighted over and over throughout the book that give us that feel of what SpaceX was about and moving fast . But this is also gonna cost them as we'll soon. See.
In November of 2005, they would attempt their first launch and they would have an issue with the fuel tank valve. So they would end up scrubbing the launch until December and then again in December, they would have to scrub due to bad weather. Now, this was like the 20th of December. And to roll the rocket back to the hangar would've meant that most of the team would've missed the last commercial flight from Quas back to the [00:51:00] mainland for Christmas.
So they just decide to leave the rocket on the launchpad, and they believe that they were gonna be back on the island in early January to attempt the launch, but they would end up having some equipment delays and they wouldn't arrive back until around January 20th. Now, during this time, the author paints a pretty vivid image.
The first stage engine therefore spent an entire month outside in merciless conditions, trade winds blew across oreck, almost continuously, carrying salt spray. The pad lies less than a hundred yards from the ocean with big breaking waves, throwing salt into the air and coating the rocket. The corrosion environment there is insane.
So once they arrived back on lec, they would roll the rocket back into the hangar and they would make some needed repairs and they would get it ready to go for the next launch window that was scheduled for [00:52:00] March 24th of oh six, and let's just see how this is gonna go for them. As the rockets Merlin engine fired, it started to rise like almost everyone else in the control room.
Musk eyes were trained at the video feed for the launch for five seconds, and then 10. The Falcon one rocket climbed above the sand, coral, and sea. It flamed brightly. It had actually launched nervous energy, gave way to exhilaration just as quickly. Within seconds, everything started to go wrong. The engine itself seemed to be on fire.
We noticed it on a scent. We were hoping that maybe if the rocket got far enough, then maybe the flame would extinguish because it wouldn't have enough oxygen to burn. The rocket did not get far enough for the atmosphere to thin. Half a minute after it took off for the first time, the Merlin engine flickered out.
A few seconds later, [00:53:00] the rocket itself stopped rising, succumbed to gravity, and fell back towards Alek. For nearly four years, a small band of people had worked relentlessly to reach this moment. Within the span of one minute, it was over.
If you're wondering what happened here, they would quickly understand that there was a fuel leak that had developed near the top of the main engine. And this obviously started a fire. And a report from the defense agency is gonna say the following about the fire. The only plausible cause of the fire was the failure of an aluminum B nut on the fuel pump inlet pressure transducer due to irregular corrosion cracking the nut, which cost all of $5 had cracked due to corrosion from sea salt spray on ORIC the night before the first launch.
Now, to be [00:54:00] fair, even if they had not left the rocket outside in that sea spray for a month, there was some other failures that also happened, and one of which was a valve that didn't open all the way,
and this failure would not have propelled the first stage rocket into space anyways, and it would've eventually come back to earth.
and this issue could have been caught in advance as well. but the team had decided to forgo equipping the rocket with an excess of sensors. And after the failure, we can really get a sense of how Musk is feeling right here.
Like other rocket enthusiasts, Musk experiences an extraordinary adrenaline rush during a launch. By the evening, he was crashing from the high and beginning to reflect on what had happened and what could be done to move forward. He was clearly sad for what happened, but also making fun of the situation because what else can you do?
And Musk could plan for [00:55:00] the first couple rockets to fail. Still, it's a bitter defeat. Four years of hard work they put into this first flight and then within a minute it was over. But they had learned some valuable lessons here. And when faced with hard times, you just gotta pick yourself up. You try to find that silver lining.
It's in every cloud. If we look for it, we will find it. So they continue to move forward in these two important lessons that they learn from flight One, they're gonna do the best thing they can and they're gonna apply those learnings. So they would install the proper sensors to help them detect anomalies with the engine and the various valves.
And then secondly, they're gonna take care of not to leave the rocket outside exposed to the sea salt spray when they're not having any launch attempts.
And then they would go about and implement some other [00:56:00] learnings, such as how to efficiently route wires, making it easier to service. And then for the first time, they would start documenting all of the parts that were going into the rocket as well. And this would take them about a year of modifications, and then this would draw them towards their second flight.
But before this, Musk would ask his VPs to compile a list of all of their top risk, and they would discuss things like valves that had failed during testing, parts from suppliers that had failed, and various systems that needed hardening.
And towards the bottom of the list at number 11 was this issue with Slosh. Now, slosh happens when a fuel tank drains two rapidly, and the remaining fuel in the tank kind of sloshes around and it would cause the rocket to spin outtacontrol. And in the book they say it's like, uh, running [00:57:00] with a bowl of soup.
And if the Rocket's movement couples with the slosh, then the soup would spill everywhere. They had tested this risk many times, and most of the time they found that it wasn't an issue. But in a very small percentage, it did become a problem. So Musk is gonna go ahead and accept this risk because the only way to solve for it would be to add baffles into the second stage fuel tank.
And this would add complexity and also add weight to the rocket. And Musk held a very, very hard line on adding any weight because the more weight you add, the less effective your rocket is and they're trying to reach space after all. So he kept a very, very tight line on adding any weight. In fact, he was obsessed about cutting weight as much as humanly possible,
so on March 21st of oh six, they would be scheduled for flight [00:58:00] two, and let's just jump into the book and see how this goes.
This time the engine burned only where it was supposed to fuel. Tank pressures were good, temperatures were nominal. The rocket climbed and after a couple of minutes, the first stage fell away from the rocket second stage, which continued climbing.
The Merlin engine had worked. Soon. Falcon one crossed the threshold of space soaring past 62 miles. Right on schedule.
It was awesome until it wasn't. A few minutes after the first stage separated, the Falcon One Rocket second stage began spiraling off course. Slowly, it began to spin. As the spin accelerated to about 60 revolutions per minute, the Kestrel engine flamed out. The rocket had reached space, but it had fallen short of getting into a stable orbit around the earth.
The second stage began descending and splashed into the ocean [00:59:00] a few hundred miles to the east of Quas.
They had not achieved 100% success, perhaps 95%.
SpaceX was so close here, no other company had reached a milestone in such a record time, especially no private companies. Now, a few days later, Musk is gonna publicly say that the mission represented a large step forward for SpaceX. It's gonna become clear fairly quickly.
That Slosh had gotten them during this flight. And to this day, Musk always ask for the top 11 risk. And I love how they feed their lessons learned back into the company to make it stronger. In addition, they're gonna add baffles to all of the Falcon one stage two fuel tanks moving forward.
As the team prepared for flight three, they made some big changes to the way that the Merlin engine would cool [01:00:00] itself. For the first two flights, they use what is known as an ablative material inside of the thrust chamber and on the engine's rocket nozzle. And then as propellants combust, this ablative material chars, and it falls away in flakes, and it protects the chamber in the nozzle from excessive heat.
And it allowed for a simpler engine design, and it cut back their production times as well. But this material was highly problematic for SpaceX as each ablative shell that they were using cost around $30,000. And they were burning through a lot of them, even just to do a simple one second test fire would cost them $30,000.
So to add efficiencies and to help save costs muss would change the Merlin engine to be a regeneratively cooled engine. And in this [01:01:00] method, it uses a cooling process that would run a coolant through the engine to relieve it of some heat through convection And then this heated coolant would also work as a propellant for the engine at the same time.
they would test this revised engine many times out in the Texas desert with a very high level of success.
And as an added benefit, they could almost immediately reuse the engine. This was a big plus for Musk because he had plans in his head to one day be able to reuse that first stage. So after about 10 successful test fires, they finally shipped the engine to Orek, and they began preparing for flight three.
And as they entered into flight three, Musk is gonna declare the following,
must declare that the Falcon One rocket had progressed from a development phase into that of an operational status. This was tantamount to saying that the Falcon [01:02:00] One rocket was ready for prime time
With the experimental flight one, the company had flown a small satellite built by the Air Force Academy students and valued at less than a hundred thousand dollars for flight two. They launched a dummy spacecraft that approximated a payload that had no value for flight.
Three. SpaceX selected a trio of customers it could, ill afford to disappoint. The Air Force provided the primary payload, 180 pound satellite named Trailblazer to test new capabilities in orbit. NASA also provided two tiny satellites,
On August 3rd of oh eight, the Falcon One Rocket is back on the launchpad and their confidence is extremely high.
All across the company.
as data's rolling in from the rocket prior to launch, all signs look positive. They had [01:03:00] experience now from the two previous attempts, and they really believe that today was their day
back in California at their new Hawthorne offices. It was a super festive atmosphere. It was super uplifting. Staff members were encouraged to invite their family and their friends to watch the launch on the big screens that they had set up out on the factory floor. And as they approached their three 20 launch hour, a thunderstorm would roll into Oreck.
And the Army had determined that it was a fast moving storm, and they allowed SpaceX to expand their launch window by 10 minutes so the storm would pass, and this would give them safe and clear skies to execute the launch. So at 3 34, the Falcon One rocket would take flight and the rocket would rise confidently soaring to what appeared to be a happy destination in [01:04:00] space.
And let me just paraphrase from the book how things would go,
, The Merlin performed beautifully as the first stage climbed into space. All passed in what seemed like less than a minute, a mere flash in time. And at the end of it, the first stage propulsion system had done its job. Now, the second stage would take over When the anomaly occurred, you could just see that things were not right.
It took a little while to internalize. It was incredibly disappointing. The team was devastated. A camera attached to the second stage looking down told the jarring story of what had happened. As the Merlin engine completed its burn, the rocket rose above the Pacific Blue Ocean White clouds far below.
When the engine shut down the spent first stage separated and began to fall away towards Earth. But then before the first stage had dropped more [01:05:00] than a few feet, it snapped back upwards To the horror of those watching it thud into the bottom of the second stage and the kind of nightmare sequence that wakes a rocket scientist in cold sweat.
This collision sent the second stage tumbling out of control. As the camera blinked out, it was clear the mission was doomed. the Falcon one, rockets first and second stages were plummeting back to the ground.
With this failure, it seemed like SpaceX's trek to the stars might be over twoin California at SpaceX's headquarters, the celebratory mood quickly turned dreary.
They had put everything into this for the last four to five years, and so you might be asking what exactly happened here when that first stage engine had turned off.
There's a separation of that second stage, and after a few seconds, the second stage engine will fire up and continue on. [01:06:00] But remember, they had redesigned the first stage Merlin engine to be regenerative. So when it turned off, it still burns any residual fuel. And this burning of that fuel produced a very slight thrust, but it was catastrophic because it forced it to collide into the second stage.
And that's what sent it spiraling outta control. And you might ask, well, is this something that they should have caught in advance? Possibly, but it was almost undetectable. And here's why. So at Full power, the Merlin Chamber reaches about 1400 pounds of pressure per square inch, and the TRAT thrust it cut off.
Was only 10 pounds per square inches described in the book. Now at sea level, air exerts only about 15 pounds per square inch. So it was basically undetectable during their testing. [01:07:00] But in the vacuum of space with the rocket engine hardware so close together, this was enough to cause the collision. So, I mean, what is the solution then?
It's just a simple code change in the software that would allow them more time to allow the stages to separate four seconds. That is,
so after the main engine shuts off, it can burn off the residual fuel and then begin stage separation past that. But the big question is, would there be a fourth flight? And Musk had been on record saying that he would cover the first three flights in the space world. If you fail three times, you are basically, you're done.
One behavior that we know of Musk at this point is that he has a relentless drive and vision, and he is driven by a long-term vision of humanity, expanding to Mars and beyond. And he's not just gonna simply roll over and [01:08:00] give up. And I really believe that this fuels his persistence despite enormous technical and business challenges.
And plus, let's take into account a few things. One is he had the most talented staff on board. He had hired them all and trained them all and got them all into his vision and his mission. Two is he has a factory full of parts, and three is he has test and launch facilities that are already established, but there's some drawbacks as his government funds are running very low.
He doesn't have maybe a month or two worth of reserves here from a cash perspective. And then the economy at this time was starting to go into recession. This is 2008, remember? And we're about to take a big hit in the economy and how he approaches this. Well, let me just read here from the book for you so can get a feel.
The day after the third failure, Musk called the Falcon One staff into a meeting. Musk [01:09:00] took his place at the front glass walls behind him, trying to find the appropriate words for the moment. No one quite knew what the boss would say. Mosque was his crest fall, and as the rest of his employees, even worse, he had bet a lot on SpaceX in time and money and emotional toil with little return. Now his personal fortune was running dry. He had invested everything in SpaceX and Tesla Beyond Money. His personal life was falling apart. He and his first wife, Justine, had split that summer. As Musk looked around the conference room in early August, he saw a chance for salvation.
He had a good team. He personally hired all of these people, judging them to be smart, innovative, and willing to give their all. He had driven them hard, so very hard. They had made mistakes, but they were dedicated and had put their souls into SpaceX. So in the darkest hour, [01:10:00] must chose not to play the blame game.
Certainly he could dish out brutally honest feedback, crushing feelings without regard. Instead, he rallied the team with an inspiring speech. As bad as Flight three had gone, he wanted to give his people one final swing in the factory, they had the parts for a final Falcon One Rocket build it, he said, and then fly it, and he would give them just six weeks to do this.
This was then my friend, fly or die. Back to the book here. The period that followed would be the most memorable and arguably important period of the company's history, hardening its DNA, and setting the stage for SpaceX to become the most transformative aerospace company in the world.
For the next month, they would work on the rocket. Around the clock. Many engineers and technicians are gonna sleep in the factory at their desk [01:11:00] because there was really no time to leave the building and do anything else.
SpaceX, they didn't have months worth of time to ship a rocket to Quas via their traditional shipping vessels that they would use. They needed it there almost immediately. And one of their engineers that I had mentioned earlier, Brian Bedy, he had some connections in the military and somehow he is able to convince the Air Force to transport the rocket inside of one of their big massive C 17 aircraft.
And the flight on the C 17 itself is a thriller and they almost lost the rocket on the way there. as the aircraft is starting to descend on the way to the islands, they hear this crumpling sound. And immediately the 20 or so SpaceX employees who were on board knew exactly what that was.
There was a pressure difference [01:12:00] between the fuel tank and the outside that was causing it to implode on itself. So one of the SpaceX employees would run to the front of the plane and he would beg the pilot to start ascending. Which they would do, but he's informed that they only have about 30 minutes worth of fuel left.
So they can only ascend for about 10 minutes and they're gonna have to go down. They don't have any choice whatsoever. And meanwhile, another engineer would climb inside of the darkness of the rocket and he would locate the fuel tank valve and twist it open. And as soon as he did that, he felt air whooshing past him into the rocket.
And right at that same time, the C 17 started to descend for their landing. 'cause they didn't have any choice. They almost set a fuel here, and this action saved the rocket from further damage. But the big question is, can they still fly the rocket? So once they [01:13:00] had arrived at lec, they did an assessment and they saw that there was quite a bit of damage and the team was estimating about six weeks worth of repair or so, and that was even working around the clock.
And let's find out how Elon would react right here. Elon saw that and went off the freaking deep end. Thompson says six weeks is too long. SpaceX didn't have six weeks. Realistically, SpaceX did not even have a month before its funding ran out.
and now Thompson, their VP of engineering. He knew this was extremely dire and he's gonna tell his team in Orek the following
you're gonna strip that effing thing like a Chevy and that rocket better be effing disassembled. By the time Buzz and I get there on Monday morning, there was dead silence in the trailer on Oreck. As the word sunk in, they were gonna have to fix the rocket right there in the tropics.
There was no time for quality [01:14:00] control or meticulous records. They didn't have six weeks, they had one. They were gonna have to haul ass and hope for the best. And now as they strip the rocket down. Engineers in California, they would load up Musk Desalt Falcon 900 Jet with all the extra parts and supplies that they could find, and then they would head out and help with the rescue mission.
And two days later they would arrive in Oreck, where they would find the rocket engine, of course, stripped down like a Chevy. They had parts everywhere. The engine was up on blocks, and they would work really hard to fix the baffles in the fuel tanks. They would inspect all the welds and they would get all the wrinkles straightened out.
And it says within a week, the first stage engine was completely reassembled and was ready for testing. That's simply amazing, six weeks down to one, and not to mention they're fixing it on a freaking tropical island. [01:15:00] So they would go forward and they'd do all their pressure testing and everything would pass with flying colors so that it would just continue to push forward.
And the author describes in such a great detail and it makes you feel like you're really there with them. Let me read for you.
They had broken virtually every rule in aerospace to pull the first stage together. But because of these heroics on Orek, SpaceX still had one last shot at survival. They pushed on hard through September, working late nights under starry skies, breaking only for grilled steaks or Turkish goulash. After the pressure test, they bolted the second stage onto the first stage.
Then the launch team rolled the entire rocket, the very last Falcon One hardware they had on hand out to the launch pad. By the last week of the month, they were as ready as they were ever gonna be. It was fly [01:16:00] or die. And man, that's powerful stuff right there. I think this is a really valuable lesson right here for you and I, Musk had set high expectations for his team and he had developed a very demanding culture.
I mean, everyone basically knows their futures are on the line right here and the company, they're almost out of funds and they really need a miracle. All of his employees, they dig in super deep and they make this happen. And as leaders in our business, we really need to set the pace for our teams and we need to demand excellence and embrace hard work.
We shouldn't let employees slack
you have to be a leader first in the office, last to leave, model the behavior you want. Musk, he wasn't a slacker. He worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. He drove his team hard and he demanded [01:17:00] excellence. And we can do this too. This is a powerful, powerful lesson for us. . Let this give us momentum to go forward and be great.
My friend. I believe in you now. The life of SpaceX is on the line right here and they raise the Falcon one into position for the fourth flight and it really is, it's fly or die. And many times in the book they mentioned this fly or die. so just eight weeks after the flight three had failed, the rocket is back on the launchpad.
It's amazing. It blows my mind. Musk is gonna say the following, I was stressed outta my mind and I can certainly feel for him right here. I mean, he is almost outta cash. And to add to the pressures, they were in the final stages of bidding on a $1 billion contract to fly operational cargo to the International Space Station.
So yeah, I [01:18:00] mean it's really do or die. And at this point it's super tense in the book and you don't really wanna put it down. You just wanna keep reading and reading to figure out what's gonna happen. So let's jump back in and see how this works out.
The white rocket with a star black inner stage stood on the launchpad, venting auction into the tropical breeze. Palms near the rocket, swayed in the wind, the smoke and fire burst forth as Falcon One rose from the launchpad. About 20 seconds into the flight, the video feed switched to an onboard camera
looking down at Tiny Orme Island, a receding speck in an endless expanse of Azure Ocean. after a minute with the rocket already more than a dozen miles into the sky, the calls of nominals spread through the control room. the first stage in the Merlin engine as it had done on the previous two flights, burned as intended towards space.
[01:19:00] Soon it came to the pivotal moment of stage separation. After about two minutes and 40 seconds, the Merlin engine shut off, and then the on poured computer counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and six seconds before the first and second stage detached from one another. This time allowed for a safe separation. The first stage fell away from the rocket.
Its job done, but it was not the final moment. SpaceX had seen the kestrel engine burn before Kestrel had minutes to burn before the rocket reached orbit. At around two minutes into the flight, the payload fairing split away from the top of the rocket. The camera on Falcon One's second stage captured an arresting view of the two halves falling back to earth and still the Kes engine continued to burn, weighing about [01:20:00] 100 pounds.
It glowed red as it consumed liquid oxygen and kerosene to push the upper stage towards a stable orbit around the Earth. Then nine and a half minutes after launch, the Keroengine shut down,
rat sat had reached orbit. When Kestrel shut down, the place just exploded. We went absolutely wild. We were all jumping around and hugging each other, screaming. It was a righteous celebration, and I thought I was about ready to cry at that point in the book, to be honest with you.
You feel just so incredibly happy for the team as they had put so much dedication in work over the last six years to get this rocket into space. And they had accomplished their dreams and their goals and the mighty underdog had come out on top and dominated.
And Musk is gonna soon address his team and he would say the following, this was one of the greatest days of my [01:21:00] life. This is just the first step of many and we're going to have a really great party tonight. I get even cracked up now just a little bit. having read this five or six times now.
Musk would celebrate with all of the engineers and the technicians and everyone that made it possible. And they really enjoyed their success that evening. And it is a success that's gonna help propel them forward to ultimately win a contract to bring supplies to the International Space Station, as they were one of two vendors that had been selected.
And in December of oh eight, just a couple days before Christmas, Musk would get a call from NASA telling him that they had been selected and that this was certainly life-saving money that they needed at the time. The contract was valued at $1.6 billion. this would allow SpaceX to propel itself into the future as a company.
And past this, they would fly several more [01:22:00] commercial Falcon One flights successfully into space. But not long after, in 2009, Musk would make a bold move and he would officially retire the Falcon One Rocket. he would move all that support staff over to focus on the Falcon nine, which was the right move here.
He really needed the Falcon One rocket to prove that he could develop a cost effective rocket to get into space, which he had done. Just that he learned a shit ton along the way, and this really propelled him to move things forward.
And with that, we'll go ahead and wrap up. This is a beautiful book. It's a fun read if you're like me and you don't have a lot of understanding how rockets work. Eric Berger, he does a really good job at explaining the details in a simple manner, and he writes in a way that makes you feel really connected to the team.
You get to experience those highs and lows as the team experience [01:23:00] them. He paints a super detailed and vivid picture. In my opinion, it's a must read. I highly, highly recommend it. Uh, as we've done on past episodes, I just wanted to take a little bit of time to reflect on the top lessons that we've learned along the way.
I really believe in reflection. I think it's important. It helps us build deeper connections with the material and the content that we're reviewing and that we're reading. And I just want to go over these with you, and as I'm reading through these, just imagine how these lessons might help you in your business.
Is there anything that you could implement or maybe do just a little bit better? I think application is key, my friend. All right. The first lesson that we learned today was that of hiring a level players in your business, Musk. He personally interviewed the first 3000 employees at SpaceX, and this took a lot of hard work and [01:24:00] dedication and time, but he felt that it was absolutely necessary and we should take that same approach.
Don't settle my friend. One. Wrong hire can be devastating in our business. Seek out those A plus players, my friend. They will be the driving force for your business. The second lesson that I love is to be relentless for your business. When you need something, pick up the phone and seek answers.
Track down that information and the resources that you need. We saw an example of Steve Jobs who at the age of 12, called Bill Hewlett out of the blue when he needed some parts, and he would hold this trait for the rest of his life, calling on people when he needed help. That was one of his superpowers.
Musk, he does the exact same thing, so I mean, if it works for Elon and it works for Steve. It'll absolutely work for us. Be relentless for your [01:25:00] business. The third lesson was around bureaucracy. Don't let it hold you back. We saw that when Musk needed a testing facility, he immediately flies to Texas when he learns that one's available, and he locks it down the same day he visits.
In another example, when he was put on ice at Vandenberg, knowing that he wasn't gonna even have any idea when he could launch his rocket, he immediately pivots and he heads to a site in the middle of the fricking Pacific Ocean that's 5,000 miles away. I mean, he could have sat back and just watched all of his money dwindle, waiting for the window to open up.
But he doesn't get caught up in the bureaucratic bullshit. He pivots and he drives hard, and he finds alternative solutions and he makes it work. And we can do the same thing here. overcome these challenges and drive forward. And I think this [01:26:00] pairs well with lesson four, and that is around a reasonable strategy in business.
And you and I, we've discussed this several times on the podcast already. And it seems to just be repeating itself over and over in these great entrepreneurs that we're studying, trader Joe's introduced us to the concept of developing this reasonable strategy as a path forward in business. And that if we spend all of our time waiting for an optimal strategy, we're bound to fail because there is no perfect strategy In Musk, he followed this approach and he always put forth a reasonable strategy to get to his next goals.
And you and I, we can take a similar approach, my friend, let it propel us forward and be great in life and business. Always have a reasonable strategy.
And then the fifth and final lesson here that we saw today. Was that of setting high expectations for [01:27:00] your team? Musk, as we heard today and all throughout this book, he has incredibly demanding expectations for his team, but at the same time, he modeled what he expected. He worked long days. He was in the trenches with his team, and he was encouraging them to overcome challenges, and we can do the same Model the behavior you expect.
Be the first one there in the morning, be the last one to leave. Set the pace, give clear expectations, and drive for excellence. It goes back to lesson one, that if we're hiring for excellence, we can drive for excellence. I believe in you, my friend. You can make it happen. These are the top lessons that I learned from this book.
I've greatly enjoyed spending this time with you, my friend. If you'd like to sign up for my newsletter, you can visit me@deeplydrivenpodcast.com, and at the top of the page you'll see [01:28:00] a newsletter link. If you just follow that, you can sign up. Each time I finish reading a book, I'll send you my top lessons and takeaways.
And if you liked the episode and you've made it this far, thank you very much for listening. Maybe you would just consider leaving a quick review or sharing the show with a friend. I would greatly, greatly appreciate it.
I spend a lot of time reading, outlining, and recording and editing these episodes, and I really enjoy the process. My goal is to make a quality show that is beneficial for your life and for your business and for the customers that you service. And I really hope that you've learned a few things here today and that I've done a good job illustrating the story of the early days of SpaceX for you.
Again, it's been my pleasure. Pick up the book if you can. Highly, highly recommend it. Until next time, make it a beautiful day in the neighborhood, my friend