A room in the archive
Two Falcon 1 rockets had failed. On August 2, 2008, SpaceX gathered everyone in the hangar to watch the third. This room follows the next 161 days, in order, as they happened.
Act one: the last attempt
Day 0 to Day 57
Flight 3 stood on its pad on Omelek Island, in the Kwajalein Atoll, 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii. The launch window opened at 4 p.m. California time.
The launch window will open at 4:00 p.m. (PDT) / 7:00 p.m. (EDT) / 23:00 (UTC) and remain open for five hours.
Webcast url is now available: http://www.spacex.com/webcast.php
Read the postFrom Kimbal Musk’s blog, as written that afternoon.
Kimbal Musk blogged the launch from the Hawthorne hangar. Each post here appears at the time he wrote it.
SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, CA. The entire staff and their families are viewing the webcast in the Hanger.
Read the postFamilies came for a party. Someone had carved an ice luge for tequila.
A tequila ice luge stood ready for the party.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 8The first count
In California it was late afternoon. On Omelek, across the date line, it was already Sunday.
Topping up of LOX to begin shortly.
Read the postNot official yet, but based on reports from Kwaj, expected T-Zero is around 7pm PDT.
Read the postWord on the ground is that the Helium cryochill appears to be ok. T-Zero now around 8pm PDT.
Read the postFrom Kimbal Musk’s blog, as written that evening.
The first count stopped at T-0. The team recycled while a thunderstorm sat over the island and the launch window closed in on them.
A storm sat over Omelek. The range gave ten extra minutes.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 8After dark in Hawthorne, the count began again.
Should be at T-10min when we start up again.
Read the post
Waiting for more information.
We have two more Falcon 1’s right behind this one, no matter what happened.
Read the postFrom Kimbal Musk’s blog, as written that night.
The first stage flew perfectly. At separation it bumped the second stage, and the rocket tumbled. Four minutes later Kimbal posted the line this room turns on.
“So when we lost video, we knew something had gone wrong in a big way.”
The same night
Three of three had failed. The company waited to hear what Musk would do.
“For my part, I will never give up and I mean never.”
The most important message I’d like to send right now is that SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward. We have flight four of Falcon 1 almost ready for flight and flight five right behind that. I have also given the go ahead to begin fabrication of flight six.
There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport. For my part, I will never give up and I mean never.
Read the whole emailMusk said it to the company on the factory floor, then wrote it down. He named flights four, five and six, and approved parts for the sixth.
“When Elon came out, he walked past the press and first addressed the company.” … “I think most of us would have followed him into the gates of hell carrying suntan oil after that.”
Under everything was one question: how many more tries could SpaceX pay for?
As a precautionary measure to guard against the possibility of flight 3 not reaching orbit, SpaceX recently accepted a significant investment. Combined with our existing cash reserves, that ensures we will have more than sufficient funding on hand to continue launching Falcon 1 and develop Falcon 9 and Dragon.
Read the whole documentThe $20 million from Founders Fund is announced on Day 2.
SpaceX, a privately-held space launch services provider, has received a $20 million equity investment from Founders Fund, a leading technology venture capital firm, headquartered in San Francisco.
Read the whole document“If that fourth launch hadn’t worked, that would have been it. We would have not had the resources to mount a fifth.”
“I figured we could pull a fifth launch off, but that was it. … I thought we could get to five. He thought four was it.”
On what Musk told the factory that night: a significant investment gave SpaceX
“ample financial resources to attempt 2 more launches; giving us security until at least flight 5”
She recalls the investor as Draper Fisher Jurvetson; the record says Founders Fund.
“Flight four was it.”
Vance, Elon Musk, ch. 8Musk had about $30 million left. The payroll had passed 500 people.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 11That night Musk told staff the money was enough. He kept the company confident. Years later he said one more failure would have ended SpaceX. Shotwell thought they could fly a fifth.
$30 million sounds like a lot. But it was Musk’s own money, the last of it, and he split it between SpaceX and Tesla (Berger). SpaceX had more than 500 people and almost no revenue. At about $130,000 a year per person, salary plus benefits and overhead, payroll alone burns about $5.4 million a month.
Half of $30 million covers less than three months of it, before one part, one test or one launch is paid for. Add Founders Fund’s $20 million and it is still only about six months. Shotwell, looking ahead, saw payroll fail within six to eight weeks (Berger, Liftoff, ch. 11).
Half of $30 million $15.0 million. About 2.8 months. Out in late October.
With Founders Fund’s $20 million $35.0 million. About 6.5 months. Out in mid February.
Musk’s money, half of $30 millionFounders Fund, $20 millionEach line is $100,000. Each stack is one month of payroll, 54 lines.
500 people × $130,000 ÷ 12 = about $5.4 million a month. Explorist’s estimate, not a SpaceX figure.
Eight weeks
The next day, Musk called his senior team together, with the launch crew on Kwajalein on the phone.
The third time was definitely not a charm for SpaceX.
Wired.com: How do you maintain your optimism?
Musk: Do I sound optimistic?
Wired.com: Yeah, you always do.
Musk: Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we’re going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.
Read the whole articleThe press counted the failures. Inside, the team expected blame. Musk gave them a deadline instead: build the last rocket from parts in the factory, and fly it in eight weeks.
“I thought, I’m not even gonna be able to get home. Like, where am I gonna scratch up $1,800 to fly back to the States?” … “Elon said, can scrounge up enough, and you guys have eight weeks to launch the next rocket, whereas we had previously done that in a year.”
“I was frustrated and almost giving up at that time, and he was just the opposite.”
He calls what followed “a Hail Mary with that rocket”.
The meeting was in the Von Braun room, with Kwaj on the line.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 9; Isaacson, Elon Musk, ch. 28The cause
Engineers spent the weekend in the flight data. On Wednesday, SpaceX published what they found.
The problem arose due to the longer thrust decay transient of our new Merlin 1C regeneratively cooled engine, as compared to the prior flight that used our old Merlin 1A ablatively cooled engine.
We were aware of and had allowed for a thrust transient, but did not expect it to last that long. As it turned out, a very small increase in the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation would have been enough to save the mission.
Read the whole summaryThe new Merlin engine kept pushing for about a second after shutdown. In the vacuum of space, that was enough to push the spent stage back into the second. The fix: wait longer before separating.
“We made one change with the rocket engine. We missed one change in a separation timing.”
Steve Davis found it overnight.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 8RatSat
Flight 4 had a rocket. It still needed something to carry.
Malaysia would not risk its satellite on this rocket. Three engineers built a 364-pound aluminum dummy in under a week and named it from their initials.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 9No customer would fly on Flight 4. So the payload was a block of aluminum, built in a week.
The C-17
The rocket for Flight 4 was ready in about a month. To save time, SpaceX hired a US Air Force C-17 to fly it from Los Angeles to Kwajalein.
Expedited delivery — SpaceX purchased a C-17 flight from the USAF to fly the Falcon 1 Flight 4 vehicle from Los Angeles International to the Kwajalein Atoll
Read the updateThe record says only “expedited delivery.” The people on board remember the last rocket crushing itself over the Pacific, and ten minutes to save it with a wrench.
“On the approach, you could see Hawaii and so on, all of a sudden there were strange noises from the plane.”
“You could literally see where the cylinder of the rocket had started to suck in and compress like a beer can.”
“The first person I could see was our structural engineer, Florence Li, and she pointed at the rocket, crying.”
The crew asked:
“Do we need to throw it out of the back of the airplane?” … “We said do not throw it out of the back of the airplane.”
“They came back with the most Fisher Price tools that I’ve ever seen.”
Dunn crawled into the interstage with a wrench and opened a pressure line.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 9On Anne Chinnery’s call:
“It was about 03:00 in the morning, and her voice was trembling. … Is anybody hurt? No. We broke the rocket.”
On the descent into Hickam, the tank caved in “as if some giant were slowly squeezing a beer can.”
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 9“We heard a loud pop. We looked back and saw that the first stage tanks had sunken in. I think we thought for sure we were done.”
“Strip it like a Chevy.”
The rocket reached the island with its first stage dented.
“Don’t even tell me what else is wrong with it. Just keep going.”
The repair estimate was six weeks. The money did not allow six weeks. The team rebuilt the stage on a coral island in about one.
“I actually think it was Chris Thompson. He said, alright. Knock all that off. Strip it like a Chevy.”
The repair estimate was six weeks. Musk went “off the frickin’ deep end.” The team stripped the stage on the island and rebuilt it in about a week, then pressure-tested the dented tank with live propellant.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 9The crash
While the team rebuilt the rocket, the world’s banks began to fail.
Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy on September 15, and the markets seize.
The world outside
On September 15, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the markets froze. The investors SpaceX and Tesla needed stopped writing checks. If more money came, it would come from a customer.
“We had three failures under our belt. So it’s pretty hard to go raise money. The recession is starting to hit. The Tesla financing round that we tried to raise that summer had failed.”
And on Tesla’s investors:
“Try to imagine explaining that you’re investing in an electric car company, and everything you read about the car company sounds like it is shit and doomed and it’s a recession and no one is buying cars.”
“By the fall, overall economic activity in the country slumped as the U.S. gross domestic product fell by nearly 5 percent.” The money U.S. venture funds raised fell from $53.2 billion in 2008 to $22.7 billion in 2009.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 10Kimbal had lost most of his money too.
Isaacson, Elon Musk, ch. 29Musk “fretted about how his company’s desperate finances must look to NASA as his personal wealth dried up amid the recession.”
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 11The static fire
On Omelek, the rebuilt rocket was ready for a static fire: its engine run on the pad, with the rocket held down.
The static fire took place on Saturday [20 Sep 2008, CA time], as expected, and no major issues came up. However, after a detailed analysis of data, we decided to replace a component in the 2nd stage engine LOX supply line. There is a good chance we would be ok flying as is, but we are being extremely cautious.
This adds a few extra days to the schedule, so the updated launch window estimate is now Sept 28th through Oct 1st [CA time].
—Elon—
Read the updateWith almost no money left, they still delayed the launch several days to change one part.
The last hours
The launch window opened on Sunday, September 28.
The night before
Tim Buzza bikes to the island’s point and watches the Southern Cross until he calms down.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 10Launch morning
Musk takes his children to Disneyland and rides Space Mountain.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 10; Vance, Elon Musk, ch. 8; Isaacson, Elon Musk, ch. 30Past midnight at launch time
In her own words:
“My husband was sleeping. I’m in the bathroom with the shower on, typing up a proposal for the 1.6-billion-dollar NASA resupply to the International Space Station.”
In the last hours, three people the outcome hung on were on three continents.
Orbit
A small team ran the launch from a trailer at the back of the Hawthorne factory. The rest of the company watched the webcast outside.
A reconstruction
Drag to look around
Click the trailer to go in
Screens: SpaceX’s Flight 4 webcast, film and photographs. The room is rebuilt from photographs and shown empty so the equipment can be seen.
In the control room at Hawthorne. Dead silence as the count hits T-2:30s
Launch!!!
“We were consistently flying 1.5 degrees to the right of centerline… So flight 4 we offset it preflight and it flew right down the line perfectly.”
Come on second stage. Light up baby.
We’re now orbital. Fuckin’ A.
Shotwell, in Glasgow:
“ran down the hall, knocked on all the doors for my team that was there, and we hugged and kissed and cried.”
A perfect launch. Everyone is jumping off their chairs!!!
From Kimbal Musk on Twitter, as written that afternoon.
Great speech by Elon. The whole company is cheering.
Wow, this is a great day for SpaceX and the culmination of an enormous amount of work by a great team. The data shows we achieved a super precise orbit insertion — middle of the bullseye — and then went on to coast and restart the second stage, which was icing on the cake.
I will have a more complete post launch statement tomorrow, as right now I’m in a bit of a daze and need to go celebrate :)
—Elon—
Read the whole documentWell, that was freaking awesome. We made orbit. … There are a lot of people that thought we couldn’t do it. A lot, actually. But, you know, as the saying goes, fourth time’s the charm, right?
… Definitely this is one of the greatest days of my life, and I think probably for most people here.
Hear it from 32:40Falcon 1 Flight 4 lifted off at 4:15 p.m. California time. Nine and a half minutes later it was the first privately developed liquid-fuel rocket to reach orbit.
The next day
The day after orbit, the House voted down the bailout. The Dow fell 778 points, 7 percent.
The world outside
Relief
Nine days later, with the flight data reviewed, Musk wrote to the mailing list.
A week spent reviewing data has confirmed that the flight went really well, including the coast and restart. The mood here at SpaceX is just ecstatic! This is the culmination of six years of hard work by a very talented team. It is also a great relief for me, who led the overall design of the rocket (not a role I expected to have when starting the company).
Read the whole updateThe company celebrated. Musk remembers relief, not joy. Orbit proved the rocket. It did not pay the payroll.
“That was also with the last bit of money that we had. Thank goodness that happened.”
Musk felt no joy, only that “the patient survived.” The factory had no rockets, and the only customer left was Malaysia.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 11Act two: the sprint
Day 57 to Day 161
Falcon 1 had reached orbit. NASA was about to choose who would carry cargo to the space station.
“Musk was desperate for the full-duration test-firing to occur before NASA reached a decision on contracts.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 1Nine engines
Falcon 9’s first stage had nine Merlin engines where Falcon 1 had one. At the test stand in McGregor, Texas, SpaceX had to show that all nine could fire together for a whole flight.
In Texas, the Falcon 9 first stage fired for the length of a real flight, at night. Twenty miles away, people called 911.
On Saturday night, at about 10:30pm CST, we successfully conducted a full mission duration test firing of the Falcon 9 rocket first stage, lasting 178 seconds (nearly three minutes)! At full power, the rocket generated 855,000 pounds of thrust at sea level.
Read the updateAt 2 a.m. a dry run found one bad line of software that opened every valve on the rocket. The test slipped from morning to night. Then the sound bent back down off a temperature inversion and lit up 911 lines for twenty miles: “One child asked his mother if the Sun had exploded.” It was Shotwell’s birthday.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 1The sprint
SpaceX wanted a whole Falcon 9 standing on its pad at Cape Canaveral, in Florida. In mid-November, its parts were still in California and Texas.
The fairing arrives on a flatbed.
Today, the payload fairing half for our first Falcon 9 arrived at the SpaceX headquarters via a flatbed truck.
Read the updateA voice from the empty pad.
In mid-November, before any hardware arrives, Brian Mosdell, SpaceX’s Florida launch director, walks The Space Show across Complex 40: “This is where the Falcon 9 will roll out, pin into the launch mount and rotate vertical, and then be loaded and launched.” The stages will arrive “in the second week of December,” and be processed “on the hangar slab,” open to the weather. First launch? “June of next year.”
The Space Show, broadcast 1061, November 26, 2008, at 1:05:32 and 1:10:26. Falcon 9 flew in June 2010.
The 87-foot tank is wrapped for the road.
At 87 feet long, the first stage tank will travel by flatbed truck on Thursday to arrive at the Cape in mid-December. In preparation for the trip, we wrapped the F9 1st stage tank with a custom fit tarp to protect it on the road.
Read the updateIn McGregor, all nine engines hang from a crane.
In McGregor, wind stops the crew from setting the engines down, and all nine hang from “the second-largest crane in Texas” through the night.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 2“All of SpaceX was hanging in there from a crane in front of me.”
High winds prevented our team from climbing the vertical test stand (over 100ft tall) to begin the project. However, the winds calmed down on Thursday and we removed both the tank and engine assembly.
Read the updateWelders work 24 hours a day for almost six weeks.
The steel section will be painted on Friday; our team of welders worked 24 hours a day for almost 6 weeks straight to complete the steel section.
Read the updateTwelve trucks leave Hawthorne for Florida.
The last of the assemblies leaves the Hawthorne headquarters on a rainy day in Los Angeles. In total, we have twelve trucks heading to the Cape with the rocket and supporting parts.
Read the updateThe tank reaches the Cape.
The Falcon 9 first stage flight propellant tank arrived Tuesday night at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after its cross-country journey from Los Angeles. The tank measures 87 feet long and 12 feet in diameter — approximately the size of a 737 fuselage.
Read the updateSpaceX posted an update almost every day. Read in order, they show a company building a rocket with nine engines where Falcon 1 had one, while NASA weighed its choice.
President
NASA would announce its choice before Christmas.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) has appointed Gwynne Shotwell president, the company announced Dec. 18.
Read it at satellitetoday.comShotwell ran sales and led the NASA bids. Musk made her president five days before NASA announced its choice.
“When Elon asked me to be President in 2008, I almost didn’t say yes.”
The call
NASA was choosing who would carry cargo to the space station after the Shuttle retired. It announced its choice on December 23.
“I remember waking up the Sunday before Christmas in 2008, and thinking to myself, ‘Man, I never thought I was someone who could ever be capable of a nervous breakdown,’ but I felt, ‘This is the closest I’ve ever come.’” … “NASA called and told us that we’d won a $1.5 billion contract. And I couldn’t even hold the phone, I just blurted out, ‘I love you guys.’”
Kimbal, asked if his brother was broke:
“Oh yeah. In debt. More than broke.”
Bill Gerstenmaier made the call on Monday, December 22.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 11Musk changed his computer password to “ilovenasa.”
Isaacson, Elon Musk, ch. 30In Boulder he cried, and the only Christmas present he could find was a set of see-no-evil monkey trinkets.
Vance, Elon Musk, ch. 8Big news today was SpaceX winning the NASA CRS contract for an initial $1.6 billion, representing 12 flights to the International Space Station starting in 2010. The team here worked extremely hard to make this happen and we couldn’t be more excited about not only our future, but the future of commercial spaceflight in the US and the impact this will have on our long-term efforts towards human space exploration.
Read the updateWASHINGTON — NASA is gambling up to $3.5 billion on two up-and-coming rocket companies in the hopes they can provide the international space station with food and supplies after the space shuttle’s planned retirement in 2010.
Read the whole articleTwelve cargo flights to the space station, $1.6 billion. 143 days after the third failure, NASA bet on SpaceX. The next morning a Florida paper called them rookies.
On the slab
At the Cape, the parts that had crossed the country lay on a concrete slab.
The integration of Falcon 9 continued steadily through the long Christmas holiday, and the images below show just how close Falcon 9 is to being completely integrated. Whether measured by weight or by cost, the majority of the Falcon 9 being assembled is actual flight hardware.
Read the updateThe team at the Cape built the rocket on an open slab, through Christmas.
The team assembled the rocket on a bare slab where a hangar would one day stand. ULA staff stopped at the fence to mock them.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 2On Christmas Eve, Tesla closed the funding that kept it alive.
Berger, Liftoff, ch. 11; Isaacson, Elon Musk, ch. 31Vertical
On Saturday, January 10, the rocket was ready to stand up.
After a very smooth vehicle mating operation yesterday, we began the process of raising Falcon 9 at 12:45pm EST and approximately 30 minutes later, Falcon 9 was vertical at the Cape.
Read the update
“And there it stood, basking in the Florida sunshine, a beastly beauty.” Roger Carlson, the test engineer from the crane night, climbed a lightning tower and texted Musk a picture from the top: “It is pretty damn wild and scary up on top of those candlesticks, but it was one of the greatest days of my life.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 2“The first stage and its nine engines were real enough, but the rocket had almost none of the flight computers and other avionics needed for flight. The second stage was mostly hollow. … about half of the rocket displayed in Florida was fake.” The team called it Capricorn One, after the 1978 film about a faked Mars landing. A guard at the pad said SpaceX should fly one first.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 2Monday, January 12, at the Cape. Buzza, Brian Mosdell and Chris Thompson take questions with the rocket standing nearby. (Berger puts Musk there too; the press quoted only his written statement.) A reporter asks what comes next.
“It has some more paces to go through. This rocket will come down, it will be disassembled, and then pieces will go back to either test sites or Hawthorne, get into final configuration for flight, and then be returned for the first flight sequence.”
Buzza adds: “I certainly don’t hope to give the impression we’re overconfident.” Thompson, beside him: “Every piece of hardware on that vehicle is essentially a flight or qualification article.”
Read it at spaceflightnow.comStephen Clark, Spaceflight Now, January 12, 2009
CAPE CANAVERAL — After only a few days on the launch pad, the first Falcon 9 rocket will leave Launch Complex 40 in pieces.
That’s by design.
Read the whole article“Elon was not happy about that, so he and I agreed that was my last press conference.” Buzza, to Berger.
Berger, Reentry, ch. 2“Every piece of hardware on that vehicle is essentially a flight or qualification article.”
“about half of the rocket … was fake.”
Falcon 9 first flew 17 months later, on June 4, 2010.
“He ordered large floodlights delivered to the site, and the company’s communications director, Roger Gilbertson, spent hours arranging them for dramatic shots after dark. One of the resulting nighttime images captured the beams forming a large X across the rocket.” … “But Musk was all about the show.”
Berger, Reentry, ch. 2161 days after Flight 3 failed, Falcon 9 stood on its pad at Cape Canaveral. Half of it was a mock-up, built to show NASA, and the world, how fast SpaceX could move. The real one flew 17 months later.
“I don’t ever give up. I mean, I’d have to be dead or completely incapacitated.”