Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX By Eric Berger

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Just a great book. Nothing to say. Idéal sur Kindle Five years ago I read Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (by Ashlee Vance) who covered Musk's beginnings from Zip2 (which was bought by Compaq before the merger with HP) then PayPal on to Tesla and SpaceX. I've been a space buff my whole life so found the SpaceX part of this book most intriguing because very little has been previously documented. I just finished Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX and am even blown away by the stories of how Musk kept the program going like the one where Air Force politics drove SpaceX to mover the Falcon 1 launch site from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to an Army base at Kwajalein Atoll. (all space buffs already know that it was the US Army that hosted the efforts of rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun). I am not certain what became of Zip2 after Compaq acquired it but making Musk a millionaire definitely has made the world a interesting place. Elon Musk will go down in history as a modern day Howard Hughes. BUY THIS BOOK! Idéal sur Kindle

Excellent book. The best part is not focusing so much on Elon Musk and the other big guys, but all the little guys, most in their late 20s, who went to the island to make history. Elon twitted that the book is accurate, but not how we would tell this history, and I think thats the best compliment he could give! Idéal sur Kindle LIFTOFF, Elon Musk and the Desperate early days that launched SPACEXEric Berger, 2021The creation and subsequent success of the company SPACEX is one of the most improbable and stunning business success stories of modern times. Elon Musk started the company in 2003 with 100 million dollars of his own money, a couple dozen engineers and a rented warehouse in Hawthorne, Ca and within 18 years turned it into the preeminent worldwide leader in space launch services with over 2/3’s of the global market. This industry was dominated for decades by huge legacy aerospace companies such as Boeing and Lockheed. The history of start up firms that challenged this status quo is a history of a graveyard of failures. How did Elon Musk achieve this remarkable success? That is the subject of this page turning technological thriller by Eric Berger who put this narrative together with the input of all the original engineers and employees including Musk himself.I, myself, spent the first five years of my employment after engineering school, working in this exact same industry so I have increasingly been intrigued by what SpaceX achieved. My experience allows me certain insight, although somewhat dated, but probably partially relevant today, into the obstacles Musk faced. I would say that the launch service business would be without a doubt the most difficult place to embark on a startup company. Firstly, it is technically totally unforgiving in that it requires impeccable quality control. The smallest error in installation or manufacture such as a single mistake in a line of software code, a defective nut holding a fuel line in place, a damaged O ring, can and will lead to a catastrophic failure costing multiple tens of millions of dollars. Secondly the economics of the business are totally unforgiving. Since at launch 90% of a vehicles weight is fuel, the remaining 10% is launch vehicle structure and payload. The launch vehicle must be painstakingly engineered close to failure design specs. An additional pound of redundant structure to increase strength will cost nine pounds of fuel consumed and a subsequent loss of payload capacity. Engines must be designed to absolute, maximum thermodynamic efficiency or lose payload capacity. Thirdly the major money for this industry comes from two semi political, large, and somewhat opaque bureaucracies, NASA, and the Airforce. The industry from its very origins has been dominated by the Legacy Aerospace contractors who over decades have greased the political skids in Washington to deliver pork to Congressional districts and provide benefits and jobs to ex employees of the government bureaucracies. Delivering services at low cost has always been low on these contractor’s priority lists. A start up that would deliver launch services at a dramatically lower cost would upset this status quo and would pose a direct threat not only to the legacy contractors but also many politicians, dependent on their political contributions. Considering all these obstacles, how could Musk, who had no previous experience in aerospace, achieve such an overwhelming dominance in this most bureaucratic and politically tainted industry? That is the story told here.When Musk was queried by the author of the fact that Bezos, with his Blue Origin, space launch company had been working for twenty years to develop a large launch vehicle engine, pumped billions of dollars of his own money into the effort, and still not delivered one or delivered a single pound of payload to orbit, he replied: “Bezos is not great at engineering, to be frank. So the thing is, my ability to tell if someone is a good engineer or not is very good. And I am very good at optimizing the engineering efficiency of a team. I am supergood at engineering, personally. Most of the design decisions are mine, good or bad”. “Boastful? Maybe. But SpaceX built and tested its first rocket engine in less than three years with Musk leading the way”. 20 years later Bezos is still trying. Musk’s secret, I believe, was to hire the best young, hands on, not afraid to get dirty engineers who shared his vision of human spaceflight. He then empowered them. When an engineer told him that a timeline or a design was impossible, Musk would say: “Don’t tell me it’s impossible, tell me what you need to get it done”. I was reminded of a saying someone told me in my early days as an engineer: “To try and Fail is to learn, to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been”’ Musk let his engineers push the boundaries and their own abilities and sometimes inevitably fail so in the end they could succeed. Also, very importantly, he went outside the framework of fat cat aerospace subcontractors and developed his own in house manufacturing capability and in this way could become a low cost competitor to the aerospace giants. Most important, he hates bureaucracy, committees, trying to avoid responsibility, CYA, and fulminating and talking about doing things rather than actually doing them.There is a great narrative plot line to this book. When Musk first started his company, he tried to secure a launch space at Vandenberg Airforce base in California. Frustrated with the Airforce bureaucracy he decided to go around the bureaucracy and moved his first launch operation to a tiny coral atoll in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific. There, his intrepid band of engineers would labor relentlessly for four years to get his first satellite to orbit. A large part of this book covers this period where his employees would labor punishing grueling hours to make his rocket work. After four years and three launch failures, Musk was within weeks of running out of money. He had to launch his remaining fourth rocket to have access to a business saving NASA contract and money to develop a rocket to deliver supplies to the space station. With money running out and immense obstacles to get his fourth launch to orbit, the SpaceX crew 5000 miles out in the Pacific worked around the clock to pull off a successful launch and set the company on its amazing trajectory.54 years ago, I was a young mechanical systems engineer assembling Titan 3C Airforce rockets at launch pad 41, Cape Canaveral Florida. I remember remarking to my fellow workers, one day, that we were building these beautifully engineered multimillion dollars shining pieces of hardware, only to light them off and a couple of minutes later see them crash to the bottom of the ocean. I said that is crazy. Elon Musk said the same thing in 2003 and he did something about it. Now SpaceX launches about 2 Falcon 9 rockets a month from Launch pad 41, the same one where I worked 54 years ago. He not only launches but he retrieves the first stages to be refurbished and used over and over again. By doing so he has reduced the price of satellite launches to ¼ of what Boeing Lockheed was charging before he arrived and thus totally overturned the status quo applecart of the space launch business and breathed new life into the endeavor of human space flight. And I haven’t even mentioned what he has achieved with Tesla! Even if you’re not a techy, read this book, you will be amazed. JACK Idéal sur Kindle A true life story that feels like fiction. Very well written and easy to follow, even tho there are tons of characters and life stories. I think this book made me appreciate the work of the people behind the spotlight at SpaceX. Also great for entrepreneurs, business people and innovators. Idéal sur Kindle A very intersting book on a man who is probably one of the most inventive person on this planet.Elon started from scratch but had one idea : the Space Conquest.to do that: make money, build rockets and Go Idéal sur Kindle Je viens de dévorer ce livre, j'ai dû m'arrêter afin de manger à un moment, mais ce fut difficile de le lâcher même pour quelques minutes. Pour son premier livre, Eric Berger régale le lecteur, l'histoire de SpaceX est belle, c'est sûr que ça aide, mais quel boulot ! C'est Idéal sur Kindle

“A colorful page turner.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times Book Review“As important a book on space as has ever been written.” —Homer Hickam, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Rocket BoysThe dramatic inside story of the historic flights that launched SpaceX—and Elon Musk—from a shaky start up into the world’s leading edge rocket company.SpaceX has enjoyed a miraculous decade. Less than 20 years after its founding, it boasts the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit, has pioneered reusable rockets, and in 2020 became the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. Half a century after the space race it is private companies, led by SpaceX, standing alongside NASA, pushing forward into the cosmos, and laying the foundation for our exploration of other worlds.But before it became one of the most powerful players in the aerospace industry, SpaceX was a fledgling start up, scrambling to develop a single workable rocket before the money ran dry. The engineering challenge was immense; numerous other private companies had failed similar attempts. And even if SpaceX succeeded, they would then have to compete for government contracts with titans such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, who had tens of thousands of employees and tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue. SpaceX had fewer than 200 employees and the relative pittance of $100 million in the bank.In Liftoff, Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, takes readers inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company’s first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. We travel from company headquarters in El Segundo, to the isolated Texas ranchland where they performed engine tests, to Kwajalein, the tiny atoll in the Pacific where SpaceX launched the Falcon 1. Berger has reported on SpaceX for than a decade, enjoying unparalleled journalistic access to the company’s inner workings. Liftoff is the culmination of these efforts, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of space.Filled with never before told stories of SpaceX’s turbulent beginning, Liftoff is a saga of cosmic proportions. Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX