In 2005, three years before its first successful orbital launch, the fledgling space startup SpaceX petitioned the U.S. government for permission to use the famous Cape Canaveral launch pad, once home to the Apollo space program.
Legacy space companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin resisted the idea and lobbied aggressively to block the deal.
Executives at these companies had a negative view of the company and disliked its founder, Elon Musk. “He was arrogant, not submissive,” Eric Berger writes in his new book, “Re-Entry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Ushered in the Second Space Age,” summing up the feeling at the time. “Do we really want this guy in the hallowed grounds of America's largest and oldest spaceport?”
Their efforts failed, and SpaceX gained access to the Cape.
Less than two decades later, Berger writes, “Elon Musk and his rocket company have risen to the top of the spaceflight hierarchy.” The company's flagship rocket, the Falcon rocket, the first commercially reusable rocket and the inspiration for the book's title, is now Carrying more payloads into orbit than Russia, the Chinese government and private competitors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Combined.
NASA relies almost entirely on SpaceX to transport astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), and the company's Starlink satellites are capable of providing internet to nearly everyone around the world. To the battlefields of Ukraine.
The company's Starship rocket is the largest rocket ever flown and could one day carry astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
SpaceX recently Completed the world's first commercial spacewalkAnd, as a bit of poetic justice, when Boeing's troubled Starliner spacecraft ran into technical issues on its journey to the ISS in August this year, SpaceX I got a call to bail them out. And bring the astronauts home safely.
SpaceX blew everyone away. David became Goliath, Berger said.
Berger writes that over the decades, the world has changed its opinion of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who first became an odd curiosity, then a widely respected entrepreneur, and now a deeply controversial figure. Berger says Musk's political views and business ties may eventually bring him into conflict with the U.S. government and force a “reckoning.”
How did this happen?
Re-entry Starting with Berger's first book launch Tracing the course of space exploration all the way up to the first launch of the Falcon 9 rocket, this book reveals a lot about why SpaceX has been so successful.
The first reason is Elon Musk. His creative vision and strong leadership have seen SpaceX through its ups and downs. For example, it was Musk who relentlessly pushed SpaceX to develop reusable rockets, despite industry skeptics and the frustration of his own engineers. It was Musk who announced the Starship program (aka the Mars mission) and decided to launch the Starlink satellite network. at the same time.
Musk also revolutionized the space economy. Previously, space was a “cost-plus” industry, according to Berger, where companies bid on projects and got paid even if the work went way over budget or past deadline. SpaceX changed that model by bringing a startup mentality to the industry. “We were gritty guys,” recalls former SpaceX executive John Koullis.
The second reason for its success is its people. Many of SpaceX's talented engineers and business leaders spent their mornings negotiating with NASA and their afternoons, nights, and weekends solving never-ending technical challenges. One of SpaceX's first employees and senior executive, Gwynne Shotwell, negotiated and won a cargo development contract with NASA in 2006, saving SpaceX financially and setting the company on the path to future success.
And then there was NASA flight director Holly Ridings, who oversaw the first docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule to the ISS in May 2012 and made a courageous decision to risk it all mid-flight that paid off. She later became NASA's first female chief flight director. The list goes on.
As the company continues to achieve pioneering results, it has become a top destination for talented, ambitious rocket engineers who want to build things and are motivated by SpaceX's mission to make humanity an interplanetary species.
A final reason for the company's success was its relationship with NASA. Early on, SpaceX relied on NASA for its first contract, and NASA relied on SpaceX. With the shuttle spacecraft being retired, the incoming Obama administration took a gamble, believing SpaceX could do things better. “I knew very well that not only my own reputation but the success or failure of the Obama Administration's space policy would depend in large part on the outcome of the SpaceX launch,” NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garber said of the first Falcon 9 launch in 2010.
NASA's support didn't end with funding: NASA engineers worked closely with SpaceX from the first Falcon 9 launch, to the first unmanned Dragon capsule, to the Dragon crew that transported astronauts to the ISS. NASA and SpaceX have had a “very fruitful relationship” for decades, Berger said.
The second half of the book is where the company really starts to take off. Sure, there have been setbacks, including two (non-fatal) disasters that grounded the Falcon 9 for over a year, but overall the rate of progress from 2012 to today is impressive. In the past decade, the company has mastered reusable rockets, launched Starlink, built and flown the largest rocket ever, and begun ferrying astronauts to the ISS.
Musk was at the forefront from start to finish, inspiring his team and reminding them of the larger mission: “If we don't come together and take this first step, we're not going to get to Mars in my lifetime, or in your lifetime,” Musk said after another failed re-entry attempt.
While Musk is rightly surrounded by controversy, his sincerity about space cannot be questioned. It is clear that he is driven by a larger purpose. If SpaceX makes a ton of money but doesn't get to Mars, the company has failed in Musk's eyes. He feels there is nothing SpaceX can't accomplish, and maybe that's why the company seems to have the ability to do the impossible.
Berger is a veteran space reporter and senior space editor at technology news site Ars Technica. He has a scientific mind and clearly loves the technical details of rocketry. Readers can learn how SpaceX keeps rocket fuel stable so it doesn't explode on the launch pad, or how they recover a capsule from the ocean without losing the spacecraft overboard.
Learn how adjustable “grid fins” stabilize a spacecraft during re-entry, how a laser guidance system (LIDAR) allows two spacecraft to seamlessly dock as they hurtle through space, how to 3D print a space helmet, and even how to produce rocket fuel on Mars.
Re-entry It's great (pun intended), but it ends with a word of warning: SpaceX hasn't lost the spirit of its founder, Berger writes, but he worries Musk is becoming distracted from his larger mission.
Referring to Musk's Twitter acquisition and recent incendiary political comments, Berger asks, “Elon, what the hell are you doing?” You might be asking the same thing after reading about what Musk accomplished in the two decades before he bought Twitter.
Alex Tapscott, author of Web3: Charting the Internet's Next Economic and Cultural Frontier and Managing Director of Digital Asset Group, a division of NinePoint Partners LP (editor)
