SpaceX Starlink

Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets That Launched a Second Space Age

by Eric Berger  · 23 Sep 2024  · 375pp  · 113,230 words

and lows, the flaws, failures, and world-changing accomplishments.” —Jared Isaacman, commander of the first all-civilian spaceflight “Ever wonder how Elon Musk and SpaceX have managed to single-handedly disrupt the entrenched and all-powerful aerospace industry in record time? Eric Berger takes us inside the meeting rooms, factories

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s historical record.” —Andy Lapsa, cofounder and CEO of Stoke Space Also by Eric Berger Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days that Launched SpaceX REENTRY SPACEX, ELON MUSK, AND THE REUSABLE ROCKETS THAT LAUNCHED A SECOND SPACE AGE ERIC BERGER BenBella Books, Inc. Dallas, TX Reentry copyright © 2024 by

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Sarah Avinger Cover photography by John Kraus Special discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact bulkorders@benbellabooks.com. For the thousands of people at SpaceX who made the magic happen. CONTENTS PROLOGUE | 1 |A VIOLENT BEAST | 2 |LEARNING TO BE SCRAPPY | 3 |FLIGHT ONE: REACHING ORBIT | 4 |FLIGHT TWO:

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Washington, Miller faced eight hours of challenging technical questions in an academic-like setting. Although the engineering questions were difficult, the overall vibe was casual. SpaceX, then located in buildings scattered across El Segundo, California, proved far more chaotic. Tim Buzza, the company’s launch director, was too busy for

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off. Dejectedly, they swung the barge around and headed home. Emergency surgery saves Merlin What happened? That Sunday, as a precautionary step before launch, SpaceX performed a series of video inspections of the rocket’s interior. The engineer responsible for the Merlin engine that powered the second stage, Erik Palitsch

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own needs, senior officials like Cooke were not particularly well-versed in the company’s technology. But Cooke trusted Horkachuck, who reviewed the technical information SpaceX had provided regarding the nozzle surgery. Yes, trimming several inches off the bottom of the nozzle would reduce the Merlin engine’s capability, Horkachuck

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of him with all guns blazing. When a program fell behind, Musk dispatched Juncosa to fix it, and Juncosa frequently steered large programs such as Starlink and Starship through troubled waters. Above almost everything else, Musk values the ability to get difficult shit done in creative ways, and Juncosa does

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propulsion technology. And NASA management had little appetite for the exploding test articles that would necessarily accompany densification development. Neither of these were barriers at SpaceX, which could afford to fail—and indeed publicly celebrated its test failures as evidence of pushing beyond the bleeding edge. By densifying liquid oxygen

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explode, and what the resulting detritus looked like. The results were inconclusive. Ultimately the sniper theory investigation was dropped when the Federal Aviation Administration sent SpaceX a letter saying there was no gunman involved, period. The real breakthrough came in McGregor later that fall, with repeated pressurization tests of a

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. “Elon talked about how the history of large satellite constellations is only full of failures,” Altan said. “I could feel his concern about how Starlink was going.” In 2016 high-speed internet from satellites still seemed like an idea from the future. Receiving data from space was not new. By

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communicating with one another so that a user’s connection is not lost as a satellite passes over the horizon. Musk estimated that SpaceX needed about 12,000 Starlink satellites for global internet coverage. That is a mind-boggling number of satellites. No company, or country, in the world operates more

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than a few hundred satellites. And Starlinks were not particularly small; each was about the size of a kitchen table, with a mass of more than 500 pounds. Developing all of this

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supposed to become the world’s largest satellite operator, by a factor of more than ten? “Elon made it clear that Starlink had to work,” Altan said. “It was going to be the moneymaker for SpaceX, and fund everything we were going to do in the long term.” In other words

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, Starlink was created to compete with Comcast and other internet providers, as well as provide a secure communications backbone in remote parts of

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to build a fleet of rockets and ship one million tons to Mars to make a self-sustaining settlement there. During a meeting with his Starlink team about marketing the service to potential buyers, which I sat in on, Musk put this bluntly. “We should remind our customers that they

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Earth. Those are your two options.” To pay for Mars, then, Musk made a huge bet in the mid-2010s. SpaceX initiated not one but two massive projects, Starship and Starlink, simultaneously. Neither project had any precedent in history. Starship would be bigger and more powerful than NASA’s mighty Saturn V

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rocket and needed to be reusable many times over. Starlink was far larger and more ambitious than any satellite constellation in history. Both projects were likely to fail. “Here’s how Elon thinks about

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that fantastic focus on the final mission. For him, not doing these two things is failure, even if in everyone’s books SpaceX was already a success.” When he spoke in Guadalajara, Musk did not reference Starlink. Instead, on a slide titled, “Funding,” he lightheartedly listed some of the ways that

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SpaceX might pay for its grand Mars expeditions. These sources included stealing underpants, launching satellites, sending cargo and astronauts to the space station, and

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on the government sector side. Ultimately this is going to be a huge public-private partnership.” One reason Musk may not have spoken publicly about Starlink in Mexico was due to the program’s struggles. Following Altan’s departure in 2014, Musk hired a longtime Microsoft engineer named Rajeev Badyal

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. To tap into his network of contacts in Washington, near Microsoft, Badyal convinced Musk to move the Starlink offices to Redmond. It was the first product design office SpaceX opened outside of Hawthorne. Located more than 1,000 miles away and staffed with people from more conservative work environments like Microsoft,

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debris,” he said. “But I was always an outsider.” The situation felt untenable, and Altan left SpaceX a second time in September 2017. A few months later, in early 2018, SpaceX launched its first two prototype Starlink satellites, nicknamed Tintin A and Tintin B. They worked well enough. But that spring, Musk clashed

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with Badyal over the pace of development. The former Microsoft engineer wanted to continue tinkering with the Starlink satellite design and fly more prototypes

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he flew to Washington, firing Badyal and four other leaders of the Starlink program. He installed Juncosa to right the ship and foster SpaceX’s move-fast culture. Less than a year later, SpaceX had its first batch of sixty Starlink satellites on the launch pad. It was a remarkable achievement, both in

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were flying in space thanks to the reusable Falcon 9 rocket. After starting as a rocket company, SpaceX now also claimed the mantle of the world’s largest satellite operator. Starlink accounted for more than two-thirds of all active satellites in orbit. And critically for the Mars vision, the program

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had begun to generate positive cash flow. To reach Mars, SpaceX may not have to steal underpants after all. What

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’s personal brand,” the letter stated. Hundreds of employees signed it, mostly anonymously. Instead of fostering change, however, the letter antagonized senior leaders at SpaceX. Shotwell responded that employees should focus on their jobs. Ultimately nine people were fired, at least in part for their involvement with the open letter

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few hundred million dollars started flowing. How should a modern spaceship land? Over the next four years the competition boiled down to three players: Boeing, SpaceX, and a Colorado-based company building a spaceplane, Sierra Nevada Corporation. Each had its own advantages. Boeing was the blueblood, with decades of spaceflight

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Musk rejected this immediately. At the same time, McAlister kept pushing Gerstenmaier, telling him competition was essential to moving the program forward as Boeing and SpaceX strove against one another to build the safest, most reliable, and most cost-effective system. Eventually, Gerstenmaier agreed. He called the NASA administrator, Charlie

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offered by the flight software. This became a recurring battle between Houston and Hawthorne, with NASA flight operators arguing for more extensive backup capabilities and SpaceX preferring automation. The skirmishes extended to critical functions, such as giving astronauts the ability to manually deploy the parachutes, or ignite SuperDracos during ascent

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, the parachute failure represented no less an existential crisis for Dragon. Initially, the spacecraft’s engineers assumed parachutes would be a relatively straightforward problem. SpaceX had already landed multiple Cargo Dragons. And although Crew Dragon required four parachutes, due to the strain on the vehicle from added components relating to

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this light bulb went off,” she said. There have always been competing priorities at SpaceX. A decade earlier Cargo Dragon competed with the Falcon 9 rocket for resources. Then came the Grasshopper and recovery programs, followed by Starlink and Starship. There were only so many engineers, programmers, and technicians to go

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successful liftoff they embraced. Together, they had worked two rocket failure investigations, and then the Dragon explosion. Like Hurley, Lueders had welcomed the radical transparency SpaceX offered. When there was an issue with the rocket or spacecraft, Koenigsmann or his chief deputy, Bala Ramamurthy, let her know immediately. “Every time

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sheen once again. As this work proceeded, this booster also needed a customer willing to risk a payload. “It wasn’t like we had Starlink missions where we could just go and fly them, and if we had a failure it would be painful, but it wouldn’t be the

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’s a lot to be inspired by here and opportunities for us to catch up and surpass them as they get distracted by BFR and Starlink. -RHS- The “BFR” mentioned is what Starship was then known as. In polite circles, it meant Big Falcon Rocket. Everywhere else, it simply meant

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Big Fucking Rocket, because that’s what it was. Smith believed Musk’s fixation on Starship and Starlink would give Blue Origin time to surpass SpaceX in the launch business. Bezos’s own large rocket, named New Glenn, was due to make its debut in 2020. Smith

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launch any. Its New Glenn rocket should finally fly in 2024. Smith also fundamentally misjudged the commitment Musk and SpaceX made to Starship and Starlink. This backfired badly when, in April 2021, SpaceX won the much-coveted contract to land humans on the Moon as part of NASA’s Artemis Program to return

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certainly will do so by stepping off Starship. Bezos and Smith were incensed and sued NASA for a second chance. As for Starlink, by the end of 2023 it started to turn a profit for SpaceX. Smith, who was finally fired in September 2023, is far from alone. The history of

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two years earlier, lofting the Crew Dragon Demo-1 mission into orbit. That rocket’s latest flight was rather mundane, boosting yet another passel of Starlink satellites into space. However, in doing so, the core set a record, breaking Musk’s goal of ten flights per booster with an eleventh

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behind Starship.) That effort is being led by a familiar face, John Couluris, who led the C2 mission for SpaceX in 2012. I hope he crushes it. Bezos also has a Starlink competitor called Project Kuiper. I have less confidence in that initiative as it is led by Rajeev Badyal, whom Musk

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fired as director of the Starlink program for moving too cautiously. Embarrassingly, in late 2023, Bezos resorted to buying launches on the Falcon 9 to get Kuiper satellites into orbit

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U.S. government stops doing business with his companies. This seems highly unlikely, at least in the near term. The Falcon rockets, Dragon spacecraft, Starlink satellite constellation, and Starship vehicle are essential to major U.S. civil and military initiatives. But decision-makers and political leaders are watching Musk and

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on rockets’ horizontal velocity and Rose on rules and regulations and SES-9 launch and Shotwell and SLC-40 site and spacesuits SpaceX founded by and SpaceX philosophy and Starlink and Starship success of at Tesla on test tripod and Thompson and transporter erector Twitter acquisition by and ULA creation vision of and

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attempts by safety reviews by Saturn V rocket and scrap metal deals spacecraft recovery by space shuttle program of (see also space shuttles) SpaceX’s relationship with and SpaceX’s unorthodox philosophy and supersonic retropropulsion transport of large boosters by National Reconnaissance Office national security satellites Nedelin, Mitrofan Nelson, Bill New

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Bala Reisman, Garrett Relativity Space Rench, Phillip reusable rockets. see also Starship Delta Clipper densification needed for Falcon 9 (see Falcon 9) as goal of SpaceX hydraulic systems for maintenance on NASA’s attempts at recovery of Russia’s view of Richeson, Justin Ridings, Holly Rocketdyne rocket engines. see also specific

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space industry Space Launch Complex Space Launch Complex 4 East Space Launch Complex Space Launch Initiative space policy space shuttles. see also specific shuttles spacesuits SpaceX. see also individual projects and people American-made rockets of budgets and costs at competing priorities at critics of as destination for young engineers

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success of United Launch Alliance rivalry with unorthodox philosophy of work culture of SR-71 “Blackbird,” Stafford, Thomas stage separation system stage telemetry Starhopper Starliner Starlink Starship Star Wars program Stewart, Cory Stoke Space Strategic Defense Initiative Stults, Sam Suffredini, Mike SuperDraco thrusters Taylor, Mike TEA-TEB flow Tenenbaum, Jason

Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War

by Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff  · 8 Jul 2024  · 272pp  · 103,638 words

aerospace was changing. Space launch and satellite operations had once been controlled by NASA and the military, but the success of new players such as SpaceX, Planet Labs, Blue Origin, and others was already disrupting and transforming the fundamentals of the space industry. The government no longer shouldered the cost of

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in the 1960s. By the 2010s, the government was just another customer of commercial launch companies that could get payloads into space cheaper than NASA. SpaceX could even do it for a fraction of the cost of United Launch Alliance, a consortium of Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Every month there seemed

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with a novel technical approach that was on its way to providing capabilities that hadn’t previously existed. This trend has continued, and in 2023, SpaceX launched 80 percent of all mass to space globally. That’s why Winnefeld had assembled the J-39 SWAT team led by Sorensen and Farris

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so many projects forward, but also because other big defense-oriented startups were gaining traction. Palantir, which did big data analytics, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which launched payloads into space, were growing quickly and winning government business. Anduril, a company whose leaders Raj met before they even incorporated and that

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became part of the so-called “PayPal Mafia,” a group of influential figures that included Elon Musk, another South African and the leader of Tesla, SpaceX, and other startups, and Reid Hoffman, who’d go on to found LinkedIn and become a prominent venture capitalist. Thiel used the money he made

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Palantir to provide data mining capabilities to U.S. intelligence services, and created Founders Fund, which invested in Palantir and Anduril. In 2014, Thiel helped SpaceX (founded by his longtime friend Elon Musk) sue the air force for issuing an $11 billion sole-source contract to United Launch Alliance (ULA) for

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to rethink its acquisition process—in part by shaming the DoD and exposing to the public its outdated, oligopolistic methods. “I’ll tell you, what SpaceX had to do to effectively do business with the United States Air Force embarrassed us in public. And no service secretary likes to be embarrassed

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is an AI software program called Lattice that can analyze enormous amounts of data gathered by sensors. Stephens says Anduril benefited from the lawsuits that SpaceX and Palantir had brought. He recalls overhearing someone from the Department of Homeland Security at an In-Q-Tel conference talking about why they were

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going to do business with Anduril: “Anduril was founded by the same people who built Palantir and SpaceX. I don’t want to get tied into a lawsuit for the next ten years. These people have teeth.” Palantir and

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SpaceX needed five years to get to their first $10 million in revenue, “but Anduril did that in twenty-two months,” Stephens recalls. By the end

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too. (The company is now worth $30 billion and generates $2 billion a year in revenue.) Further momentum comes from the fact that by 2023 SpaceX was valued at $137 billion. “There’s more appetite now than at any time in the past two decades,” Stephens says. “When VCs can see

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appeals protesting getting involved with weapons kind of go away. The successful new defense tech companies today are standing on the shoulders of Palantir and SpaceX.” Stephens has no patience for people in Silicon Valley who insist commercial tech companies like Google and Microsoft shouldn’t work for the DoD. “There

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. If you look just at “unicorns,” companies with valuations above $1 billion, 55 percent were founded or cofounded by immigrants. Google, eBay, Stripe, Uber, Yahoo, SpaceX, Zoom, Nvidia—the list goes on. Why are we making it more difficult for the founders of the next batch of unicorns to come live

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outgunned. But their tech-savvy military had obtained an advantage by anticipating Russian moves and devising workarounds. When Russians jammed Ukrainian radios, Ukrainians switched to SpaceX Starlink Internet terminals provided by Elon Musk and Android phones to keep orders flowing from the Defense Ministry. On WhatsApp and Signal, citizens reported Russian troop

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. Ukraine’s Soviet-era surveillance drones, modified with explosives, shredded strategic bombers deep in Russia’s territory. Spotter teams in pickup trucks streaming video via Starlink racked up kills by the hour. Turkish Bayraktar TB2 rear-propeller drones slammed missiles into Russian convoys. “Welcome to hell,” the TB2’s forty-two

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drones to help aim artillery; DIU maintained a list of drone-makers that could supply them. Ukrainians were relying on noisy generators to power their Starlink terminals—the noise betraying their positions. DIU had a portfolio of energy companies that made long-duration batteries. Even in a time of crisis, the

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help use his connections in Silicon Valley to get technology to the front. He began visiting front-line units and asking what they needed. Generators, Starlinks, and small drones, they told him. His key insight came when he learned the difference between “corrected” and “uncorrected” artillery fire. The latter often takes

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, your location will come up somewhere in the Indian Ocean.” The Russians also rolled out a secretive new electronic warfare system, Tobol, to attack SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network. Tobol was originally devised as a defensive weapon to protect Russian satellites, but now the Russians were deploying it as an offensive weapon

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that Russia lacks. Chinese analysts are readying for what might be the next battle, with military rocket scientists noting that “faced with the threat of Starlink, we must develop and build our own low-orbiting satellites.” “Not a moment can be spared in developing ‘soft-kill’ and ‘hard kill’ measures,” one

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available U.S. gear connected to more specialized Chinese sensors. Across every military domain, commercial technology continued to change the game. SpaceX had by now launched forty-five hundred Starlink satellites—more than half of all satellites in orbit. Some thirty-seven thousand more were on the way. Elon Musk now had

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more control over satellite communications than the world’s superpowers. In one instance he refused to extend Starlink’s capabilities to Ukrainian military units aspiring to attack Russian warships in the Crimean Peninsula with unmanned explosive sea drones. The war in Ukraine now

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even though his other business interests, especially Tesla, involved China? The geopolitical complexity was deepening, with the U.S. government behind. To catch up with SpaceX, China was racing to build out its “Guo Wang” constellation of thirteen thousand satellites. Interstellar, Christopher Nolan’s 2014 space thriller, was set in 2067

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in the middle of the night in the front seat of a Volkswagen sedan whose driver had spent the early months of the war ferrying Starlink Internet terminals to the front. We had been invited by the Ukrainian General Staff and Andrey Liscovich, CEO of the Ukraine Defense Fund. Except for

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. no service secretary likes to be embarrassed: See Eric Lofgren, “Is it an embarrassment how the US Air Force treated SpaceX?,” January 30, 2020, https://acquisitiontalk.com/2020/01/did-spacexs-experience-doing-business-with-the-us-air-force-embarrass-the-service/, and “A Conversation with General John Hyten, Vice Chairman of

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19, 2023, https://static.rusi.org/403-SR-Russian-Tactics-web-final.pdf. Tobol works by blending: Alex Horton, “Russia Tests Secretive Weapon to Target Spacex’s Starlink in Ukraine,” Washington Post, April 18, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/18/discord-leaks

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-starlink-ukraine/. “the war answers a central question”: Eric Schmidt, “Trip Report from Ukraine,” Special Competitive Studies Project, September 2022, https://scsp222.substack.com/p/the-

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capabilities: Victoria Kim, “Elon Musk Acknowledges Withholding Satellite Service to Thwart Ukrainian Attack: The Starlink satellite internet service, which is operated by Mr. Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, has been a digital lifeline for soldiers and civilians in Ukraine,” New York Times, September 8, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08

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/world/europe/elon-musk-starlink-ukraine.html. Would Elon decide to sell his services to Taiwan

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Wang” satellites, 225 HawkEye 360, 181, 189, 202, 232 KH-1 Corona, 77 optical-based, limitations, 83 Planet Labs, 202 reconnaissance, 77, 79, 80, 83 Starlink, 201, 204, 224–25 Scale AI, 169, 239 Donovan platform, 239 Schadlow, Nadia, 139–40, 141 Schmidt, Eric, xi, 46, 47, 118, 130, 134, 220

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Base, 90 Seoul threatened by North Korea, 89–92, 98 space technology, 36, 79–80, 100 See also satellites; SpaceX SpaceX, 79, 80, 101, 123, 127, 195 lawsuit against the Air Force, 123, 127 Starlink, 201, 204, 211, 224–25, 231 Stackley, Sean, 189 Stanford University Hacking for Defense course, 84, 85, 151

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, 114, 190, 199–218, 223, 230–37 Shah visits, 232–34 Silicon Valley and, 190, 202–3, 206, 207 sinking of the cruiser Moskva, 114 Starlink, 201, 204, 206, 211, 231 techno-guerrillas, 205–8, 223, 231, 233 technological infrastructure of, 207–8 “Uber for Artillery,” 207 U.S. funding, 203

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innovation and, 242 Kessel Run team, with Northrop Grumman, 67–70, 102, 132 Office of Operational Energy, 58 reconnaissance satellites, 77 resistance to change, 60 SpaceX’s lawsuit against, 123 Special Operations Command, 183 stereotype of pilots, 65 talent swap with Apple, 179 See also CAOC U.S. Army Army Futures

The Case for Space: How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up a Future of Limitless Possibility

by Robert Zubrin  · 30 Apr 2019  · 452pp  · 126,310 words

several human generations since Apollo, yet nation-states have retreated from their once-bold path beyond our planet. With the amazing private efforts such as SpaceX now bearing fruit, a revolution is upon us such that space exploration is becoming the domain of private companies and citizens. Zubrin paints the

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Zubrin, without whose patience, love, and constant support this book never could have been written. Great things are happening. On February 6, 2018, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket took flight, demonstrating a capacity to lift sixty tons to low Earth orbit and playfully sending a Tesla Roadster on a trajectory

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three-quarters reusable. This is a revolution. The moon is now within reach. Mars is now within reach. And it's just the beginning. SpaceX is developing the means to allow refueling the booster second stage after it reaches orbit. Once this technology is in hand, the Falcon's interplanetary

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payload will triple, giving it a capability greater than that of the mighty Saturn V rockets that sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s. SpaceX's fully reusable 150-ton-to-orbit Starship launcher, now under development, will multiply that capability nearly three times over again. With such a

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the Falcon Heavy—competing to take their share of a market that will soon explode in size. They will soon have plenty of company. SpaceX has shown that it is possible for lean, hard-driving entrepreneurial ventures to do—better—what it previously was thought only the governments of major

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how. Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. —Victor Hugo December 21, 2015. The flight controllers are glued to their consoles. The SpaceX Falcon 9 took off minutes ago, and its upper stage is well on its way to deliver its payload of eleven ORBCOMM satellites to orbit

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line, is quite large, cutting costs to less than a third of the conventional system. This is where the Falcon 9 is right now. SpaceX could advance this technology by making the Falcon 9 upper stage reusable, but since this stage is small, only a modest additional reduction in launch

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rents, dominate. What to do? One approach is to go to a larger launch vehicle, such as the fully reusable heavy-lift Starship launcher that SpaceX has under development. By simply increasing the payload, a lower cost per kilogram can be achieved. Indeed, the Falcon Heavy, with sixty-ton-to-

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kg price to orbit today. But the largest potential gains lie in increasing the flight rate. With around thirty launches per year, a company like SpaceX spending something like $1.2 billion yearly would need to charge at least $40 million per launch to balance its books. But if it

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Mars Society convention in Pasadena in 2012. Image courtesy of the Mars Society. But Musk was different. He didn't just put some money into SpaceX. He devoted his mind, his heart, and his full business talent. When I first met Musk in 2001, he had a good scientific background

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was good for one more try. However, when the third launch failed too, Musk was tough enough to press on regardless, and in 2008, SpaceX finally reached orbit with the successful flight of its little Falcon 1—the first orbital launch vehicle ever developed by private money.4 In 2010

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. Fortunately, he's not going to have that option for long. Where Musk has gone, others are already following. The most important of the SpaceX emulators is the Blue Origin company, founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Once again, we see the power of the space idea. I had no

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of a company planning to offer suborbital five-minute zero-gravity rides to space tourists, which would not have made it a serious competitor to SpaceX or the aerospace majors. But in September 2016, Blue Origin announced its plan to create the New Glenn, a reusable two-stage Earth-to

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the 1960s, it can punch out launches at somewhat lower costs—if significantly lower reliability—than the American aerospace majors. But Russia has nothing like SpaceX—yet. I am aware of groups over there who would like to start such an enterprise. It's possible they could pull it off.

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not, they may have to reform.9 Figure 1.3. Space launch systems. The key reusable commercial competitors for the near term are the SpaceX Falcons and the Blue Origin New Glenn series. The United Launch Alliance's veteran Atlas and Delta series are being priced out of the market

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Launch, Firefly, and Rocket Lab. Vector Launch was founded by Jim Cantrell, the crack engineer I hooked up with Elon Musk to help him launch SpaceX. After getting that venture underway, Cantrell and his friend Jim Garvey split off to start their own outfit, focusing on the microsatellite market, which

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2003. We found it to be highly attractive, as it delivered a significantly higher exhaust velocity than the time-honored LOX/kerosene rockets used by SpaceX and Lockheed Martin (3.7 kilometers per second, compared to 3.4), and was easier to start and restart as well. Our test engines

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$70 million in investment. First launch is expected in 2020. Firefly was founded by Tom Markusic, a veteran of NASA, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and SpaceX. Designed to deliver one thousand kilograms to orbit, Firefly Alpha is a two-stage booster combining traditional LOX/kerosene propulsion with innovative carbon structure technology

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and others, are at least that much again, the total gross annual bill for running the company must exceed $1.2 billion. Now, during 2018, SpaceX performed twenty-one launches. This was an incredible feat because not only were they successful every time, but the number of launches constituted 20 percent

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stage based at the destination. This is precisely the sort of system that is now emerging from the two-stage reusable booster development programs of SpaceX and Blue Origin. The reason a two-stage system is necessary is a result of the basic equations of rocketry. To obtain global reach,

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are all assumed to have a ground liftoff mass of 2,500 tons, roughly the takeoff mass of the Saturn V, space shuttle, or SpaceX's Starship booster system design, and employ methane/oxygen rockets for propulsion.1 (Methane/oxygen is the best propellant combination for rocket planes because it

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V/C required of each being less than an easy-to-do 1.4. This is why the two-stage reusable vehicles being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin are the right designs for both orbital delivery and fast intercontinental travel. More broadly, if you want any rocket vehicle to achieve

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600 satellites, orbiting at 1,557 kilometers altitude.8 Not to be outdone, in May 2017, Elon Musk announced that his SpaceX company would be fielding its own constellation, named Starlink, consisting of 4,425 small satellites orbiting at 1,200 kilometers, operating in eighty-three orbital planes. In turn, these craft

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sending forty tons to lunar orbit or trans-Mars injection is beyond the current capability of the Falcon Heavy or any other existing launch vehicle. SpaceX is working on creating such power, which can be obtained by refueling the Falcon Heavy second stage on orbit or by building a bigger booster

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has continued to creep forward and now is approaching ignition is little short of remarkable. But now, in large part as a result of SpaceX's demonstration that it is possible for a hard-driving entrepreneurial organization to achieve things that previously it was believed only the governments of major

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However, Musk's plan assembled some of those good ideas in an extremely suboptimal way, making the proposed system impractical. As described by Musk, the SpaceX ITS would consist of a very large two-stage fully reusable launch system, powered by methane/oxygen chemical bipropellant. The suborbital first stage would have

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locally produced methane/oxygen propellant, and solved the problem of landing large payloads on Mars by employing the same breakthrough supersonic retro-propulsion technique that SpaceX has demonstrated on its Falcon rockets. On the weak side, the system was way too big, and flying such a giant rocket all the

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TLI) orbit (i.e., just short of Earth escape, which would allow it to be used again the next week). Well, it would appear that SpaceX took my critique to heart, because the next year, when Musk presented his plan again at the IAC conference in Adelaide, Australia, he had scaled

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. That's great. I hope you take it further and make it an operational system. This would offer many advantages. 1. It would give SpaceX a fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle, the first in history, which could be a very profitable workhorse for the company. 2. It would provide

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with a Dragon, a Spartan two-person human mission to a near-Earth asteroid in interplanetary space could be readily accomplished. However, once the SpaceX Starship is available, it could be used to fly a crew of twenty or more to a near-Earth asteroid in style. The mission would

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community to become cynical. “Fusion is the energy of the future, and always will be” became a common quip. But then a breakthrough happened. SpaceX demonstrated that it is possible for a well-run, lean, and creative entrepreneurial organization to achieve things—and do so much more quickly—that were

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ark uses its two-hundred-gram, 0.2-square-meter heat shield (for a ballistic coefficient of 2.5 kg/m2. For comparison, the SpaceX Dragon has a ballistic coefficient of 400 kg/m2.). to safely enter the atmosphere and land its three-hundred-gram payload section on the ground

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bear fruit. A PROGRAM FOR ACTION In the beginning, there was the word. There are those who think that because the entrepreneurial space companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are moving ahead so nicely, we no longer need NASA or other government-led efforts. They could not be more mistaken.

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. Mars Direct surface base. Habitation module is at left, energy recovery ventilator at right. Image courtesy of Robert Murray, Mars Society. Plate 6. Once SpaceX implements its plans to refuel upper stages on orbit, the nowoperational Falcon Heavy will have greater trans-Mars throw capability than a Saturn V rocket

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be raised on Mars, the first true colonists of a new branch of human civilization. Image courtesy of Robert Murray, Mars Society. Plate 9. SpaceX illustration of its proposed 2023 artists’ cruise around the moon. Provided the musicians are up to it, voyages to near-Earth asteroids could be next

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. Image courtesy of SpaceX. Plate 10. Jupiter's moon Europa is an ocean world entirely covered by sea ice. The subsurface ocean is kept liquid by heating due to

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bar.” bipropellant: A rocket propellant combination including both a fuel and oxidizer. Examples include methane/oxygen, hydrogen/oxygen, kerosene/hydrogen peroxide, and so on. BFR: SpaceX's concept for a reusable two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle with a payload capacity of about 150 tons to low Earth orbit. The “Big

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payload that sits on top of a launch vehicle. Falcon: The Falcons are a line of partially reusable launch vehicles developed and operated by the SpaceX company. The Falcon 9 can lift twenty-three tons to low Earth orbit. The Falcon Heavy can lift sixty-two tons to low Earth

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: Single-stage-to-orbit. Starship: A fully reusable two-stage-to-orbit launch vehicle with a payload capacity of 150 tons being developed by the SpaceX company. Formerly known as the BFR. telerobotic operation: Remote control of some device, such as a small Mars rover equipped with video cameras, by

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at 25 RPM,” Space Daily, October 15, 2001, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-base-01f.html (accessed October 12, 2018). 4. Aaron Rowe, “SpaceX Did It: Falcon 1 Made It to Space, “Wired, September 28, 2008, https://www.wired.com/2008/09/space-x-did-it/ (accessed October 14

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a14539476/the-race-for-space-based-internet-is-on/ (accessed October 14, 2018). 9. Patrick Daniels, “SpaceX Starlink: Here's Everything You Need to Know,” Digital Trends, August 5, 2018, https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/spacex-starlink-elon-musk-news/ (accessed October 14, 2018). 10. Committee on Achieving Science Goals with CubeSats, Achieving

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rockets), 36 Ariane V (heavy-lift rocket), 107 Arrhenius, Svante, 255 artificial gravity. See gravity artificial greenhouse gases. See terraforming artist cruise around moon (2023 SpaceX plan), plate 9 Artsutanov, Y. N., 93, 94, 95 ASAT (antisatellite systems), 63–64 Ash, Robert, 147 asteroids, 125–50 claiming of, 138–40

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, 265–69, 268 vision of extraterrestrials in the year 3000, 323–24 See also intelligence, search for; life, search for fairing, 340 Falcon (rocket) (SpaceX), 340 comparison of space launch systems, 36 Falcon Heavy, plate 1, plate 3, 27–28, 33, 35 as a heavy-lift booster, 11–12, 107

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329, 330 ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) (Tokamak complex), 83–84, 175, 176, 176, 177, 178 Itokawa (asteroid), 130 ITS. See Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) (SpaceX) Janhunen, Pekka, 204 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 197 Jarboe, Tom, 180 Jefferson, Thomas, 125, 128 Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), 99, 129, 130, 147, 153, 332

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also Apollo program [NASA]) as a refueling point for other destinations, 91–93 SDIO sending space probe to, 13 solar system energy resources of, 159 SpaceX planned 2023 artists’ cruise around, plate 9 water on, 13, 55, 69, 70, 73, 75–76, 79, 79, 81, 91–92, 145–46 Mount

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system to reduce costs, 39–45 lower costs allowing for orbital industries, 49–50 See also commercial benefits of spaceflight Elon Musk and development of SpaceX, 30–37 impact of cost-plus contracts, 22–24, 330–31 need for reusable spacecraft, 21–23 rise of microlaunchers, 37–38 skyhook as

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2023 artists’ cruise around, plate 9 sending Tesla Roadster past Mars, 11 size of, 39–40 Starlink satellites, 53 and two-stage systems, 41, 45 See also Falcon (rocket) (SpaceX); Musk, Elon SPARC (Smallest Possible Affordable Robust Compact) fusion reactor, 177 specific impulse (Isp), 45, 143, 160–61, 163, 193–94,

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60 Sridhar, K. R., 147 SR-71 (Boeing), 277 ST (spherical tokamak), 175–76, 176, 180 Stapledon, Olaf, 238 Starlink (SpaceX), 53 Star Maker (Stapeldon), 238 stars, travel to. See interstellar travel Starship (rocket) (SpaceX), 11, 12, 27–28, 28, 41, 77, 112, 134–35, 344 originally known as BFR, 110, 334, 344

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reducing launch costs of, 27 See also Interplanetary Transport System (ITS) (SpaceX) Star Trek (television series), 323 Steins (asteroid), 130 stellarators, 84 STEM graduates in US (1960–1990), 285–86, 285 Stoker, Carol, 333 Strategic Defense Initiative

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reactor propulsion, 143 of fusion reactor propulsion, 160, 161, 168, 179 use of high thrust FRC rockets to depart Jupiter, 179 of Interplanetary Transport System (SpaceX), 108 and magnetic sails, 202, 203, 204 and Noah's Ark Eggs (seed spaceships), 210 and Nuclear Electric Propulsion systems, 343 and nuclear thermal

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

by Eric Berger  · 2 Mar 2021  · 304pp  · 89,879 words

5. Selling Rockets 6. Flight Two 7. Texas 8. Flight Three 9. Eight Weeks 10. Flight Four 11. Always Go to Eleven Epilogue Acknowledgments Key SpaceX Employees from 2002 to 2008 Timeline Bulent Altan’s Turkish Goulash Index Photo Section About the Author Copyright About the Publisher Prologue September 14, 2019

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Segundo, and it allowed them to capture basic flaws with early prototypes, fix their designs, and build successively more “finished” iterations. An independent company like SpaceX can afford the latter approach, said planetary scientist Phil Metzger. He cofounded the Swamp Works project at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in 2012 to

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Atlas rocket flights. By the early 2000s, boosters only infrequently launched from the “East” pad, while the smaller “West” site had fallen entirely into disuse. SpaceX could use the western pad, where the launch facilities were mostly demolished. Only a small concrete building and a flame duct, which channels heat and

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rocket. And then they were ready. In the spring of 2005, the company trucked its first complete rocket to Vandenberg. From the beginning, Musk understood SpaceX could not become a sustainable, profitable business from government launch contracts alone. Although the prospect of a low-cost, launch-on-demand rocket appealed to

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Mango said. A month or so later, discussions continued during meetings at the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in northern Alabama. Musk and a few other SpaceXers flew into Huntsville, and Mango reciprocated the dinner invitation. Huntsville could not match the sophistication of Southern California’s restaurant scene, but it did have

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rocket fuel to combust rapidly and burn vigorously. Only after they had dumped the liquid oxygen, or LOX as it is commonly called, could the SpaceXers approach the rocket. Then, having addressed the problem that had tripped the flight computer, they would begin anew the cumbersome process of transferring liquid oxygen

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that day, conferencing with engineers back in California, plotting logistics, or working with Army officials to secure the necessary permissions to launch a rocket. Some SpaceXers, like Chinnery, essentially moved to the atoll and spent almost the entire second half of 2005 on Kwajalein and Omelek. Others, like Koenigsmann, with his

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dithering about stuff. If they knew they needed to ship stuff, they just shipped stuff.” When possible during the development of their Omelek launch site, SpaceX took the quick-and-dirty approach, sacrificing polish and sophistication for expediency. For example, the engineers decided they did not need a fancy “transporter” to

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the island back to Kwaj, Thompson knew the Falcon 1 would not be launching that year. Despite these early setbacks, Koenigsmann had grown increasingly convinced SpaceX had taken the right approach to building a rocket. His experience at Microcosm in the 1990s provided a counterexample of how companies with less money

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program sputtered. Koenigsmann thought he might have found a solution for this problem after he first met Musk in early 2002, before the creation of SpaceX. An investment from the multimillionaire might invigorate Microcosm’s rocket program. Eager to introduce Musk to Wertz, Koenigsmann arranged a meeting to discuss Scorpius and

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million dollars each for design studies. While some awards went to established companies such as Lockheed Martin, the majority were given to smaller firms like SpaceX. Ultimately, SpaceX and AirLaunch, which aimed to drop its rocket from a C-17 aircraft, emerged as finalists. AirLaunch never reached space. D.A.R.P

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in spaceflight. “Before this there were a handful of companies serving the government and commercial launch needs, and it was more of a cartel situation.” SpaceX changed expectations with its low prices and transparency. Shotwell signed her first launch contract in 2003, to orbit a small experimental satellite named TacSat for

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that his work, at times, did not meet the exacting standards needed for successful rocket flight.” Musk also expressed goodwill toward Thomas, who remained with SpaceX for about a decade afterward. “I was at his retirement party and expressed my appreciation for his contributions in the strongest possible terms,” Musk said

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take the time needed, as nearly a full year passed between the first and second flights of the rocket. Gradually, throughout the rest of 2006, SpaceX began adopting more traditional aerospace practices. During a conventional rocket assembly process, someone meticulously records the serial number of every component or part added during

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decades of Boeing aerospace heritage, Maser did indeed bring gravitas, and he helped institute some of the inventory control and quality inspection measures that spurred SpaceX’s maturation between its first and second flights. But some employees, such as Koenigsmann, interpreted Maser’s attitude as arrogance. To them, the new

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boss acted like he knew more about rockets than anyone at SpaceX. Koenigsmann had reasons for his frustrations. Maser was hard on the avionics chief, imposing rigorous qualification tests for the Falcon 1 computers that exceeded real

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of the risks, including slosh. Addressing all the problems would involve months more of study, and potentially add significant weight to the rocket. And at SpaceX, the more direct solution was to simply fly the rocket, an acid test with more conclusive results than months of analysis, assumptions, and simulations. They

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holiday, with much work left to do, Buzza knew all hope of a January launch was slipping away. Among the many challenges confronting the SpaceX engineers was getting the rocket to communicate with the ground support equipment. A couple of days after Christmas, Buzza and Koenigsmann were discussing an issue

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the engineers would perform the prelaunch static fire test. All of this testing required copious amounts of LOX. To supply liquid oxygen to the rocket, SpaceX ordered five-thousand-gallon containers shipped from the mainland. During the monthlong transit across mostly tropical waters, about one third of each super-chilled tank

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early 1990s, in an effort to become more efficient and businesslike, NASA adopted a “Faster, Better, Cheaper” approach to space science missions. By the time SpaceX was founded, however, several high-profile NASA missions had employed this philosophy and failed. For any aerospace project, the joke became that you could never

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few employees set about pouring concrete, building a horizontal stand for initial Merlin engine tests, and restoring the blockhouse for workspace and test monitoring. The SpaceX team also began to understand the place, which in many ways remained wild, Texas ranch land. Early on Musk brought his father, Errol, for

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but Secret Service agents remained resident at the ranch throughout his presidency. The agents asked a lot of pointed questions, and were not happy. Although SpaceX could not reorient the test stands, the company did gradually begin to get better about warning the surrounding community about future tests. Mueller’s team

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intricate cooling system for the Merlin engine chamber and nozzle. In some of their earliest discussions, Mueller convinced Musk that ablative engine chambers would get SpaceX to orbit faster. And the ablative design cost about half as much as a regeneratively cooled engine, he told Musk. “He said the ablative

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Mueller dispatched Hollman to the ablative chamber vendor, AAE Aerospace in Huntington Beach, to oversee their production. They could not keep up with demand as SpaceX began to test its engines for longer-duration firings. The chambers cost about $30,000, and after taking delivery the propulsion team would perform a

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at a different new space company that summer, Blue Origin, after graduating from Duke University. Although Bezos’s space company was far more secretive than SpaceX, it shared the same basic philosophy—disrupting the aerospace industry by radically reducing the cost of getting people and stuff into orbit. Following a series

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in orbit. NASA had two tiny satellites, one CubeSat to study the deployment of solar sails, and another to study yeast growth in space. Finally, SpaceX had its first truly commercial payload, the “Explorers” mission from Celestis, which sends cremated remains into space. On this flight the company gathered the remains

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The impact threw Dunn over the cart’s steering wheel, but he walked away from the accident. The employees on the boat laughed uproariously. Some SpaceXers who stayed overnight fished the coral reefs surrounding Omelek, though they released anything they caught. Small organisms that grow on tropical coral reefs produce ciguatoxin

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struggling band of a few dozen employees. Increasingly it resembled a bona fide rocket company. The large contract awarded by NASA in August 2006 allowed SpaceX, then spread across four buildings in El Segundo, to consolidate operations into a distinctive white factory in nearby Hawthorne. Its new address was 1 Rocket

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climbing toward a cruising altitude above thirty thousand feet. Inside, the cargo compartment took on something of a party atmosphere. Wearing jeans and jackets, the SpaceXers relaxed and soaked up the moment. Steve Cameron, a propulsion technician, broke out an acoustic guitar. They were having the time of their lives. No

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CRS. Through this contract, the space agency asked for help keeping astronauts on board the International Space Station fed and clothed. The contract would pay SpaceX to build Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon spacecraft to fly food, water, supplies, and science experiments to the International Space Station. This was the one

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the station. The backup plan moved to the front burner. As a result, NASA accelerated the process of awarding contracts for actual supply missions. Although SpaceX, with Dragon, and Orbital Sciences, with its Cygnus vehicle, won COTS development contracts, NASA had no requirement to pick them for the operational phase of

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now, the four-hundred-pound Earth-observing spacecraft would get its ride to space. The launch on the afternoon of July 14 proceeded without incident. SpaceX hired Roger Carlson, a physicist from Northrop Grumman who had worked on the James Webb Space Telescope, to direct launch operations from Kwajalein. Following the

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years, the company had scrabbled to make ends meet, struggling to put rockets into orbit, and nearly dying on several occasions. For Elon Musk and SpaceX’s rapidly growing workforce that night, those failures were behind them. Overhead, their rocket soared among the stars. Below, waves dashed against the pier.

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conclusion. When he spoke with engineering peers at places like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the University of Southern California, he heard similar things. SpaceX had juice with their students, too: the freedom to innovate and resources to go fast summoned the best engineers in the land. Competitors began to

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the stability of the first stage during this turbulent period, when its rocket engine would ignite and fire directly into an atmosphere rushing toward it. SpaceX began testing this technology, called supersonic retropropulsion, as far back as September 2013. Finally, the reentry team had to come up with a mechanism

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2016 for two more years. With his programming skills, Altan served as a senior engineer on the company’s new Starlink project. This is SpaceX’s ambitious plan to put thousands of small satellites into low-Earth orbit, and provide global internet service. To make this work, the satellites must

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entice Firefly to launch from Vandenberg, Air Force officials have eagerly helped, and proactively found solutions to problems. “There is just no question that without SpaceX it would not have happened,” she said. “They convinced everybody else that commercial space is a real thing. And when they did that, the Department

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developing arguably the world’s best rocket in terms of price and performance, Musk pushed for rapid reuse, and then the Falcon Heavy, and a Starlink internet constellation as well as the Starship and Super Heavy Launch System. This incredible pressure wore down his employees, but for someone like Musk who

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with me at length about their experiences. Elon himself made plenty of time, generously inviting me to sit in on his technical meetings for Starship, Starlink, Raptor, and other projects at the company’s factory in Hawthorne. This helped me understand his leadership style. He also opened the doors to his

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OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT David Giger, Flight One mission manager BOB REAGAN, VICE PRESIDENT OF MACHINING OPERATIONS BRANDEN SPIKES, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER Timeline 2002 MAY 6 SpaceX founded by Elon Musk OCTOBER 31 First gas generator full-duration test-firing (Mojave, California) 2003 MARCH 11 First Merlin engine thrust chamber firing (McGregor

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, Texas) MAY 31 SpaceX employees visit Kwajalein for the first time JULY 2 First Merlin engine turbopump test (Mojave) DECEMBER 4 Falcon 1 displayed outside National Air and Space

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fire attempt from Kwajalein (Omelek Island) DECEMBER 20 First Falcon 1 launch attempt (Omelek Island) 2006 MARCH 24 Falcon 1, Flight One (Omelek) AUGUST 18 SpaceX wins COTS award from NASA 2007 MARCH 21 Falcon 1, Flight Two (Omelek) 2008 AUGUST 3 Falcon 1, Flight Three (Omelek) SEPTEMBER 3 C-17

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Falcon 1 first stage departs Los Angeles SEPTEMBER 28 Falcon 1, Flight Four (Omelek) NOVEMBER 22 Falcon 9 full-duration test-firing (McGregor) DECEMBER 22 SpaceX wins CRS award from NASA 2009 JULY 14 Fifth and final flight of Falcon 1 (Omelek) 2010 JUNE 4 Falcon 9 first launch (Cape Canaveral

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–95 International Science and Engineering Fair (1978), 30 International Space and Development Conference (1989), 63 International Space Station, 203, 217 Kistler contract, 109, 110, 114 SpaceX and Dragon, 217, 219–20, 221, 230 Iowa State University, 40 Iraq war, 145, 185 Iterative design, 24, 104 Jabwi (Marshallese native), 133 James

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Space Shuttle Atlantis, 90 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, 65, 101 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, 90, 107 Space Shuttle Discovery, 70–71, 102 SpaceX Dragon. See Dragon SpaceX Kestrel. See Kestrel engine SpaceX Merlin. See Merlin engine Spikes, Branden, 262 Spincraft, 19, 151 Stanford University, 21, 129, 152, 155, 160 Starhopper, 1–2,

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whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Cover design by Owen Corrigan Cover photograph © SpaceX Photos from Shutterstock by Dima Zel and ixpert FIRST EDITION Digital Edition MARCH 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-297999-5 Version 12212020 Print ISBN: 978

The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration

by Donald Goldsmith and Martin Rees  · 18 Apr 2022  · 192pp  · 63,813 words

improvements in modern rocketry, both technological and economic, have come more from private projects than from governmental efforts, and in particular from Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation, which has developed the capability of recovering the massive casing of a rocket’s first stage for reuse

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. SpaceX currently charges the United States government $1,250 per pound to send cargo to the International Space Station.7 Though this price may not reflect the true cost, since SpaceX seeks to secure government contracts for the future, it represents

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a good number to bear in mind. SpaceX’s success with its Falcon rockets contrasts markedly with NASA’s repeated problems with its next-generation

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platform to the International Space Station. For two months, controllers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama supervised the platform’s operation remotely. A SpaceX Dragon then brought it home with the first optical fibers made in space. This single example shows that space manufacturing already exists and can proceed

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of bankruptcy until the rising public demand for electric cars made Musk one of the wealthiest US citizens, along with Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. SpaceX, established by Musk in 2002 to manufacture launch vehicles, has produced the Dragon and Falcon spacecraft, workhorses for NASA’s missions to send supplies, and

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a resolution sufficient to reveal road traffic, building sites, land use, and related information. Even greater advances lie in the near future, as SpaceX envisages that its Starlink project will place up to 40,000 satellites in orbit to create a network for enhanced global broadband communication.14 Other companies, including Amazon

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that will take them to and from the lunar surface. The Dragon XL spacecraft, created by Elon Musk’s SpaceX corporation to resupply the Gateway orbiter in a manner similar to how SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket resupplies the International Space Station. A Human Landing System (HLS), to carry astronauts from the

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Gateway orbiter to the lunar surface and return them to the Gateway. In April 2021, SpaceX won the competition with its rivals Blue Origin and the Dynetics Corporation to use its Starship rocket for an uncrewed landing and then for the

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first crewed landing, with later landings subject to further competition. SpaceX’s Starship rocket also competes with the SLS, for which the Boeing corporation is the lead contractor, to provide the best new heavy-lift vehicle

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later SLS flights. As has been the case with previous NASA programs, the SLS is several years behind schedule and several billion dollars over budget. SpaceX’s more advanced approach envisions an upper stage for Starship that will be a fully operational, long-duration spacecraft eventually capable of traveling to Mars

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, Starship should prove capable of lifting more than a hundred tons into near-Earth orbit and more than forty tons to the Gateway lunar orbiter. SpaceX has achieved remarkable success in reducing the cost of sending payloads into Earth orbit, and it may eventually succeed in bringing its approach not only

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have often been described as carrying a price tag of $10,000 per pound, a figure easy to remember. During the past few years, however, SpaceX has successfully aimed to reduce this number significantly. In 2020, NASA contracted with the company to pay $2.4 billion for six missions to the

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International Space Station, including both astronauts and cargo. Since SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has a cargo capacity of 50,000 pounds, this implies a launch cost per pound—more precisely, the price charged per

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with, for example, preparing the rocket to launch humans rather than cargo, and a pure cargo launch would almost certainly be considerably less expensive. Indeed, SpaceX projects future costs of $2,500 per pound or less. To estimate the costs of maintaining astronauts into orbit, a task for which per-pound

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program in 2011 and October 2020, Soviet rockets offered the only means of carrying humans to and from the International Space Station. The creation of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, capable of launching astronauts into near-Earth orbit, has produced a situation in which only Russian astronauts depart from the Baikonur launch

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govern how different state and individual actors may or should execute their plans. The extensive projects of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and others, along with SpaceX’s demonstrated superiority to the US government in rocket manufacturing, raise issues about the proper role of nongovernmental actors in space. We may well ask

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, May 16, 2013, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130516-four-decades-of-living-in-space. 7. “How SpaceX Lowered Costs and Reduced Barriers to Space,” The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/how-spacex-lowered-costs-and-reduced-barriers-to-space-112586/ 8. Emilee Speck, “NASA Might Not Repeat Test of Moon Rocket

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percent of deaths resulted from accidents; the comparable figure among Russian cosmonauts was only 17 percent. 14. Adam Mann, “Starlink: SpaceX’s Satellite Internet Project,” Space.com, May 28, 2021, https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-satellites.html. 15. Christian Davenport, “Thousands More Satellites Could Soon Be Launched into Space. Can the Federal Government

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, 2019, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/elon-musk-jeff-bezos-space-colony-plan-makes-no-sense-2019-05-23; Sainato, “Stephen Hawking.” 5. Nicky Woolf, “SpaceX Founder Elon Musk Plans to Get Humans to Mars in Six Years,” The Guardian, September 27, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/27

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/elon-musk-spacex-mars-colony. 6. Daniel Deudney, Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020), 210–211. 7

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, 56, 63, 85, 95, 110; public opinion, 2–4, 6, 8–13, 16–21, 30, 32, 76, 83, 92, 94, 102, 104, 106, 128, 147 SpaceX, 34, 37, 38, 45, 120, 122, 123, 128, 131 Spergel, David, 8, 103 Spirit rover, 18, 82, 116 Spudis, Paul, 117 Sputnik, 3 Starship, 39

The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity

by Tim Wu  · 4 Nov 2025  · 246pp  · 65,143 words

Prize the Same Kinds of Businesses,” Business Insider, September 2, 2023, https://markets.businessinsider.com/​news/​stocks/​warren-buffett-elon-musk-toll-roads-bottlenecks-tesla-spacex-starlink-2023-9. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 12 “Connections North: Bridges of the West End,” West End Museum, accessed October 11, 2024, https://thewestendmuseum.org/​exhibits

Elon Musk

by Walter Isaacson  · 11 Sep 2023  · 562pp  · 201,502 words

he drove over a pylon in the parking lot with a “No Left Turn” sign and turned left. 52 Starlink SpaceX, 2015–2018 An internet in low-Earth orbit When Musk launched SpaceX back in 2002, he conceived it as an endeavor to get humanity to Mars. Every week, amid all the technical

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s $30 billion, which is more than NASA’s budget. That was the inspiration for Starlink, to fund getting to Mars.” He pauses, then adds for emphasis, “The lens of getting to Mars has motivated every SpaceX decision.” To pursue this mission, Musk announced in January 2015 the creation of a new

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division of SpaceX, based near Seattle, called Starlink. The plan was to send satellites into low-Earth orbit, about 340 miles high,

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so that the latency of the signals would not be as bad as systems that depended on geosynchronous satellites, which orbit 22,000 miles above the Earth. From their low altitude, Starlink

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forty thousand satellites. Mark Juncosa In the midst of the hellacious summer of 2018, Musk was having a Spidey sense that something was amiss at Starlink. Its satellites were too big, expensive, and difficult to manufacture. In order to reach a profitable scale, they would have to be made at

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for Musk. So one Sunday night that June, without much warning, he flew to Seattle to fire the entire top Starlink team. He brought with him eight of his most senior SpaceX rocket engineers. None knew much about satellites, but they all knew how to solve engineering problems and apply Musk’s

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was at his south Texas house and went on Twitter. “Sending this tweet through space via Starlink satellite,” he wrote. He was now able to tweet on an internet that he owned. 53 Starship SpaceX, 2018–2019 Musk’s living room and backyard in Boca Chica; Bill Riley and Mark Juncosa

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Origin and less time in the hot tub.” * * * Another dispute erupted over their rival satellite communications companies. By the summer of 2021, SpaceX had deployed nearly two thousand Starlinks into orbit. Its space-based internet was available in fourteen countries. Bezos had announced in 2019 plans for Amazon to create a similar

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by setting clear metrics, such as cost per ton lifted into orbit or average number of miles driven on Autopilot without human intervention. For Starlink, he surprised Juncosa by asking how many photons were collected by the solar arrays of the satellite versus how many they could usefully shoot down

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thought of this as a metric,” he says. “It forced me to try some creative thinking about how we could improve efficiency.” This led SpaceX to develop a second version of Starlink, and it applied to get approval from the Federal Communications Commission. The application lowered the planned orbital altitude for future

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protecting us on the artificial intelligence front.” Musk’s lofty goals are usually accompanied by practical business models. He had developed Starlink satellites, for example, as a way to fund SpaceX’s mission to Mars. Likewise, he planned for Neuralink brain chips to be used to help people with neurological problems, such

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the paper, Musk stressed the missions that drove his companies. “I’m just trying to get people to Mars, and enable freedom of information with Starlink, accelerate sustainable technology with Tesla, and free people from the drudgery of driving,” he said. “It’s certainly possible that the road to hell

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Musk for help, and the vice prime minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, used Twitter to urge him to provide connectivity. “We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations,” he pleaded. Musk agreed. Two days later, five hundred terminals arrived in Ukraine. “We have the US military looking to help us with

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call with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, discussed the logistics of a larger rollout, and promised to visit Ukraine when the war was over. Lauren Dreyer, SpaceX’s director of Starlink business operations, began sending Musk updates twice a day. “Russia took offline a bunch of Ukraine communications infrastructure today, and a number of

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Tesla Powerwalls or Megapacks too.” The batteries and solar panels were soon on their way. Every day that week, Musk held regular meetings with the Starlink engineers. Unlike every other company and even parts of the U.S. military, they were able to find ways to defeat Russian jamming. By

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Sunday, the company was providing voice connections for a Ukrainian special operations brigade. Starlink kits were also used to connect the Ukrainian military to the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command and to get Ukrainian television broadcasts back up

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days, six thousand more terminals and dishes were shipped, and by July there were fifteen thousand Starlink terminals operating in Ukraine. Starlink was soon garnering lavish press coverage. “The conflict in Ukraine has provided Musk and SpaceX’s fledgling satellite network with a trial-by-fire that has whetted the appetite of many

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of the dishes and services it provided. “How many have we donated so far?” Musk wrote Dreyer on March 12. She replied, “2000 free Starlinks and monthly service. Also, 300 heavily discounted to Lviv IT association and we waived the monthly service for ~5500.” The company soon donated sixteen hundred

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sneak attack on the Russian naval fleet based at Sevastopol in Crimea by sending six small drone submarines packed with explosives, and they were using Starlink to guide them to the target. Although he had readily supported Ukraine, his foreign policy instincts were those of a realist and student of

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the Russian fleet in Sevastopol, they lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly. When the Ukrainian military noticed, in the midst of the mission, that Starlink was disabled in and around China, Musk got frantic calls and texts asking him to turn the coverage back on. Mykhailo Fedorov, the vice prime

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Jake Sullivan, and chairman of the joint chiefs, General Mark Milley, explaining to them that SpaceX did not wish Starlink to be used for offensive military purposes. He also called the Russian ambassador to assure him that Starlink was being used for defensive purposes only. “I think if the Ukrainian attacks had succeeded

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do you like more?: One who supports Ukraine, or One who supports Russia.” Musk backed down a bit in subsequent tweets. “SpaceX’s out of pocket cost to enable and support Starlink in Ukraine is ~$80M so far,” he wrote in response to Zelenskyy’s question. “Our support for Russia is $0

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probably fail and risk nuclear war. This would be terrible for Ukraine and Earth.” * * * In early October, Musk extended his restrictions on the use of Starlink for offensive operations by disabling some of its coverage in the Russian-controlled regions of southern and eastern Ukraine. This resulted in another flurry of

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playing. Neither Ukraine nor the U.S. had been able to find any other satellite providers or communication systems that could match Starlink or fend off attacks from Russian hackers. Feeling unappreciated, he suggested that SpaceX was no longer willing to bear some of the financial burden. Shotwell also felt strongly that

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companies and foreign governments. Other companies, including big and profitable defense contractors, were charging billions to supply weapons to Ukraine, so it seemed unfair that Starlink, which was not yet profitable, should do it for free. “We initially gave the Ukrainians free service for humanitarian and defense purposes, such as

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against Musk in the press and Twitterverse. He decided to withdraw his request for funding. SpaceX would provide free service indefinitely for the terminals that were already in Ukraine. “The hell with it,” he tweeted. “Even though Starlink is still losing money & other companies are getting billions of taxpayer $, we’ll just

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Russian troops, and there is complete lawlessness and outrage—the residents are impatiently waiting for liberation…. At the end of September, we noticed that Starlink does not work in the liberated villages, which makes it impossible to restore the critical infrastructure of these territories. For us it is a matter

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and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.” In the end, with Shotwell’s help, SpaceX made arrangements with various government agencies to pay for increased Starlink service in Ukraine, with the military working out the terms of service. More than 100,000 new dishes were sent

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to Ukraine at the beginning of 2023. In addition, Starlink launched a companion service called Starshield, which was specifically designed for military use. SpaceX sold or licensed Starshield satellites and services to the U.S. military and other agencies, allowing the government to

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impressed by the factory Musk had built and his detailed knowledge of every machine and process. He also admired SpaceX for deploying a large constellation of Starlink satellites to provide internet from space. “Starlink is the realization of what I tried to do with Teledesic twenty years ago,” he says. At the end

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own launch capability) and one for the European Space Agency. It also that month sent into orbit another batch of Starlink communications satellites, bringing to twenty-one hundred the number in the SpaceX constellation that was by then providing internet connectivity to 500,000 subscribers in forty countries, including Ukraine. No other

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Screw space.’ ” “Yes,” Musk said with a rueful laugh, “it was better to send up four people out of central casting.” Jolting the team The Starlink satellites being built in Seattle were beginning to pile up in July 2022. Falcon 9 rockets were launching from Cape Canaveral at least once a

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to close the Twitter deal, an SEC investigation, and a lawsuit challenging his Tesla compensation. He was also worried about controversies over the use of Starlink satellites in Ukraine, difficulties in reducing Tesla’s supply-chain dependence on China, a Falcon 9 launch of four astronauts (including one Russian woman

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cosmonaut) to the International Space Station, a West Coast launch the same day of a Falcon 9 carrying fifty-two Starlink satellites, and sundry personal issues regarding children, girlfriends, and former wives. Musk sublimates stress in a variety of ways, goofiness being one. On the

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founders of a new company and get equity in it,” he explained. I calculated that would mean he would be running six companies: Tesla, SpaceX and its Starlink unit, Twitter, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and X.AI. That was three times as many as Steve Jobs (Apple, Pixar) at his peak.

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, Elon Musk, Dave Morris. Stephanie Mlot, “Elon Musk Wants to Make Bond’s Lotus Submarine Car a Reality,” PC Magazine, Oct. 18, 2013. 52. Starlink: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Mark Juncosa, Bill Riley, Sam Teller, Elissa Butterfield, Bill Gates. 53. Starship: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Bill

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2022; Adam Satariano, “Elon Musk Doesn’t Want His Satellites to Run Ukraine’s Drones,” New York Times, Feb. 9, 2023; Joey Roulette, “SpaceX Curbed Ukraine’s Use of Starlink,” Reuters, Feb. 9, 2023. 71. Bill Gates: Author’s interviews with Bill Gates, Rory Gates, Elon Musk, Omead Afshar, Jared Birchall, Claire

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Leslie, 465, 508, 534 Bernstein, Carl, 573 Beykpour, Kayvon, 520 Bezos, Jeff, 223, 353 Amazon HQ and, 336 competition with SpaceX, 226, 227–28, 231–32, 233–34, 354 competition with Starlink, 355–56 Inspiration4 mission and, 385 love of space travel, 224–25 management style, 166, 354–55 space tourism and

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, John, 498 Clinton, Hillary, 261, 424, 525 Clooney, George, 143 Cobra Kai, 346 Cocconi, Alan, 126 Coffin, Gage, 273 comics, 27 communications satellites. See Starlink Compaq Computer, 66 computer programming EM’s childhood interest in, 29, 33–34 EM’s college years and, 50 EM’s Silicon Valley internship and

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to, 212, 225, 348–49, 441 cargo missions to, 122, 188, 189, 204, 231 Obama administration SpaceX contract, 210–12 space capsule returns from, 211, 614 SpaceX supply rockets contract, 188, 189, 204 internet. See Starlink; X.com; Zip2 Iron Man, 142 Iron Man 2, 142 Isaacman, Jared, 382, 383, 384–85,

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and unrealistic deadlines and below —MARS MISSION: college years, 51 Gates on, 436–37 Mars Society inspiration for, 92 Optimus and, 485 SpaceX founding and, 92–94, 100, 321 Starlink founding and, 321 Starship system and, 326, 362, 391, 604–5, 608, 611 unrealistic deadlines and, 391 vision/hype mixing and,

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, 402–3 overview, 284–86 questioning requirements and, 113, 272, 284–85, 286, 351, 370–71, 401–2 SolarCity and, 370–72, 373 SpaceX and, 113, 152 Starlink and, 322, 323–24 Starship system and, 328, 365, 378, 477–78 Tesla and, 274, 278–81 X.com and, 76 —RISK ATTRACTION,

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576 EM’s reconciliation with, 87, 183 Gracias and, 157 PayPal coup and, 82, 83 “PayPal mafia” and, 183 politics and, 423–24, 529, 566 Starlink for Ukraine and, 433 Twitter acquisition and, 511 Sailor Moon, 415 Salzman, Alan, 138, 191–92 San Souci, Ben, 509, 519, 548, 553 Sarsfield, Liam

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, 122 satellite communications. See Starlink Saturday Night Live, 376, 377 Saudi Arabia, 291–93 Scarborough, Joe, 492 Scheutzow, Pete, 407 Schiffer, Zoë, 558 Schmidt, Eric, 241 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 30

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management style and, 364, 365, 366 Falcon 1 launch attempts and, 152 Kistler NASA contract and, 122 Malaysia contract, 145 on Patel, 477 as SpaceX president, 188–89 Starlink for Ukraine and, 428, 432–33, 434 Starship system and, 328–29, 362, 363, 364, 478–79, 611 working relationship with EM, 119

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rescue and, 288 Twitter server move and, 585 unrealistic deadlines and, 101, 113–14, 177, 184, 330 See also Falcon 1 launch attempts; SpaceX, risk and; Starlink; Starship system SpaceX, risk and Falcon 1 launch attempts and, 153, 154, 186 Falcon 1 rocket and, 110 Falcon 9 successes and, 232–33 founding and

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, 100 Inspiration4 mission and, 383–85 iterative design approach and, 115 Starship system and, 608–9, 610–11 testing and, 116 Thiel on, 86 SpaceX test

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stand, 111 Spiro, Alex, 488 EM’s impulsive tweets and, 294 EM’s management of Twitter and, 521–22, 527–28, 543, 556 Twitter acquisition and, 464, 490, 493, 512, 513 Spy Who Loved Me, The, 316 Stanley, Christopher, 546, 552 Star Wars, 5, 110 Starlink Bezos competition

Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos and the Trillion-Dollar Space Race

by Christian Davenport  · 6 Sep 2025  · 441pp  · 127,950 words

the re-constituted National Space Council. DECEMBER 2017: President Trump signs Space Policy Directive-1, instructing NASA to return astronauts to the moon. FEBRUARY 2018: SpaceX launches its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time. APRIL 2018: Jim Bridenstine is confirmed as NASA administrator. JANUARY 2019: China lands its Chang’e

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his “vision speech” in Washington, D.C., and says Blue Origin can help astronauts land on the moon by 2024. MAY 2019: SpaceX launches the first batch of sixty Starlink satellites. MAY 2019: Bridenstine names NASA’s moon program Artemis, after the twin sister of Apollo in Greek mythology. APRIL 2020: Blue

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Origin wins the lion’s share of the first round of a NASA contract to build a moon lander. MAY 2020: SpaceX launches NASA astronauts

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in this country and internationally.” NASA and Boeing had similar cultures: formal and conservative, with a strict hierarchy and a military-like deference to authority. SpaceX could hardly have been more different. Employees were brash and iconoclastic. Their culture encouraged dissent. Hurt feelings mattered less than correct answers. Musk encouraged employees

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stupid,” Reisman recalled. “We were constantly challenging them and had interns telling them that they were stupid.” One had even tried to change the way SpaceX talked about its systems. The company’s engineers called the displays GUIs, pronounced “Gooeys,” an acronym for graphical user interface. Pilots, the astronaut informed

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weekends. He approved every significant decision and signed off on every purchase over $50,000. At the time, SpaceX had started ramping up an entirely new business line based in Redmond, Washington—Starlink satellites, which would beam Internet signals to stations on the ground, allowing broadband access from remote areas of the

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globe. The plan was to build, in-house, hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of the small satellites, and hoist them to orbit. If it was going to work, SpaceX

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a new engine, the Raptor, all at the same time, and none of it was guaranteed to work. “He was really worried that taking on Starlink and Starship was going to kill the company,” Muratore said. “I think we all were worried too, because what he would say was, ‘Building large

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car company. Much of what was driving the growth was another major and risky endeavor that Musk hoped would become a new line of business: Starlink, which Musk had said was essentially “like rebuilding the Internet in space.” Others, he knew, had tried and failed. In fact, as he said

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would transform the company from a rocket company to an Internet provider. Musk had said that SpaceX’s rocket business generated about $2 billion a year and could possibly grow to $3 billion. But revenue from Starlink could be “more like $30 billion a year,” he said. “Total Internet connectivity revenue in

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2018, during a visit to the company’s satellite manufacturing center in Redmond, Washington, Musk fired the Starlink leadership team— including Rajeev Badyal, SpaceX’s vice president of satellites—and brought in new management from SpaceX’s headquarters, with the goal of launching the first batch of satellites by the middle of 2019

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charge of it. One of the first things they did was hire Rajeev Badyal, the Starlink manager who’d been fired by Musk. Once again, Musk and Bezos would find themselves in direct competition. Once again, SpaceX would have a massive head start. But Amazon had a worldwide customer base, years of

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. Furthermore, after NASA’s insistence on a strategy of choosing two providers. Their abrupt reversal in choosing only one seems equally preposterous.” Then, without mentioning SpaceX, he wrote: “Finally, their choice of winner seems . . . preposterous. I share your astonishment, disappointment, disorientation, confusion and even anger. “We’re not just giving

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win the contract, he became more sincere and less juvenile. “The BO bid was just way too high,” Musk wrote me. “Double that of SpaceX and SpaceX has much more hardware progress. I think he needs to run BO full-time for it to be successful. Frankly, I hope he does.” The

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COVID pandemic, tweeting at one point that “my pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” He was also railing against regulators, including the Federal Aviation Administration, which issued SpaceX launch licenses and was charged with protecting people and property on the ground. In December 2020, with Musk pushing his engineers to work ever faster

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in an email a few months later. “Yours is now.” AMAZON, WHICH WAS planning to launch its own constellation of Internet satellites to rival SpaceX’s Starlink, tried to use Musk’s behavior against him as the companies sparred before the Federal Communications Commission. In one unusually combative filing, Amazon went after

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Musk personally, saying he was a dangerous rogue who openly and repeatedly defied lawful regulations. SpaceX’s violation of its launch license was part of

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enormous skepticism from NASA that it was safe to load superchilled, superdense propellent onto spacecraft with astronauts already strapped inside. Perhaps most significant of all, SpaceX had also convinced both NASA and the Pentagon—which initially were wary of flying missions on used Falcon 9 boosters—that using “flight proven” rockets

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had one of its Falcon 9 rockets fly its eleventh mission, also a record. By the end of 2021, it had launched nearly two thousand Starlink satellites and was beginning to become a legitimate Internet service provider. Musk was still unsatisfied. Success begat not rewards and repose but more suffering, much

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some of its biggest product lines—including Alexa, Kindle, Ring, and more recently the Kuiper Internet satellite program that Amazon was developing to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink—Dave Limp wanted to try something different. He had always thrown himself into his work, but by the beginning of 2023, he just didn

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Falcon rockets, averaging about a launch every four days, a record, as it built out its Starlink satellite constellation, which by the end of the year totaled more than 5,000 spacecraft. In all, SpaceX hoisted more than 2,500 spacecraft that year. Perhaps more impressively, it lifted more than 2.5

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yeah, it’s a giant moment for sure.” The industry needed Blue to be successful if for no other reason than to finally give SpaceX some competition. SpaceX had gotten so big and successful that it had outpaced everyone, leaving the government with few other options. When the Pentagon announced the winner

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for the first batch of its next launch contracts in late 2024, SpaceX won them all, beating out the United Launch Alliance for a haul worth $733 million. Starlink was also sopping up billions from the Pentagon and National Reconnaissance Office, while Amazon’s Kuiper satellite network

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was coming into focus. The only questions were: Which flag would she plant, and what would be her name? NOTES INTRODUCTION 2 China has paid SpaceX: Andrew Jones, “China Unveils Fully Reusable Starship-Like Rocket Concept,” SpaceNews, November 14, 2024, https://spacenews.com/china-unveils-fully-reusable-starship-like-rocket-

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gov/international-space-station/space-station-facts-and-figures/. 3 “You need to be looking”: Elon Musk, “Making Life Multiplanetary,” September 28, 2017, https://www.spacex.com/media/making_life_multiplanetary_transcript_2017.pdf. 6 “we boldly go”: Neil deGrasse Tyson, X, https://x.com/neiltyson/status/538433684169179137. 6 could be

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Dire Warning, Concerns Rise About Conflict In Space with Russia,” February 15, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/15/space-weapons-russia-china-starlink/. 75 In 1962, the United States: William Neff, Frank Hulley-Jones, and Joel Achenbach, “What Would Happen If Russia Detonated a Nuclear Bomb In

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Elon Musk Smoking Pot Rankled Agency Leaders,” The Washington Post, November 20, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/11/20/nasa-launch-safety-review-spacex-boeing-after-video-elon-musk-smoking-pot-rankled-agency-leaders/. 118 “Every single one of those accidents”: Marina Koren, “NASA Administrator on Elon Musk: ‘

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, January 22, 2019, https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a25953663/elon-musk-spacex-bfr-stainless-steel/. 182 Starlink satellites: Caleb Henry, “Musk: We’re Not Spinning Off Starlink,” Space-News, March 9, 2020, https://spacenews.com/musk-were-not-spinning-off-starlink/. 186 “Push the button”: Jackie Wattles, “NASA Administrator Tells Elon Musk’s

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SpaceX ‘It’s Time to Deliver,’ ” CNN, September 28, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/28/

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business/elon-musk-spacex-nasa-bridenstine-crew-dragon/index.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI

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com/technology/2020/02/28/boeing-admits-starliner-testing-flaws/. 197 The space agency had largely: Christian Davenport, “Boeing Faced Only ‘Limited’ Safety Review While SpaceX Got a Full Examination,” The Washington Post, November 18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/18/boeing-faced-only-limited-safety-review-nasa

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-while-spacex-got-full-examination/. 197 “We’ll fly when we’re ready”: Jeff Foust, “Commercial Crew Companies Emphasize Safety Over Schedule,” SpaceNews, September 14, 2016,

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https://apnews.com/article/us-news-ap-top-news-ca-state-wire-tx-state-wire-virus-outbreak-536cdbad77169d956e66836260347294. 201 “a sacred honor”: Christian Davenport, “Inside SpaceX, the Willy Wonka–Like Rocket Factory That Plans to Send Private Citizens to Space,” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/14

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little”: Christian Davenport, “The Next Americans in Space,” The Washington Post, May 25, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/05/25/who-spacex-launch-astronauts/. 208 “Dragon, SpaceX, we show”: Crew Demo-2 Splashdown, August 2, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSJIQftoxeU. 208 “had come alive”: Loren Grush, “

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%20the%20latest%20prototype. 225 more than $30 billion: Michael Sheetz, “SpaceX Valuation Rises to $33.3 Billion as Investors Look to Satellite Opportunity,” CNBC, May 31, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/31/spacex-valuation-33point3-billion-after-starlink-satellites-fundraising.html. 225 “like rebuilding the Internet”: Cecilia Kang and Christian Davenport

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, “SpaceX Founder Files with Government to Provide Internet Service from Space,” The Washington Post, June 9, 2015, https

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://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/spacex-founder-files-with-government-to-provide-internet-service-from-space/2015/

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06/09/db8d8d02-0eb7-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.html. 225 “successfully gone into operation”: Stephen Clark, “SpaceX’s First 60 Starlink Broadband Satellites Deployed in Orbit,” Spaceflight Now, May 24, 2019

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, https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/05/24/spacexs-first-60-starlink-broadband-satellites-deployed-in-orbit/. 225 “Total Internet connectivity revenue”: Sheetz, “SpaceX Valuation Rises to $33.3 Billion.” 226 “This was

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one of the hardest”: Alan Boyle, “SpaceX’s Elon Musk Says ‘Goodness’ Will Come from Twice-Delayed

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Starlink Launch,” GeekWire, May 16, 2019, https://www.geekwire.com/2019/spacex-elon-musk-starlink/. 226 “I do believe”: Christian Davenport, “Elon

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Musk’s SpaceX Is Striving to Win the Race to Build the Internet

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Sheetz, Gina Sunseri, and Jackie Wattles. While reporting this book, I ran into sources who had also cooperated with Berger for his excellent work about SpaceX, Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age, and shared similar information with me. I also relied on my own

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–74 China’s space program, 62, 145–46, 227–28 Kuiper satellite network, 226, 310 military use of, 16, 74 Russia’s space program, 62 Starlink satellites, 4–5, 182–83, 225–27, 255, 288–89, 303, 310 vulnerability of, 74–75 for weather forecasting, 85 Schaefbauer, Mark, 321 Schenewerk,

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engines, 2, 28, 53, 183, 288–89 redundancy principle, 51–53 on space renaissance, 81 space tourism, 282–83 Starhopper prototype, 183, 184, 185, 220 Starlink satellites, 4–5, 182–83, 225–27, 255, 288–89, 303, 310 Starship development, 3–5, 156, 161–62, 181–82, 183–85, 219–25

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51, 181, 182–85, 221–22, 256, 258, 316 Starfish Prime, 75 Starhopper, 183, 184, 185, 220 Starliner, 124, 127, 128, 137, 140, 196, 310 Starlink satellites, 4–5, 182–83, 225–27, 255, 288–89, 303, 310 Starman, 105–6, 108–9 Starship Blue Origin’s surveillance of, 3–5

Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter

by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac  · 17 Sep 2024

as an entrepreneur and executive, Musk had thin skin and wanted to know everything about how the public perceived himself and his companies—Tesla Motors, SpaceX, Neuralink, and the Boring Company. That morning, however, he focused on his primary addiction: Twitter. Musk had amassed more than 22 million followers on

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heavens before exploding into flaming heaps of discarded ideas. Before eBay had even completed its acquisition of PayPal, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, in May 2002. He committed $100 million of his PayPal windfall to space, with the goal of getting to Mars and making humans a

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fired Eberhard and took on the chief executive role himself. The company soldiered on toward building a luxury sedan, losing millions of dollars a year. SpaceX also struggled, teetering on the verge of bankruptcy after three failed launches. In 2008, its Falcon 1 rocket finally reached orbit, leading the company

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relations staff, sometimes emailing them well past midnight, to correct the record. Reporters who constantly questioned him or wrote too critically of Tesla or SpaceX were personally blacklisted by Musk. His craving for narrative control led him to Twitter. Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher had joined the 140

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at speaking engagements and on Twitter. It was all nonsense, Zuckerberg believed. Musk, enraged, refused to back down. Despite Musk’s disagreement with Zuckerberg, SpaceX did not turn down Facebook’s business. It needed the money and attention. The company loaded the Facebook satellite onto a Falcon 9 rocket at

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hard problems like building rockets and electric cars. But Musk held his fire, letting his grudge against Zuckerberg build inside him. * * * >>> At Tesla and SpaceX, Musk refused to take advice from anyone about his posts, and when one executive dared to point out that his tweets about deadlines made life

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Musk had emerged victorious in his “pedo guy” tweet lawsuit only a few weeks earlier. Over the video call, Musk, seated behind his desk at SpaceX’s headquarters, was unlike his online persona. He was reserved and sometimes barely audible, lacking the spikiness or juvenile humor that permeated his tweets. Dorsey

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crisis of the period, the Russian invasion into Ukraine. At first, he showed unwavering support for Ukraine and played the hero, saying that SpaceX’s satellite internet service, Starlink, would be available in the country. “Hold Strong Ukraine,” he tweeted in the early weeks of the invasion, with six Ukrainian flag emojis

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tweeted that he refused requests by some foreign governments to block Russian news sources that had been used to spread propaganda about the war from Starlink’s internet. “Sorry to be a free speech absolutist,” he wrote, angering Ukrainian supporters who saw his move as tacit endorsement and enabling of

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on March 5. “Wtf is going on Elon…” The EU passed a law banning Russia Today, and internet providers like Starlink had been told to deny access to their sites, the SpaceX chief replied. “Actually, I find their news quite entertaining,” he continued. “Lot of bullshit, but some good points too. “

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where he stood on extraterrestrial life. * * * >>> As Musk talked with his future employees, he was also working to put down a small rebellion at SpaceX. The previous month, Business Insider had dropped a bombshell story, reporting on the existence of a settlement between Musk’s rocket company and a former

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, male-dominated culture, led by a chief executive who tweeted about sex acts and starting a university with the acronym TITS. Months earlier, female SpaceX employees had already spoken up about stories of sexual harassment and discrimination, which the company brushed aside. Even after the Insider story published, Musk continued

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reflect our work, our mission, or our values.” By the following day, five of the letter’s organizers were rounded up and fired for what SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell labeled “overreaching activism.” Others were brought into meetings with managers, who had clearly been told to discipline their subordinates.

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sometimes lionize the changemakers of the human race. Isaacson was shadowing Musk for his next project, an authorized biography of the genius behind Tesla and SpaceX. Isaacson asked Crawford for her contact information and shot her a toothy grin. “I can tell you’ll be important,” he said. Crawford eventually

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ego. She wanted to see Twitter continue to succeed, and she had seen the company’s growth stall. Perhaps, she suggested, Musk could use Starlink to connect places with little internet coverage—like parts of India—to bring more potential Twitter users online. True free speech meant democratizing Twitter’s

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blue badges carried by employees, and instead held red visitor or green vendor keycards. Most of them were men. Some of them sported Tesla- or SpaceX-stamped apparel. To the Twitter employees, these outsiders could not be trusted, and they came up with a nickname for the intruders: “the goons.” * * * >>>

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current chief executive. He said he was angry at Sundar Pichai, Google’s leader, for not putting antennas into Android phones that could connect with Starlink, SpaceX’s proprietary satellite internet service. Then Musk, riffing off his own story, offered up something else he had heard to impress the executive even more

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and other employees began to understand that Musk’s expertise in other areas didn’t necessarily translate into running or understanding Twitter. At its core, SpaceX was a physics problem. Tesla was a manufacturing challenge. But Twitter was a social and psychological problem. Beyond the engineering challenges of keeping one

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Musk underscored his belief later in the meeting. He didn’t hold the Kremlin’s hacking capabilities in high regard because they hadn’t disrupted Starlink, the SpaceX-developed satellite internet service that was used by the Ukrainian army in its war against Russia. “These could be famous last words, but thus

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far the Russian attempts to hack Starlink have been not very good,” he said, casually revealing war secrets to a bunch of civilians. When Musk left

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.m. in San Francisco, some undecided employees received invitations to meetings hosted by some combination of Musk, his advisers, and executives from Tesla or SpaceX. The meetings were a last-minute sales pitch intended to convince employees to stay. In one gathering with the corporate finance team led by Birchall

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to run Twitter, but he was quietly considering it. He dreamed up a plan to export Musk’s free speech vision globally. He’d pitch Starlink to repressive countries, giving them internet access through Musk’s company. Then he’d add a new provision: if they wanted Musk’s internet,

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ordered Twitter’s human resources team to start drafting a separation agreement for Baker so that Musk could fire him. Birchall claimed that workers from SpaceX’s legal and government relations teams were conducting an internal investigation into Baker’s conduct, and the result of their investigation would determine whether

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marked by Musk’s online harassment. * * * >>> With Spiro’s departure from Twitter, Musk needed new deputies. He imported a new raft of employees from SpaceX to fill the void, including Chris Cardaci, the company’s vice president of legal, and Tim Hughes, its senior vice president for global business and

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. In a meeting with Twitter’s remaining lawyers, Davis told them that Hughes was the best fit for the role because he worked on Starlink while at SpaceX, which had some dealings with the FTC. “We have to be flawless when it comes to compliance,” Davis said, and in a rare

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the congressman ammunition for his House select subcommittee on “the weaponization of the federal government.” Musk later invited staffers from Jordan’s office to visit SpaceX’s facilities in Texas. He also found a sympathetic ear in the FTC’s lone Republican commissioner, Christine Wilson. In February, he secured a

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quell fears, a stark reminder that Musk’s vision for “freedom of speech” was not so welcome in autocratic countries. Musk, whose SpaceX was pushing to launch its Starlink service in the country, said nothing of Turkey’s government or its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, over the shutdown. Yet it was in

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erupted. His supporters tweeted that McCormick was a Biden lackey and politically motivated to take down their hero. The billionaire reincorporated Neuralink in Nevada and SpaceX in Texas, pulling them out of Delaware’s jurisdiction, and called on other companies to follow suit. Some of Twitter’s former employees took extended

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who wanted to push him out. Musk and then-girlfriend Claire Boucher, better known as the singer Grimes, pose together during a 2018 event at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. Elon Musk and Steve Davis, the chief executive of the Boring Company, at an event for the tunneling start-up

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on conversations and interviews totaling more than 150 hours with nearly 100 people. Those people included current and former employees for Twitter, X, Tesla, and SpaceX; lawyers, bankers, and other associates who worked for both sides during Elon Musk’s negotiations to buy Twitter; as well as friends and acquaintances

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Workers They’re More Likely to Die in a Car Crash Than from Coronavirus.” BuzzFeed News, March 13, 2020. buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-spacex-employees-car-crash-coronavirus. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT labeled some 300,000 tweets: Fung, Brian. “Twitter Says It Labeled 300,000 Tweets

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Shopping Spree He had a reputation for using drugs: Glazer, Emily, and Kirsten Grind. “Elon Musk Has Used Illegal Drugs, Worrying Leaders at Tesla and SpaceX.” Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2024, www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-e826a9e1. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “as collateral to

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06/16/technology/elon-musk-twitter-employees-meeting.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Business Insider had dropped a bombshell story: McHugh, Rich. “A SpaceX Flight Attendant Said Elon Musk Exposed Himself and Propositioned Her for Sex, Documents Show. The Company Paid $250,000 for Her Silence.” Business Insider,

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May 19, 2022. businessinsider.com/spacex-paid-250000-to-a-flight-attendant-who-accused-elon-musk-of-sexual-misconduct-2022-5. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “Elon is seen as

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earthquake-twitter-blocked.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Musk, whose SpaceX was pushing to launch its Starlink: Fernholz, Tim. “How Turkey Is Using Starlink to Win a Tesla Factory.” Quartz, September 18, 2023. qz.com/turkey-erdogan-elon-musk-starlink-spacex-tesla-1850849958. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Twitter had faced immense

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a more deserving person ever….” Twitter, December 13, 2021. Accessed February 21, 2024. twitter.com/kimbal/status/1470415129799905280. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT the SpaceX chief watched as massive plumes of white smoke: Musk, Elon. “Magnificent Machine with a 1000 ft plume. pic.twitter.com/wsyXJQJr3v.” Twitter, November 18,

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2023. twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1725926972423852296. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT With the countdown finished, the 397-foot rocket: Chang, “SpaceX Starship Launch.” GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “This is the richest man in the world”: Kaplan, Alex. “Far-Right Figures and White Nationalists Celebrate

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views and, 406, 423–29 revenue from, 294, 320, 325, 330, 339, 340, 354, 357, 365, 380, 381, 388, 401, 403, 409, 417, 419 for SpaceX, 340 Yaccarino and, 417–18 Ukraine war and, 97, 152, 325 Upfronts presentation and, 408 Africa, 35–36, 44, 45, 79 Afshar, Omead, 115, 

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287, 311 Threads, 413–14, 433 Twitter accounts promoting, 382–83 internet, 7, 12, 29–31 dot-com bubble, 30 satellite launch and, 35–36 Starlink service, 102, 103, 244–45, 280, 332, 363, 374, 400 see also social media Internet Archive, 89 Internet Research Agency, 332 Interpublic Group (IPG), 294

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Berlin, 109 bodyguards of, 7 businesses of Boring Company, 23, 37, 134, 179, 239, 241, 267, 268, 314 Neuralink, 23, 38, 179, 205, 250, 434 SpaceX, see SpaceX Tesla, see Tesla Motors X.com (bank), 29–31, 415 Zip2, 29, 207 see also Twitter under Elon Musk; X Chappelle show incident, 

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, 211 Solomon, Sasha, 347, 348 Sorkin, Andrew Ross, 427–30 Soros, George, 406, 408 South by Southwest, 15 Soviet Union, 37, 184, 193, 364 SpaceX, 1, 23, 24, 31–36, 47, 96, 101, 115, 137, 165, 167, 175, 181, 208, 241, 250, 256, 290, 291, 299, 316, 317, 320, 322

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of, 35–36 board of, 115 COVID pandemic and, 63 Musk’s loan from, 253 sexual harassment at, 200–201 Starbase facility of, 78–79 Starlink service of, 102, 103, 244–45, 280, 332, 363, 374, 400 Starship test launch of, 423–25 tunnel project of, 314 Twitter advertising of, 

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Square, 16, 22, 40, 42, 44, 49, 51, 52, 55, 233 Srinivasan, Balaji, 382 SR-71 Blackbird, 364 Stanley, Christopher, 344–45, 354 Starbucks, 314 Starlink, 102, 103, 244–45, 280, 332, 363, 374, 400 Staudinger, Sarah, 194 Steinberg, Marc, 52 Stewart, Patrick, 17 Stone, Biz, 15, 16, 46 Stone,

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views and, 406, 423–29 revenue from, 294, 320, 325, 330, 339, 340, 354, 357, 365, 380, 381, 388, 401, 403, 409, 417, 419 for SpaceX, 340 Yaccarino and, 417–18 Apple App store and, 317–19, 333, 365–66 Blue subscription service of, 285, 295, 297, 306, 310–19, 

When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach

by Ashlee Vance  · 8 May 2023  · 558pp  · 175,965 words

inescapable sunshine, and salty spray welcome during a tropical holiday but abhorred while doing manual labor and toiling with machinery. A couple members of the SpaceX team paid their first visit to Kwajalein in 2003, hoping to find a place where they could go about their wild rocketry experiments without too

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being that all the good stuff—the equipment, housing, stores, eateries, and bars—was located on Kwajalein Island, the largest of the islands. Meanwhile, SpaceX had been banished to Omelek Island, an eight-acre lump of land with an infrastructure that consisted of a couple boat docks, a helicopter landing

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pad, four storage sheds, and about a hundred palm trees. It was there that SpaceX would receive rocket parts being sent from its operations in California and Texas and assemble them before testing and eventually launching an entire rocket. In

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a do-it-yourself basis, and meals consisted of prepackaged sandwiches or whatever they could haul out of the ocean. Despite the difficult conditions, the SpaceX crew worked at an astonishing speed, particularly for the aerospace industry, which tends to measure delays not in weeks or months but in years.

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got stuck and triggered a failure before reaching orbit. “Falcon 1 blows it again,” wrote one reporter covering the launch. By that point, Team SpaceX was beyond frazzled. Life on Kwajalein had long transitioned from amusingly exotic to torturous. Late-night drinking sessions at the Snake Pit bar were no

…

. It was an engineering milestone and an accomplishment many people in the aerospace industry had dreamed about for decades. In more symbolic terms, the SpaceX engineers shattered the natural order of things. While not at all clear back in 2008, that first launch into orbit would emerge as an inciting

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that a driven individual aided by a company full of bright, hardworking people could match, and maybe one day best, entire countries. More broadly, SpaceX had rejected many of the “truths” held evident by the old, government-backed aerospace industry. It demonstrated that a novel approach to rocketry could work

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of rockets could be modernized and made more efficient. New things were possible. Much of the existing aerospace community rejected those revelations. They still viewed SpaceX as an oddity, a minor-league player. The Falcon 1 could carry a thousand pounds of cargo into orbit, whereas the old guard’s

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impact of the Falcon 1 from rippling well beyond Musk’s empire and changing humanity’s relationship with space. Engineers, entrepreneurs, and investors saw what SpaceX had accomplished and began to have their own wild visions of what they might achieve. They, too, could ride the wave of ever-progressing

…

, they would set several major milestones. A start-up would emerge as the operator of the most satellites orbiting Earth, allowing Planet to join SpaceX as the next New Space maverick of consequence. The company would also confirm that small, cheap satellites working together could equal or best the large

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meditated and prayed. Planet had been particularly unlucky during previous launches, when its satellites had been destroyed after first an Antares rocket and then a SpaceX rocket had exploded. In a weird way, the explosions validated Planet’s approach to satellite making. Since it produced lots of small, cheap devices,

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Worden wanted Ames to build some, if not all, of the probes. He proposed applying some of the low-cost development techniques being pioneered by SpaceX and others to build the cheapest robotic machines in NASA’s history. Right away, though, the bureaucracy of Old Space and government cronyism derailed

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fresh satellites would have the latest computing and electronics components, so the constellation of imaging machines would keep getting better all the time. Just as SpaceX had changed the economics of rocket launches, Marshall and Boshuizen hoped to change the economics of satellites. Launching one would no longer be an

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forming relationships with rocket companies around the globe and negotiating contracts. Planet became the ultimate rocket vagabond, sending its devices to Russia, India, and SpaceX in the United States. Planet also began courting some rocket start-ups that were starting to appear on the scene. These companies had yet to

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of 2021, there were five thousand satellites in orbit. About two thousand of them were built and launched by SpaceX. These satellites do not take photos but rather are part of SpaceX’s Starlink internet system. The machines orbit around the earth and beam down high-speed internet to antennas on the ground

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. The major near-term objective of Starlink is to create the first truly global internet service. Anyone with a Starlink antenna can tap into the Web

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such as the UK government, Coca-Cola, SoftBank, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Group. Though SpaceX has the advantage of owning its own rockets, it, too, has needed to raise billions of dollars to fund Starlink. Outside these major players, there are yet more companies of various shapes and sizes hoping to

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quick connection wherever they go, but, again, nobody knows how large the audience will be. As things stand, SpaceX is valued by its investors at more than $100 billion, and the vast majority of that figure is premised on Starlink creating a major revenue stream. Even for a company as efficient as

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SpaceX, there are not huge profits in rocket launches. It’s much better to be a worldwide telecommunications company with

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subscribers paying monthly fees. The politics of space internet systems come with plenty of ambiguity, too. SpaceX and others must apply for licenses to provide their services in most countries. Countries such as China and Russia that control what sorts of information

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can flow across their networks despise the idea of anyone being able to buy a Starlink antenna and evade their draconian firewalls. Still, just about any country that cares about its data infrastructure and has the money to invest will

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astronomers, who had every reason to be concerned about those objects blocking their views and have heard Elon Musk promising to fill the skies with Starlink systems for years, did not start objecting to the space internet idea in earnest until it was already being built. By then, a few

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In 2008, companies still made large satellites that required large rockets. Devices like those built by Planet Labs were several years away from becoming mainstream. SpaceX might have crafted a perfectly fine small rocket, but no one needed it at the time. Founded in 2006, Rocket Lab had bounced around for

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excess cargo on other companies’ rockets. Their machines were tucked into spare nooks and crannies around the larger satellites that were the primary concern. SpaceX, for example, would fly a large satellite to its desired orbit first as the main payload and then let the small satellites trickle out into

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shipping service to low Earth orbit. And by 2016, it certainly looked as though the world might need exactly such a thing. Companies like SpaceX and Samsung were revealing plans to fly thousands upon thousands of satellites into orbit to power new space-based internet systems. Numerous other companies both

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out. Tradition had dictated that new rocket programs required the efforts of thousands of the brightest scientists and engineers and billions of dollars in funding. SpaceX had altered those long-held assumptions by lowering the cost of rocket production and recruiting young, inexperienced engineers. Much of its most important technology, though

…

perfecting a new skill. Even though the company had fallen behind Beck’s optimistic schedule, its efforts were impressing outsiders. Potential investors watched as SpaceX launched more and more rockets, and Rocket Lab’s rivals such as Virgin Orbit and Firefly were reporting some early successes with their programs. All

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Dozens of satellite start-ups had sprung up to mimic Planet Labs, and they all wanted cheap, quick rides to space. Huge companies such as SpaceX, Samsung, and Facebook were talking about sending up tens of thousands of satellites to build their grand space internet constellations. The world would soon have

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industry, however, marveled at Rocket Lab. Electron was considered to be perhaps the most perfectly engineered small rocket that had ever been made. Whereas SpaceX’s first three launches had ended in flames, Rocket Lab’s first three had been just about perfect. Only a software mishap outside the company

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to them and usually outworked everyone else at any company he went to. He recognized that Ventions’ facilities were disheartening compared to the grandeur of SpaceX, but he saw something authentic and inspiring in London. “Ventions had everything that was good about Masten,” Judson said. “The passion. The small team.

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to go from horizontal to upright. Anyone paying attention would see a missile poking out above the Orion Street building fence. Chris Thompson, the old SpaceX hand, had officially joined Astra as one of its top executives and brought with him experience, a hardened demeanor, and hopefully some much-needed

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option for their vehicles, and with good reason. The main US rocket-launching hubs in California and Florida were dominated by the military, NASA, and SpaceX, and their rockets took precedence over those of young, unproven companies. Kodiak provided a similar infrastructure, and the people running it were more willing

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Adam London and Chris Thompson were there, along with surly Ben Brockert and rocket-worshipping Mike Judson. So, too, were Roger Carlson, a veteran of SpaceX, and Jessy Kate Schingler, who had joined Astra to write software for the rocket. Raised in Toronto, Jessy Kate had earned an astrophysics degree from

…

commercial space projects will do so much better.” When the pandemic first engulfed the world, it looked as though the entire New Space gang, excluding SpaceX, Planet Labs, and Rocket Lab, might disappear. The rocket-making start-ups had all been struggling. The satellite start-ups were plowing through cash

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appeared almost like magic and rescued the company. He even let Markusic return as CEO. Markusic boasts serious space credentials. He’s worked at NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic and has done pioneering research into futuristic areas of rocket propulsion. Though not a Texan by birth, Markusic has

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following, the land had been used off and on by chemical and munitions manufacturers and aerospace companies testing their hardware. The tenant right before SpaceX had been Beal Aerospace, a private company founded by the billionaire Andrew Beal that had managed to churn through many millions of dollars in three

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of success reached far away places, offerings of praise and congratulations were dispatched from the corners of the world. And it was good. Many SpaceX employees have a love-hate relationship with Musk. They admire Musk’s drive and all the opportunities that the man’s unmatched vision and relentless

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complex parts that had been perfected over decades and could be transferred to Texas. “We will bring this Ukrainian heritage to the USA just like SpaceX used some of NASA’s heritage,”* Polyakov said. “We have good materials. Precise ballistics and guidance systems. Heritage should be reused.” The Ukrainian engineers

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chamber. Though straightforward to build in theory, good turbopumps have proved notoriously difficult to make and have slowed down many a rocket program, including SpaceX’s Falcon 1. Workers at Firefly’s Ukraine factory had designed the turbopumps that go into the company’s rockets and taught engineers in the

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all of the stuff all of the time. The images produced by the LeoLabs tracking system and software were startling. You could see thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites arranged in a mathematical grid pattern around Earth. Hundreds more satellites from OneWeb and Planet Labs were tucked into the matrix. There were

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that this will be the state commercial space will inhabit for quite some time—a position somewhere between exciting and harrowing. It’s clear that SpaceX has emerged as the dominant presence looming over the commercial space industry. It has the most impressive rocket fleet, and it builds and launches

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on in the war. No other conflict had ever been documented this way. When the Russians attempted to destroy Ukraine’s communications infrastructure, SpaceX sent Ukraine thousands of Starlink antennas. The space internet enabled Ukraine’s military to keep operating in a fashion that would have been impossible a couple of years

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earlier. Military units could still talk to each other safely with the Russians unable to penetrate Starlink’s encryption technology. The same Starlink systems allowed Ukrainian drone operators to orchestrate thousands of bombing missions from locations all around the country. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Elon Musk

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and, 476 lunar landers and, 56 Markusic and, 413–415, 417 OpenStack and, 251–253 robotics program of, 53–54 Rocket Lab and, 231, 234 SpaceX and, 435 Vandenberg Air Force Base and, 462 National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, 475 National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, 244 National Photographic Interpretation Center, 117

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Sputnik 1, 115 sriharikota, 28 SS-18, 440 Stachowski Farm, 409–410 Stalin, Josef, 440 Star Wars (Strategic Defense Initiative; SDI), 43, 45–48, 55 Starlink internet system, 128–130, 487–488 Starship, 13 static fire tests, 314–318 Stealth Space Company employees of, 265, 286–293 engine tests at, 281

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New York Times, the Economist, and the Register. Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com. Also by Ashlee Vance Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Geek Silicon Valley: The Inside Guide to Palo Alto, Stanford, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale,

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1986 with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev. “It was my major contribution to ending the Cold War,” he said. * For example, he was one of SpaceX’s main detractors in Congress. * His sisters tried to stop the proceedings by calling the police and telling them that Weston intended to commit suicide

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He paid the family back several years later. * At the time of this writing, the litigation was ongoing. * This is very true. Throughout its history, SpaceX had partnered with NASA on technology that the space agency had developed over the decades. * For anyone interested in the backstory of Dnipro, I recommend

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