EVE OF STARSHIP/SUPERHEAVY #8: 2 /4: Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2025
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-SpaceX/dp/0062979973/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
In Liftoff, Eric Berger, senior space editor at Ars Technica, takes readers inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company’s first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. We travel from company headquarters in El Segundo, to the isolated Texas ranchland where they performed engine tests, to Kwajalein, the tiny atoll in the Pacific where SpaceX launched the Falcon 1. Berger has reported on SpaceX for more than a decade, enjoying unparalleled journalistic access to the company’s inner workings. Liftoff is the culmination of these efforts, drawing upon exclusive interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk. The enigmatic Musk, who founded the company with the dream of one day settling Mars, is the fuel that propels the book, with his daring vision for the future of spacE.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Dutch with Eric Berger. |
| 0:07.0 | His new book is Lift-Off, Elon Musk, in the desperate early days that launched SpaceX. |
| 0:11.9 | The word desperate is applicable here because we're looking at a privately funded company |
| 0:16.4 | by a man who has an idea while driving on the Long Island Expressway. |
| 0:20.8 | Let this be a lesson to the future. If you driving on the Long Island Expressway. Let this be a lesson to the future. |
| 0:23.2 | If you're on the Long Island Expressway and you think, why not go to Mars, |
| 0:28.3 | it might require your whole fortune and most of your life to devote yourself to that concept. |
| 0:34.2 | But that's exactly the way you tell the story, Aaron. |
| 0:37.6 | Eric, is that the way Musk tells the story on the Long Island Expressway? |
| 0:42.7 | I mean, I think he thought he would go faster than he did. |
| 0:47.6 | It's been 20 years, more than 20 years since he had that idea in 2001. |
| 0:51.9 | But yeah, I mean, that's how he tells the story. |
| 0:53.4 | He's like, I was just thinking about |
| 0:54.6 | what I was going to do next. You know, he kind of ended his relationship with PayPal. And he was |
| 0:59.5 | sitting on a few hundred million dollars. And he was young guy, you know, about 30 years old and |
| 1:03.8 | bright, obviously, and ambitious and was trying to figure out what he was going to do next. And |
| 1:08.3 | he looked around and thought that the space industry was right for disruption. |
| 1:13.3 | The disruption, though, required Elon must to educate himself. |
| 1:17.6 | So sometimes I think he's sitting in his cubicle reading fundamental books about being an astrophysicist |
| 1:24.5 | or a mechanical engineer and electronics engineer. |
| 1:29.0 | Is he a quick study? Does engineer. Is he a quick study? |
| 1:34.5 | Does he talk about being a quick study? Yeah, and other people around him say that as well. |
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