EVE OF STARSHIP/SUPERHEAVY #8: 3 /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
⏱️ 12 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 Bachelor. I'm with Eric Berger. |
| 0:08.0 | Elon Musk and the desperate early days that launched SpaceX, his book Lift-Off. |
| 0:12.8 | It is now 2007, the spring again, March of 2007. |
| 0:18.1 | We're back at Omalek Island. |
| 0:20.3 | The crew is gathered again for the second flight. |
| 0:23.7 | There are some details, however, we need to introduce. Eric, before we set the rocket up and |
| 0:29.7 | light the candle, what is the slosh concern? What are the baffles for the second stage? |
| 0:36.9 | So the idea is that as you go up in a rocket, your fuel drains down, right? |
| 0:42.6 | It's liquid oxygen, it's kerosene, and, you know, the tank's empty, |
| 0:48.8 | and you've got to sort of somehow manage it to make sure that the fuel keeps coming out. |
| 0:55.2 | And it's, so you pressurize that space and sort of it comes down. |
| 0:59.0 | And it's less of an issue with the first stage. |
| 1:02.8 | But when you get to the second stage, you're in microgravity. |
| 1:06.4 | So you don't have gravity pulling down on the rocket, |
| 1:10.6 | you know, sort of pulling the fuel down |
| 1:12.5 | toward the engine. And especially the second stage is also going sideways relative to the |
| 1:17.6 | Earth. So one of the big debates they had at SpaceX before that second flight was |
| 1:24.6 | on this second stage, which takes off about two and a half |
| 1:28.3 | or three minutes after the launch, |
| 1:29.9 | do you need some kind of mechanism there |
| 1:32.2 | to help that fuel flow, |
| 1:36.1 | propellant flow toward the engine? |
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