EVE OF STARSHIP/SUPERHEAVY #8:: 4/4: 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
⏱️ 9 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 Baxter. |
| 0:06.5 | This is Eric Berger's liftoff. |
| 0:09.5 | Elon Musk and the desperate early days that launched SpaceX. |
| 0:13.2 | It is now 2008. |
| 0:14.8 | The markets have collapsed. |
| 0:16.5 | The dollar is damaged. |
| 0:19.6 | The money markets are damaged. There's no money anywhere, and we're not clear |
| 0:23.7 | that Wall Street can stay open. I'm just mentioning that that's at the same time that Elon Musk says, |
| 0:29.6 | I have enough money to make one more test if you can put it together. So very quickly, the whole |
| 0:35.2 | team gathers. This is very much, again, like Tom Swift, Jr. |
| 0:40.0 | We all gather together and we're going to build that rocket and go to the moon. |
| 0:43.5 | Okay, fine. |
| 0:44.4 | They have a limited amount of time. |
| 0:46.4 | They assemble the first and second stage, but they don't have the time that it takes to get it by barge out to omelac, which would take a month. |
| 0:55.7 | So how do they convince the Air Force to give them a C-17? |
| 0:58.8 | What's the magic, Eric? |
| 1:01.8 | The magic was they had contacts in the Air Force, and a guy named Brian Belty and others |
| 1:08.0 | were calling around to try to find a transportation. |
| 1:12.1 | And it was about half a million dollars for the trip. |
| 1:15.5 | But as you say, I mean, they didn't have four weeks to ship it out there. |
| 1:18.5 | They needed it there in days. |
| 1:19.7 | And so they were able to get a C-17 military transport hired. |
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