MONETIZING LEO IS THE GENIUS. 1/4: Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2024
⏱️ 10 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 | This is a new book very important. |
| 0:05.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:08.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:10.0 | I welcome Eric Berger. |
| 0:12.0 | His new book, Very Important to Understand, Liftoff, is the Elon |
| 0:18.3 | Musk and the desperate early days that launched SpaceX. It is March 2006. We are on O'Malley Island part of the Marshall Aetols, |
| 0:29.5 | the Quadoline Aetol, part of the Marshall Chain String in the Pacific. We are standing there waiting for |
| 0:37.8 | a rocket called Falcon One to launch. Why we're there and who is there to watch this are the critical ways to understand |
| 0:46.3 | SpaceX's success. |
| 0:48.3 | Eric, congratulations and a very good evening to you. Thank you for this. |
| 0:51.8 | March 2006, what am I looking at that rocket |
| 0:56.5 | raised out there called Falcon 1? What is riding on this launch and who is watching it? |
| 1:02.1 | Good evening to you. Good evening. This is the very first test |
| 1:05.7 | launch of a SpaceX rocket. The company has put four years, they've gone as fast |
| 1:10.6 | as they can and they've reached this island in the middle of nowhere in the |
| 1:14.9 | Pacific Ocean to try to reach orbit on their very first attempt. |
| 1:19.4 | And so it's a skinny black and white rocket several stories tall with a single main engine in an upper stage |
| 1:25.7 | and they're about to ignite that engine. |
| 1:28.0 | They're about to ignite an engine called Merlin. |
| 1:31.4 | And what I learned from you Eric is that space exploration comes down to an |
| 1:36.4 | engine that's it everything else you can add on but you must build the engine |
| 1:40.8 | and that engine right now is to be tested in flight for the first time watching |
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