MONETIZING LEO IS THE GENIUS. 3/4: 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
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
1941
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelor. I'm with Eric Berger. |
| 0:08.0 | Elon Musk in the desperate early days that launched SpaceX his book Liftoff. |
| 0:12.0 | It is now 2007, the spring again, March of 2007. |
| 0:18.0 | We're back at Omelac Island. The crew is gathered again for the second flight. |
| 0:23.4 | There are some details, however, we need to introduce. |
| 0:27.0 | Eric, before we set the rocket up and light the candle, what is a slosh concern? What are the baffles for the second stage? |
| 0:36.7 | 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, |
| 0:46.8 | and the tank's empty, and you've |
| 0:49.1 | got to sort of somehow manage it to make sure |
| 0:52.0 | that the fuel keeps coming out and it's so you pressurize that |
| 0:56.7 | space and sort of it comes down. |
| 0:59.4 | And it's less of an issue with the first stage, |
| 1:03.1 | but when you get to the second stage, |
| 1:05.2 | you're in microgravity, so you don't have gravity |
| 1:08.0 | pulling down on the rocket, |
| 1:10.5 | to sort of pulling the fuel down toward the engine and especially the second stage is also going sideways relative to the surface there. |
| 1:18.0 | So one of the big debates they had at SpaceX before that second flight was on this second stage, |
| 1:26.4 | which takes off about three, you know, two and a half or three minutes after launch, do you need some |
| 1:30.8 | kind of mechanism there to help that fuel flow, propellant flow toward |
| 1:37.0 | the engine? |
| 1:39.0 | And that would have been Gervald, basically putting in slosh baffles. Now the challenge with that is it's it's there the |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.