Elon Musk and the three rockets that failed

Elon Musk is one of the most controversial figures of our time, for his business dealings, his statements and his politics. This page deals with none of that and isn't praise of the person. It deals with one specific, documented episode: SpaceX's first launches.

The no

SpaceX was founded in 2002 with the aim of making access to space cheaper. The company's first rocket was the Falcon 1, small, liquid-fueled.

March 2006. On the first launch, a fuel leak caused an engine fire, and the rocket fell shortly after liftoff.

March 2007. The second went further, but also failed to reach orbit.

August 2008. On the third, a problem in stage separation made the first stage collide with the second. Another failure.

Three attempts, three failures. According to accounts of the company, the money was running out, and SpaceX came close to going under.

What they did

On September 28, 2008, less than two months after the third failure, SpaceX launched the fourth Falcon 1, assembled from the parts it had. It reached orbit. It was the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach Earth orbit.

Shortly after, in December 2008, the company signed a contract with NASA to carry cargo to the International Space Station. From there came the Falcon 9 and the rockets that land and are reused.

What's worth keeping is the sequence: the fourth launch only existed because the team treated each failure as data. The leak, the fuel sloshing, the collision between stages: each problem taught what to fix in the next.

What this has to do with Bairo

Bairo Leandro Gonzalez Martinez doesn't compare himself to anyone on this page, and this one in particular isn't about admiration for a person. It's about a count. At SpaceX, it worked on the fourth. In Bairo's story, it worked on the seventh.

He himself says he doesn't know for sure how many times he tried, thought about stopping and nearly gave up. Seven is the number he chose to tell the story, and he tells what each attempt left behind: a method, an eye for the future, proof that he could create from nothing, the lesson about whom to build with, the courage to do what he didn't know how to do. The seventh wasn't luck. It was the first that had all the others inside it.

Read: The seventh attempt · Fifty lives · No is the foundation of yes

Sources

• Falcon 1 (launch history): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1
• SpaceX (company history): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
• 2008 in spaceflight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_in_spaceflight
• NASA, Commercial Resupply Services (December 2008 contract): https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-resupply-services-overview/