00:00You all see on the countdown that Falcon 1 is airborne at this time.
00:04In the early days it was very clear, it was like a David and Goliath story.
00:07You know, no privately developed launch vehicle company had ever achieved Earth orbit.
00:10Everybody tried and failed.
00:12I started within the first year of the program and we were designing and building Falcon 1.
00:18The rocket was out on Omelec.
00:20It was so cool to go to this secluded place for work.
00:24All that was there was the launch pad, a very small hangar, an office trailer, and basically
00:29an outhouse for a bathroom.
00:31We would sleep under the stars sometimes, have horrific sunburns sometimes.
00:35It was like Omelec Survivor, we called it, and we were right there next to the rocket
00:40and the launch pad.
00:43Living through the first few failures of Falcon 1 was really difficult.
00:48We literally had blood, sweat, and tears on that rocket.
00:52And then to see it come back down so quickly, it was heartbreaking.
00:55Flight 2 was disappointing because we made it almost all the way to orbit.
00:58We basically started spinning out of control once the vehicle was in space.
01:02But then Flight 3 was just so sad.
01:05To basically go through stage separation and then have the stages come back and re-contact,
01:09that one hurt the most.
01:10We were essentially out of money at that time.
01:13We had had the three failures, but luckily we had had another kind of spare vehicle ready
01:18to go.
01:19We pushed super hard to get that vehicle ready.
01:21We rented a C-17 to fly the first stage and second stage over to Kwajalein instead of
01:27taking the three weeks on the barge.
01:29When we were landing, we heard a loud pop.
01:31We looked back and saw that the first stage tanks had sunken in.
01:36I think we thought for sure we were done.
01:38I think we thought that was the end of SpaceX.
01:43We still felt like the underdogs.
01:44We still had everything to prove.
01:46So it was just like, nope, we're going to fix it and we're going to make this happen.
01:49Three weeks later, I think we had the first successful flight of Falcon 1.
01:58It worked.
02:04We buckled the stage on the way to Kwajalein and we still managed to get that rocket to
02:09orbit.
02:10So that gave us good confidence moving forward that we'd be able to get anything to orbit.
02:13For me, it was like a dream come true because it was something that we had been working
02:17so hard for for years, like since I started at SpaceX, and that we had seen so many failures
02:22for.
02:23I felt validated and proud of the team for doing something that I think a lot of people
02:27didn't think was possible.
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