SpaceX Revisits First Successful Launch To Orbit With Falcon 1 Rocket

Space.com

The Falcon 1 made history on September 28, 2008 by becoming the "first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit," according to SpaceX.  Hear from the team that made it happen.   Credit: SpaceX

Transcript

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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