00:00In the early days it was very clear, it was like a David and Goliath story, you
00:07know, no privately developed launch vehicle company had ever achieved Earth
00:10orbit. Everybody tried and failed. I started within the first year of the
00:14program and we were designing and building Falcon 1. The rocket was out on
00:19Omelac. It was so cool to go to this secluded place for work. All that was
00:24there was the launch pad, a very small hangar, an office trailer, and basically
00:29an outhouse for a bathroom. We would sleep under the stars sometimes, have
00:33horrific sunburns sometimes. It was like Omelac Survivor we called it and we were
00:39right there next to the rocket and the launch pad. Living through the first few
00:45failures of Falcon 1 was really difficult. We literally had blood, sweat, and tears
00:50on that rocket and then to see it come back down so quickly it was heartbreaking.
00:54Flight 2 was disappointing because we made it almost all the way to orbit. We
00:58basically started spinning out of control once the vehicle was in space but then
01:02flight 3 was just so sad to basically go through stage separation and then have
01:07the stages come back and recontact. That one hurt the most. We were essentially out
01:11of money at that time. We had had the three failures but we luckily we had had
01:16another kind of spare vehicle ready to go. We pushed super hard to get that
01:20vehicle ready. We rented a C-17 to fly the first stage and second stage over to
01:26Kwajalein instead of taking the three weeks on the barge. When we were landing you
01:30know we heard a loud pop. We looked back and saw that the first stage tanks had
01:34sunken in. I think we thought for sure we were done. I think we thought that was the
01:39end of SpaceX.
01:40We still felt like the underdogs. We still had
01:45everything to prove so it was just like nope we're gonna fix it and we're gonna
01:48make this happen. Three weeks later I think we had the first successful flight
01:52of Falcon 1.
02:02It worked. We buckled the stage on the way to Kwajalein and we still managed to get
02:08that rocket to orbit so that gave us good confidence moving forward that we'd be
02:12able to get anything to orbit. For me it was like a dream come true because it was
02:16something that we had been working so hard for for years like since I started
02:19at SpaceX and that we had seen so many failures for. I just felt validated and
02:24proud of the team for doing something that I think a lot of people didn't think
02:28was possible.
Comments