Erik Nordeus - The Engineer

Elon’s favorite American president is Ronald Reagan, who was the president between 1981 and 1989. “I think Reagan was great,” Elon said. “Reagan was a smart man. The big difference between President Bush [George W Bush] and Reagan is that Reagan actually had strong intellectual underpinnings for his decisive actions. He read. He read a lot of books. He thought deeply about the subjects. And particularly prior to the stroke, his writings were actually quite smart.” 454

Because Elon believes in a small government, he was criticized when Tesla accepted a loan from the government. But back in 2008, we experienced the worst period since the Great Depression in the 1920s. When a company requires an enormous amount of capital, like a car company does, then he argued it made sense to accept a loan from the government. 340

What a government is good at is to fund basic research – not rapid advancement of technology. “To have things takeoff, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it,” Elon said. “The government was good at getting the basics of the Internet going, but it languished. Commercial companies took a hand around 1995, and then it accelerated.” 316

Like the Internet, the US government funded the basic rocket research, and now can private companies, like SpaceX, use knowledge from that time. “We’re standing on the shoulders of giants,” Tom Mueller said. “With the Apollo program they learned so much. And we can get access to all that. We use that tremendously. A private company in a vacuum could not do what we did.” 288

NASA and SpaceX are not competitors and Elon thought NASA is not responsible for the state of space being at the same level as in the 1970s. “The public is asking NASA often to have a perfect track record and a perfect safety record,” he said. “By driving this private space mission forward, I hope for changes for NASA, for it to receive a clear and pressing mandate for a human base [on Mars].” Because the government is not good at innovation and cost optimization, it’s better if NASA sets the goals. According to Elon, NASA should say, “This is what we need to achieve,” and then it’s up to private companies like SpaceX to figure out the best solution to achieve the goal. 286

It’s no longer possible to purchase payload on the Falcon 1 – SpaceX replaced it with a larger rocket. It may sound strange to first work for six years and spend all your money, and then just scrap the rocket when it’s finally ready. But SpaceX’s goal is not to just launch rockets – they want to do it cheaply. And to do it cheaply, they needed a larger rocket that could carry more cargo.

SpaceX planned to develop a Falcon 5 rocket with five engines in the first stage, thus the 5 in the name Falcon 5. But the Falcon 5 had the same size as another future rocket. The only difference between them was the amount of engines. So SpaceX decided to skip Falcon 5 and immediately begin developing Falcon 9.

The Falcon 1 is comparable to a smaller aircraft. But if the Falcon 9 was an aircraft, it would be a 747 Jumbo Jet. 52Higher than the Statue of Liberty, the Falcon 9 is an 180 foot [55 m] tall rocket. The rocket’s diameter and length were optimized in a way that a truck can transport the rocket on a normal road. SpaceX planned from beginning that astronauts would be able to fly with it in a capsule on the top of the rocket, so Falcon 9 had to be more reliable than Falcon 1. 288

Nine engines in the first stage led to criticism on what would happen if an engine is switched off after the launch. And what would happen if an engine explodes? Wouldn’t it be better to have fewer, but larger engines? During the space race, the Saturn V rocket had five engines in the first stage, and the Soviet version of the Saturn V, the N1 rocket, had 30 engines in the first stage. Because of the complexity with so many engines, the N1 failed four times, and the launches ended with a RUD [Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly is space-industry parlance for explosion].

But the Russian engineers improved N1’s engines after each failure. Just before they would have worked, the Soviet government canceled the program. They disassembled the remaining rockets and some parts became pigsties. But they kept the engines, and the American company Orbital Sciences would years later purchase them for use in the Antares rocket.

SpaceX designed the Falcon 9 to fly despite an engine malfunction. One engine can explode without affecting the other engines. Like in an airliner, a protective sheath enclose the engines, so a fire or explosion won’t affect the rest of the rocket. Depending on where the rocket is on its way to space, the Falcon 9 can lose three engines and still arrive to its final destination. “As long as you are very careful about ensuring that a problem with one engine cannot cascade into problems with another engine, more is actually better,” Elon said. 350

SpaceX moved the launch operations from the Kwajalein Atoll to Cape Canaveral in Florida, where NASA launched most of its historical rockets. Several companies are launching rockets from the same area. The area designated to SpaceX is the same as where the old Titan IV rockets launched until 2005. SpaceX leased Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station from the military. NASA is present in an adjoining area called Kennedy Space Center. The unfortunate astronauts of Apollo 1, who died in a fire, practiced at Space Launch Complex 34.

Due to safety and security reasons, a large area of Cape Canaveral is closed off from the public, but not from all inhabitants. Before the Space Shuttle landed after a mission in space, the largest problem was clearing the runway from alligators who improved their tan. There are more than fifteen varieties of endangered species watching rocket launches from the front row. 291

Close to the launch site, there’s a control room where SpaceX supervises the launch of the rocket. SpaceX decided to build the control room outside of the main gates to make it easier for civilian customers to follow their cargo’s journey to space. This control room shouldn’t be confused with the mission control room inside of the SpaceX factory where the rocket after the launch is monitored. 333

In a square around the launch pad, there are four large lightning towers protecting the rocket from lighting strikes. Next to the launch site there’s a sphere holding 100 000 tonnes of liquid oxygen. SpaceX bought the old sphere from a scrap yard for a dollar over scrap. 298

The Falcon 9 is assembled horizontally, so there’s no need for a vertical assembly building like the huge building seen in Cape Canaveral from miles away. The vertical assembly building used by NASA could fit four raised Saturn V rockets, and was so large that rain clouds formed below the ceiling on humid days. When the 30 tonnes heavy Falcon 9 rocket is prepared before launch, it lies on large dollies attached to a rail making it moveable by just four people. The rocket can also rotate around its axis, like when a chicken is barbequed, to make it easier for the SpaceXers to access all parts. When the rocket is ready to fly, two large cranes lift the rocket up to the transporter-erector vehicle. This vehicle carries the rocket to the launch site where it’s raised to a vertical position. 334

In the same way as we need both commercial and military airports, there’s a need for both commercial and military spaceports. SpaceX would like to launch rockets from three locations. The current locations are Cape Canaveral in Florida, which is an Air Force Base, and the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Because both launch sites belong to the military, it’s problematic to launch commercial cargo. The location of this new commercial launch site should be close to the equator. “South coast of Texas is the lead candidate for that third launch site,” Elon said. 408