Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Young Readers' Edition by Ashlee Vance

Author:Ashlee Vance [Vance, Ashlee]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2017-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

SpaceX built a mobile mission-control trailer, and Musk and Mueller used it to monitor the later launches from Kwaj. Photograph courtesy of SpaceX

Earlier in the day, Musk had tried to distract himself from the mounting pressure by going to Disneyland with his brother, Kimbal, and their children. Musk then had to race back to make the four p.m. launch and walked into SpaceX’s trailer control room about two minutes before blastoff. “When the launch was successful, everyone burst into tears,” Kimbal said. Musk left the control room and walked out to the factory floor, where he received a rock star’s welcome.

“Well, that was freaking awesome,” he said. “There are a lot of people who thought we couldn’t do it—a lot, actually—but as the saying goes, ‘the fourth time is the charm,’ right? There are only a handful of countries on Earth that have done this. It’s normally a country thing, not a company thing . . . My mind is kind of frazzled, so it’s hard for me to say anything, but, man, this is definitely one of the greatest days in my life, and I think probably for most people here. We showed people we can do it. This is just the first step of many . . .”

The afterglow of this mammoth victory faded soon after the party ended, and the severity of SpaceX’s financial trouble became top of mind again for Musk. SpaceX had the Falcon 9 efforts to support and had also immediately green-lighted the construction of another machine—the Dragon capsule—that would be used to take supplies, and one day humans, to the International Space Station. Historically, either project would cost more than $1 billion to complete, but SpaceX would have to find a way to build both machines for a fraction of the cost. The company had dramatically increased the rate at which it hired employees and moved into a much larger headquarters in Hawthorne. SpaceX had a commercial flight booked to carry a satellite into orbit for the Malaysian government, but that launch and the payment for it would not arrive until the middle of 2009. In the meantime, SpaceX simply struggled to make its payroll.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.