Liftoff
The Ars Technica senior space editor chronicles the first four historic flights that launched SpaceX, describing how, after three failed attempts, the fourth flight helped transform SpaceX from a shaky startup into the world's leading edge rocket company. Less than 20 years after its founding, SpaceX boasts the largest constellation of commercial satellites in orbit, has pioneered reusable rockets, and in 2020 became the first private company to launch human beings into orbit. Berger takes readers inside the wild early days that made SpaceX. Focusing on the company's first four launches of the Falcon 1 rocket, he charts the bumpy journey from scrappy underdog to aerospace pioneer. He draws upon interviews with dozens of former and current engineers, designers, mechanics, and executives, including Elon Musk. -- adapted from jacket
Stats for nerds
14recommend
21mentions
20people
2021–2026years
67% recommend24% neutral10% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- No it’s not on me to explain why. I’ve just been watching this company since 2008, and seen them break ahead of the competition and then stay ahead as they move faster than anyone else. I’m saying the historical trend line has that gap widening. That’s a statement of fact, no “why” involved.
If you want to know the why’s I suggest reading Eric Berger’s two books Liftoff and Reentry.
- The book the show is based on / related to, When heavens went on sale (by Ashlee Vance) is well worth a read, as are Liftoff and Reentry (by Eric Berger).
- Read Liftoff by Eric Berger about SpaceX. Musk is not an rocket engineer, but he was great at hiring engineers, motivating them, and willing to take risks in an field allergic to risk (for good reason, people die when planes and rockets crash.) most interesting to me was Musk’s management of their suppliers: he really streamlined the procurement process, which sped up development enormously. He was smart enough to understand what the engineers were doing and make decisions when they deadlocked, but he wasn’t the technical genius behind everything. Nothing wrong with that. In this day of specialization, he wouldn’t be human if he was doing all the technical work.
- "Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX" by Eric Berger documents how SpaceX employees poured their blood, sweat, and tears into launching a cost-effective rocket at a time when legacy operators dominated the space market with their costly cost-plus-fee contracts. This book mostly follows the journey of employees and (thankfully) doesn't resolve to Elon praise too much. There is a continuation to this book called "Reentry" but I haven't read it yet.
- >Some people are really fetishizing iterative failure - but just because you are wandering in the desert does not mean there is a promised land.
i guess you didn't follow the falcon 9 failures right? here's two minutes of failures https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
and guess what? they finally got it right and now falcon 9 is not only extremely reliable but quite cheap for everyone.
NASA (with the shuttle and saturn V) had a completely different idea on rocket development (and blue origin seems to follow their mindset), which is fine. but to say that this is "failure fetish" when spacex has an amazing track record is just hating for the sake of hating.
i would recommend, if you have the time, the book liftoff, by eric berger https://www.amazon.com/Liftoff-Desperate-Early-Launched-Spac... -- it was the book that opened my eyes to why spacex works like they do.
- Reentry by Eric Berger. It came out in October. It's a follow up to his book Liftoff from 2021. Great books for space nerds. Makes me really admire what Space X has accomplished while also eliminating any desire I had to work for them.
