Elon Musk's Beginnings in Space - The Mars Society
Elon Musk's interest space travel and rockets began when he was young. However, closely after his thirtieth birthday he decided to follow his dream to have a direct impact on society's role in space. He moved to Los Angeles where the aeronautics industry would surround him. Los Angeles was favorable for aeronautics due to its mild and consistent weather. His first entrance into the aeronautical society largely present in Los Angeles was his attendance to a dinner hosted by The Mars Society. He donated $5,000, and then would go on to donate $100,000 toward a research facility proposed to simulate the environment in Mars that would be placed in a desert. He heard an idea to put mice in a capsule that would travel around Earth spinning, which would create the simulation of one third gravity, which is present on Mars.
However, Elon Musk is not one to make a simulation show the public an action; he wants to make it a reality. Elon Musk wanted to send mice to Mars itself. Unfortunately, Musk did not have much of a Mars Budget. As a result, he wanted to buy an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Russians. But, when Elon Musk went to buy the rockets for the launch, the Russians wanted payments far higher than Elon Musk was willing to pay. |
From Dreams to SpaceX
Elon Musk did what he does best - quantify and innovate. He created a spreadsheet detailing costs to build a rocket, and they undershot the cost of rockets from the Russians. However, Musk's goals had changed. He wanted to make a company that would build rockets. His plan was to use modest-sized rockets, which would carry supplies and research to space. Thomas Mueller, a recruit to SpaceX from TRW Space & Electronics helped Musk effectively quantify specifications on an engine for Musk's rockets. Rather than try to compete with Boeing and TRW in creating expensive rockets that would fly astronauts to the moon for NASA. Instead, Musk aimed at lowering the cost of travel to space and transport of materials.
In order to cut costs, SpaceX's first rocket was made from scratch. Everything was made in SpaceX headquarters. SpaceX esixted on the fundamental idea that its employees would work harder and more economically than any other company. His company was able to do multiple ignition tests with a gas generator in Mojave, California each day, which had never been done before. In addition, Elon Musk had good luck finding a testing sight for his rockets in the form of the test site that had already been made by Andrew Beal's company, which had collapsed earlier. The engineers testing the rockets were mostly young, and could both engineer rockets, and create the applications that ran those rockets. Musk's team was highly effective due to its independent ability. The workers under Elon Musk could be disgusted with the way that he disapproved of those that did not destroy their lives for his cause. However, those that turned did give their lives to the company felt empowered due to their control of large projects and by Elon Musk's work ethic, which could hardly go matched. SpaceX released its Falcon 1 Rocket right before going public. Space Exploration Technologies had to hire more and more engineers to keep the dream going as SpaceX increased in size rapidly. SpaceX also had to get around large companies such as Boeing because SpaceX represented possible competition. SpaceX ended up getting a launch site at Kwaj. When the Falcon 1 rocket finally launched in 2006, it failed because a b-nut that was supposed to connect a pair of tubes broke under the pressure of launch due to salt corrosion. Again in 2007, the new Falcon 1 rocket blew up. On SpaceX's fourth attempt at launch of the Falcon 1, it succeeded. Following the Falcon 1's success, the Falcon 9, a much larger rocket, succeeded in successful launches on the first two attempts; SpaceX had become a commercial success. |