“The Rocket Company That Almost Died Three Times”
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Title: Liftoff
Author: Eric Berger
Category: Technology & Innovation, AI, Data & the Future, Science & Discovery, Startups & Entrepreneurship
What if the company we now think of as inevitable almost died three times before it ever reached orbit? Sam and Sophie open Eric Berger's Liftoff with that question, and the answer is a dusty warehouse, a corroded aluminum nut, and a team that didn't know what was supposed to be impossible.
The episode walks through the three failed launches of the Falcon 1, including the fuel slosh that nearly ended the company, and the fourth launch in September 2008 that unlocked a $1.6 billion NASA contract. It then traces the Falcon 9 and Dragon era, the audacious quest to land and reuse a first stage, and the Demo 2 mission that returned American astronauts to space from American soil. Along the way, Berger's portrait of Musk is balanced: demanding, brutal, and relentlessly driven, but also the source of an uncompromising vision.
If you've ever wondered how a startup survives failure after failure, this episode is for you. The takeaway: SpaceX didn't just launch rockets, they launched a new era by treating failure as a necessary step, not an ending.
Liftoff by Eric Berger. For the full written summary, head to 7minutebooks.com/app, where you get unlimited access to over 6,000 fiction and nonfiction titles you can read or listen to in any language, plus infographics on many titles. It's $2.99 a month, $9.99 a year, or $19.99 lifetime.
Chapters
00:00The Surprising Origin Story00:41Three Failures And A Last Chance01:43Iterate, Iterate, Iterate03:06The Fourth Launch That Saved SpaceX04:27Landing Rockets And Reusability05:44Astronauts, Dark Side, Takeaway
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