Falcon 1 Flight 4: How SpaceX Reached Orbit After Three Failures

On September 28, 2008, Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit. Engineers who worked on it describe a company that, before that flight, had seen three failures and was essentially out of money.

A David and Goliath story

No privately developed launch vehicle company had ever achieved Earth orbit; everybody had tried and failed. One engineer joined within the first year of the program and worked on designing and building Falcon 1. The team worked at a secluded site with only a launchpad, a very small hangar, an office trailer and an outhouse. They slept under the stars at times and called the experience "Survivor".

Three failures

The first failures were difficult for the team, who said they had blood, sweat and tears on the rocket. Flight 2 made it almost all the way to orbit, but the vehicle began spinning out of control once in space. Flight 3 went through stage separation, after which the stages came back and made contact. One engineer said that failure hurt the most. By then the company was essentially out of money.

A rush to fly the spare

The team had another vehicle ready and pushed hard to prepare it. They rented a C-17 to fly the first and second stages to Kwajalein, rather than spend three weeks on a barge. During landing, the crew heard a loud pop and saw that the first stage tanks had buckled. Team members thought it was the end of SpaceX.

Flight 4

The team still felt like underdogs with everything to prove and decided to fix the stage. Three weeks later came the first successful flight of Falcon 1. Even with the buckled stage on the way to Kwajalein, the rocket reached orbit, which gave the team confidence that they could get anything to orbit. One engineer called it a dream come true and said they felt validated and proud of the team for doing something many people did not think was possible.