HackerNews Readings: Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX

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the_dukeonMay 11, 2021

I can also recommend Liftoff by Eric Berger.

It chronicles the early days of SpaceX, including how the company almost failed.

adventuredonJuly 15, 2021

Liftoff is an an excellent book. Recommended for anyone interested in SpaceX or space in general. The writer's style is a bit dry, however it's a fun story regardless. The gritty insides of the early days of SpaceX are both what you hoped to read about and sort of crazy remarkable (like the elaborated story about the imploded Falcon 1 that was being transported by C17 and ultimately saved SpaceX from oblivion). People risked their lives to make SpaceX happen.

It reminds me of a bigger company version of Masters of Doom. Same hacker ethos driving those early days.

_MicroftonJuly 31, 2021

Too much money might be part of Blue Origin's problem to deliver. SpaceX did not have the luxury to take ages, they had to build a working rocket to be able make money or die otherwise.

I can only recommend Eric Berger's excellent book "Liftoff" to gain insights into SpaceX' way of working to get the Falcon 1 rocket off the ground and eventually into orbit. I cannot imagine Blue Origin having operated in a similar way at any point in their history.

wefarrellonJuly 15, 2021

I'm currently reading "Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days that Launched SpaceX" and I've become convinced that SpaceX's biggest accomplishment is convincing their customers (mostly the US government) to go along with their lean/agile development process.

At a high level everyone was aware that the way the government micromanaging the design/build of rockets with cost plus contracts wasn't sustainable, but the government bureaucracy that awards contracts is heavily entrenched in that mode of operation.