SpaceX Guide to Engineering Excellence

Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the reusable rockets that ushered in the second space age. Author: Eric Berger. Bella Books; 400 pages; $31.95 and £26.99

The degree to which the Falcon 9 rocket developed by SpaceX dominates its competitors is unprecedented not just in space travel. This is more or less unprecedented in every field of human endeavour. In 2023, Falcon 9 will deliver more than 1,000 tons of payload into orbit, accounting for approximately 80% of the global total. While previous launchers rarely launched more than ten times a year, Falcon 9 now leaves launch pads in California and Florida about ten times a month. The Falcon 9’s first stage has been successfully reused after returning from space and landing on its own more than 300 times. No other orbital launcher has ever managed to accomplish anything like this.

“Reentry” by Eric Berger, senior space editor at news site Ars Technica, describes how this is accomplished. The ingredients that built Falcon 9 included good engineers, new forms of government support for spaceflight, a proactive culture and a very demanding boss (some of whom were consistent demands crucial).

The story begins in 2008. SpaceX’s first rocket, the Falcon 1, was small, cumbersome and uncommercial. By the time it finally reached orbit on its fourth attempt, SpaceX had exhausted nearly all the money the company’s founder, Elon Musk, had. In order for the company to have a future, it needs some big government contracts, and that requires a bigger launcher: Falcon 9, which requires linking together the nine Merlin engines that power Falcon 1.

That challenge fell to SpaceX’s first employee, Tom Mueller, who first developed the Merlin engine. His team’s efforts led to the first test launch of the Falcon 9 first stage in November 2008, which arguably saved the company. “We broke history, but Elon is still mad at us,” Mr. Mueller said. “Like everything else we’ve done, it’s a lot slower than Elon wanted, but a lot faster than anyone’s ever done it before.”

Mr. Berger’s book is filled with stories of impressive achievements achieved this way. It also makes it clear why people put up with things like this. Mr. Musk’s employees know that he really cares about building better rockets, that he’s taking huge financial risks, and that he’s fully committed. They knew he was always asking them to do things for less money and in less time. But they came to value his steadfast commitment to the overall goal of building a rocket that was essentially reusable and capable of flying every few days, even if it meant a seemingly impossible task.

Musk and SpaceX engineers share the same desire to build spacecraft that can change the course of history. Without that consistency, it’s hard to imagine his impulsive, intimidating front office achieving such results. Musk’s expectations for the social media company Uneasy political agenda. This is not a vision that inspires employees to achieve great things.

Since the start of 2022, SpaceX’s value has doubled to $210 billion (the value of X appears to have dropped by more than half during the same period). For employees, one of the costs of greatness is knowing that it is fleeting. Mr. Berger reported that the most successful senior managers adopted a strange fatalism when faced with Mr. Musk’s demands: No matter how much you deliver, no matter how well you manage expectations and teams, at some point you will Found myself unable to continue.

“Musk redesigned Falcon 9 within a few months in 2015,” Walter Isaacson said in a recent biography of Musk. Anyone who is skeptical of this will enjoy Mr. Berger’s book, which dismantles and redistributes the institutions that this quote locates. So narrow-minded. Anyone who takes Mr. Isaacson at face value should read this book to wake up. They will hear a fascinating story of how the extraordinary engineering was actually accomplished.

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