Avionics News August 2022 - 34

THE BILLIONAIRES BEHIND COMMERCIAL SPACE
Continued from page 33
The plan was to launch the first Falcon 1 rocket into orbit
Brian Bjelde joined SpaceX at the fledgling age of 23.
He was happily ensconced at the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration's prestigious Jet Propulsion Lab,
earning $60,000 a year while NASA paid for his graduate
studies in aerospace engineering. He was lured over for
a supposed tour of the empty SpaceX factory, which was
actually a job interview. There, he met Musk.
The first question Musk asked him was, " Do you dye
your hair? " Berger, a space journalist, recounted how Musk
often tried to throw people off-kilter during
a job interview to see how they would
react. Bjelde asked if this question was
an icebreaker. They laughed, and Musk
said, " No, your hair is darker than your
eyebrows. " Bjelde became employee
No. 14 and is today director of human
resources at SpaceX where 9,000 people
work.
Many of the new hires didn't know
whether to believe Musk or not about
Mars. Some with good jobs at NASA
like Bjelde were working on smallscale
projects. He realized the big-time
opportunity represented by SpaceX. He
could switch jobs and help design the first
big new rocket engines and related systems
being developed in decades in the United States.
Bjelde's first day on the job involved little in the way of
in-processing. He reported right away to his cubicle where
he was told to design a rocket self-destruct system from
scratch. It was supposed to cost less than anything else like it
ever invented in America. Meanwhile, Boeing and Lockheed
Martin were using Russian-designed and built rocket engines
to launch satellites under contract to NASA.
Musk was interviewing all the job applicants because
he was looking for people with the right stuff who would
never say, " Sorry, this can't be done. " He seemed to know
who those people might be even if they didn't realize it
themselves at the time of the interview.
This book gets the rocket science right, and the
storytelling is superb. Berger is a highly qualified reporter
on space technology and operations. He has an astronomy
degree and is a certified meteorologist, so he is no stranger to
honing on the technical details that matter.
34 avionics news * august 2022
from Vandenburg Air Force Base to carry a satellite into
orbit. The Air Force allowed SpaceX to refurbish a dormant
Vandenburg launch pad with Musk investing millions of
dollars on the facility. As progress was being made on
building the Falcon 1 and its main and second-stage rocket
engines, the Air Force said the launch would have to be
delayed until a classified Pentagon payload was launched
from a nearby pad. The Air Force had no idea when this
mission would launch, and SpaceX would face bankruptcy
if it waited too long.
In 2003, Musk decided to move the Falcon 1 launch
operation to Kwajalein Atoll located about
2,100 nautical miles southwest of Hawaii.
The U.S. Army runs the Ronald Reagan
Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site there,
monitoring launches from Vandenberg.
SpaceX would have tiny Omelek island
all to itself. The company could erect a
Falcon 1 rocket there and launch it while
controlling it from a bunker on a nearby
larger island. SpaceX workers would
live in spartan conditions either in Army
quarters or camping out on the tiny launch
island.
The Kwajalein phase of operations
is one of the most exciting chapters in
SpaceX history. It took four tries to get a
Falcon 1 rocket with a payload into orbit
while time and money were running out.
On the first launch in 2006, the main engine caught fire
and stopped running in midflight, and the Falcon 1 crashed
into the ocean. On the second attempt, a year later, a single
bolt on a fuel line that had corroded in the moist tropical
air failed, and the rocket exploded. Rocket science is hard
enough to get a massive amount of thrust out of an engine in
a short period of time. But even a single faulty bolt can ruin
your day. On the third attempt in August 2008, the Falcon
1 first stage finished firing and separated from the second
stage. The first stage then kept going and hit the second
stage and sent it tumbling to destruction.
Getting the only remaining Falcon 1 rocket from
California to Kwajalein involved a nearly disastrous ride
on a chartered C-17. The rocket was damaged severely
as it was rapidly depressurized during the C-17 descent
approaching Hawaii.
Kwajalein SpaceX workers frantically disassembled and
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