Falcon 1

And I found Alexander and the rest of our team here at Lace Off of pure genius and expert capability that we all share the same vision that there is another alternative and that's what we're creating.

Yeah, the industry, obviously, you can't really talk about space anymore without talking about SpaceX and the trail they blazed with Falcon 1 around 2008, 2009.

And then when Falcon 9 came along in 2010, it really ramped up in the early to mid 2000s and how... um it just made the ability to get very capable satellites into space significantly easier and um not too long afterwards another really great company called rocket lab appeared um out of new zealand and also now based on the u.s as well and um they tried to apply that to the segment of the market where falcon one was originally going to go which is smaller satellites um people who have a really great idea but can't necessarily afford you know or can't really justify uh you know a rocket like falcon 9 putting up you know you know 10 000 kilograms or more into low earth orbit people looking more in the couple of hundred range and uh they have been really successful with that platform as well so we took a look at the market and realized that uh there wasn't a whole lot going on in the more medium sector spacex kind of have their thing going on in the um The larger end, Rocket Lab, Firefly 1 and 2, really are going for that more, a little bit smaller side of things.

Companies overseas as well in Europe.

And rockets don't tend to have stages come back.

When I initially saw this clip, I thought, uh-oh, this is like the Falcon 1 issue where they didn't let the stage, you know, burn out for long enough.

But no, this was after it had been cruising for a long time.

There wasn't any residual thrust pushing these two stages back together as far as I can tell.

Boeing's comparable division had 50,000 people in it, and SpaceX had done it with just 500 employees.

So this rocket is the Falcon 1, and it reaches orbit on September 28, 2008.

And on December 23, NASA awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract for 12 space station cargo flights.

So that's December 23rd.

And so they tap customer deposits to help meet operating expenses as well.

But the company survives.

In 2010, SpaceX tries launching the Falcon 9, which is a much bigger rocket than the Falcon 1.

It's got nine engines instead of one, so much larger.

First, there were the rockets.

SpaceX's first rocket was called Falcon 1.

It failed its first launch in 2006, and failed again in 2007.

For the third launch on August 2, 2008, the rocket ignited and lifted off.

And just like that, the same PayPal mafia that had ousted Musk eight years earlier, eight years later, threw him a lifeline when he needed money the most.

The money had arrived, but the rocket still had to actually fly.

On September 28, 2008, the Falcon 1 launched for the fourth time.

This time, the rocket lifted off steadily, the first and second stages separated successfully, and it reached its intended orbit.

And I think that is the unbelievable gift that he will bring more even than what he's doing at the company level.

People forget back in 2008, he had had his third failure of Falcon 1.

He had zero capital left.

He was borrowing money to try and get a fourth flight of Falcon 1 going.

Tesla was near bankruptcy.

He was going through a divorce.

He's burning the chips.

Who has the cojones? burning the ships.

the narrative, the narrative takes you on a journey and, and the main character does change.

We have footage that had never been seen before of the launch four of the Falcon 1, you know, which was to be the, the decisive moment when he was finally able to, to prove to NASA that he had the capability of doing what he said.

And it's, it's a very exciting moment, and, and I think as, as a viewer and, and as a private citizen, I'm there rooting for him.

You know, these rockets are spectacular.