CHAPTER 10
IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL
As Thanksgiving approached in 2017, a crowd gathered at SpaceX. Cameras flashed. iPhones were held high to capture what was coming … a truck. A freight-hauling, fully electric truck that looked as if it materialized from the future. The driver’s seat sits in the middle of the cab. Its aerodynamic design actually had people cheering—about a truck. The semi came to a stop, and Elon stepped out to a rock star’s welcome.
Preaching to the crowd, Elon zipped through the Tesla Semi’s stats. It could go zero to sixty in five seconds with just the cab and trailer. Fully loaded with eighty thousand pounds, the semi could still go from zero to sixty mph in twenty seconds. Other traditional truck models can’t get anywhere near that. We’ve all seen it a million times. As your car tries to enter the highway, you get stuck behind a semi that’s slowly accelerating to highway speed—it feels like slow motion. It takes a loooooong time. And not only was the Tesla truck powerful, it could also travel five hundred miles at highway speed on a single charge.
Tesla Semi. (Photo by Korbitr.)
After Elon wrapped up his presentation on the semi, he ordered the truck offstage and started to shake hands with people in the audience. The event seemed to be over. But then the sophisticated lighting design that gave the event such a big feel suddenly went dark. A red beam shone out from an oversized video screen. An animation began to play, and then you could see it. A view of the back of the semi’s trailer. The door opened. The smoke of dry ice oozed out. Headlights lit up. And the semi’s cargo was revealed to wild applause and cheering: a new, reimagined Roadster. This one, Elon said, would be available in 2020.
Elon’s announcement made headlines around the world. At the same time, another story was brewing at Tesla: trouble producing the Model 3. The Model 3 had always been a big part of Tesla’s business plan and was critical to Tesla’s overall success as a company and its world-changing mission.
As cofounder Marc Tarpenning has explained: “Tesla had to come in at the high end. It was the only place with enough margin to play with. And that’s why as Elon has pushed for the Model 3, that’s the next big wave. ’Cause this is going to bring down the price to that of more like an Audi A4, which is going to enable hundreds and hundreds of thousands more people to be able to afford that—millions more people in the world. Ultimately we want to get electric cars everywhere. And it’s going to be a tipping point. As they drive those prices down, as we understand the technology better, there is going to be a moment where everyone just goes, ‘Oh, of course, I am going to drive an electric car.”136
Tesla’s Model Y. (© Tesla Motors Inc.)
Also announced with great fanfare early in November 2017, the Model 3’s base price started at $35,000. Customers could reserve one with just $1,000. And it was said to be available immediately after preorders were delivered.
The goal? Produce twenty thousand Model 3s a month by December 2017. That date came and went, and only 260 Model 3s had been delivered. Elon assured the media that production would hit fifteen thousand cars a month by early 2018. But that date also came and went.
39A
Meanwhile, the engineers at SpaceX had been working for years on a more powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy. And in the winter of 2018, the world was watching Launchpad 39A. Part of the launch complex at Cape Canaveral, Florida, this was the spot where the Apollo astronauts blasted off on their way to the moon. This launchpad had sent space shuttles soaring.
But on February 6, 2018, it was SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy that stood atop the historic launchpad. The most powerful rocket on the planet was ready for its first flight.
Falcon Heavy. (© SpaceX.)
The mission? A successful launch into orbit, release a test payload (usually a block of concrete), then land all three boosters back on Earth.
Crowds gathered at the nearby Kennedy Space Center. Cars and thousands of people lined the roads and highways, jockeying for a place to watch history. The media took up their positions to offer live coverage. Whether gathering near the launch site, watching on television, or streaming online—millions upon millions of people watched the countdown dwindle to the single digits.
Humans were about to try do something otherworldly. And this enormous, years-long effort was not being led by a government agency, as all earlier space milestones had been. No, this effort was led by a private company. This effort was being led by a man with an even bigger vision of getting to Mars. This launch could be a huge accomplishment just by itself, but it also could be a huge leap toward a bigger space exploration dream.
Elon was in the control room, once again. And once again, everything was on the line. But with a much bigger audience. In fact, it was one of the most widely streamed live events in the history of YouTube.
National Geographic crews captured Elon’s nerves. Hunched over, looking at the flight computers, he saw that all systems were green. In the final ten seconds, his eyes are focused, his mouth hanging open. Three. Two. One. He lifted his head to see what everyone else sees.
Falcon Heavy unleashed billowing clouds of dust, smoke, and flame as it raced toward space, shaking the ground below.
“That thing took off,”137 he said, in near disbelief. He ran outside; everyone around him screamed or laughed out loud in utter amazement.
Falcon Heavy launch. (© SpaceX.)
Hand on his head, Elon smiled from ear to ear. The side boosters, fitted with cameras that were live streaming, had separated from the spacecraft and were making their way back to Earth.
Then they landed. Simultaneously.
The screaming from the crowd was off the charts. People cheered. People cried. Never had anyone seen anything like it.
Meanwhile, in orbit, the fairing or cargo bay was preparing to release the payload, but this wasn’t a boring old block of concrete. Instead … when the fairing separated, the world met Starman, the spacesuit-clad mannequin driving Elon’s very own shiny red Tesla Roadster. The radio was playing David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and, in large friendly letters on the dash, were the words DON’T PANIC, straight out of the pages of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Elon had also sent Isaac Asimov’s three Foundation books along for the ride—stored in the glove compartment on an optical disk made of quartz.
The phrase “Don’t Panic,” a nod to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on the Roadster’s dashboard. (© SpaceX.)
Earthlings went crazy for the image. Starman had a live camera feed that broadcast a view of the mannequin driving the car, that blue marble behind him until he was too far out in the solar system to transmit the signal. The image made most front pages around the world the next day.
Starman and the Tesla Roadster in space. (© SpaceX.)
Just as Elon originally intended to do with his green leaves on red Martian soil, that image captured the world’s imagination. Space exploration was suddenly exciting again, and all along, Elon had been working on “the way.” Imaginations captured, technology developing, everyday people began talking about when humans would get to Mars.
Remember back in 2006 when SpaceX hadn’t even had a successful launch yet? That’s when NASA, due in large part to Gwynne Shotwell’s efforts, awarded the company a contract to develop a spacecraft capable of delivering cargo to the International Space Station. And remember that $1.6 billion contract two days before Christmas in 2008? That was for twelve resupply flights to the space station. Those contracts allowed SpaceX to build Dragon, the cargo capsule, and Falcon 9, the rocket powerful enough to launch it into orbit.
On May 25, 2012, SpaceX made history when Dragon became the first commercial spacecraft to dock at the space station. “It looks like we’ve got us a Dragon by the tail,”138 NASA astronaut Don Pettit said as the station’s robotic arm reached out and grabbed the capsule.
Dragon attached to the International Space Station. (© SpaceX.)
Astronauts are preparing to ride Crew Dragon in the future. SpaceX designed the capsule to carry people as well as cargo, and the first crew of astronauts is already in training. They must learn not only how to fly it, but how to handle any emergencies. Dragon’s first crew will be NASA astronauts Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins, Bob Behnken, and Doug Hurley.
Dragon leaving SpaceX headquarters. (© SpaceX.)
This program became all the more critical in the fall of 2018 when a Russian Soyuz spacecraft experienced a rocket failure, 119 seconds after launch. Fortunately the emergency abort system kicked in and jettisoned the crew capsule away, and the astronaut and cosmonaut were unharmed. At the time, Russian spacecraft was the only way to get people to and from the space station. The pressure was on for SpaceX to get the Dragon crew ready and quick.
Dragon splashdown. (© SpaceX.)
The first U.S. astronauts who will fly on American-made commercial spacecraft to and from the International Space Station, from left to right: Suni Williams, Josh Cassada, Eric Boe, Nicole Aunapu Mann, Chris Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Bob Behnken, Mike Hopkins, and Victor Glover. (© NASA.)
On March 2, 2019, Elon faced reporters, barely able to compose himself. Crew Dragon had just completed its successful demo launch and docked successfully with the International Space Station. Among the other cargo on board was “Ripley,” the sensor-covered dummy dressed in a SpaceX space suit, named after the main character of the sci-fi movie Alien. The successful mission, Demo-1, not only paved the way for a launch with live astronauts on board, but also proved that NASA can rely on an American company to get to space—instead of the Russians.