Perfection of Rebirth

Chapter 605 Musk in trouble
While Guanghui Group's business was booming, some people across the Pacific Ocean were facing a trough in their lives.

The Republic of the Marshall Islands, an island country that 99.9% of Chinese people have never heard of.

It is about 3200 kilometers southwest of Hawaii and about 4500 kilometers southeast of Tianchao Shanghai, with a land area of ​​181.3 square kilometers and a population of about 6.2.

Historically, the Marshall Islands were successively occupied by Spain, Germany, island countries, and the United States. Its predecessor was one of the four political entities in the Pacific Islands Trusteeship managed by the United States.

Kwajalein is one of the more obscure islands beneath the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Its land area is only 15 square kilometers, but the area of ​​the lagoon is 1684 square kilometers, with a population of 4250. It is the US naval and air force base and anti-missile base.

Two years ago, SpaceX's 30-person team spent months remodeling the launch pad on the palm-fringed island.

The office was converted from a double-width trailer.

Since there are no roads on the island, the engineers used the methods of the ancient Egyptians to transport the rocket and its supporting structure. The high temperature and high humidity of the jungle operation is very exhausting. The workers would rather sleep here than go back to the main island through the rough sea.

On March 2006, 3, the "Falcon 24" was launched, and Musk wore shorts and flip-flops to watch the launch process in the control room.

About 25 seconds later, a fire broke out above the Merlin engine, the rocket suddenly began to spin, and finally fell out of control and fell to the ground. The satellite equipment carried by the rocket smashed the roof of the workshop.

A year later, on March 2007, 3, SpaceX launched its rocket here again.

"Is everything ready?" Musk asked the launch team standing in front of the monitoring room.

"Everything is ready to launch when entering the window time."

The so-called window time means that within this period of time, events or things can be processed or reacted to.

For example, the window time for satellite launch refers to the period when the weather conditions are good and the launch is allowed, which is called window time.

On Kwajalein Island, because there are more window time options for satellite launches every year, it was selected as the rocket launch center.

“9！8！7！……3！2！1！”。

"emission!"

Falcon 1 leaps from a palm-fringed launch pad and heads into space.

"The rocket successfully disengaged from the landing gear".

"Track monitoring starts".

"Successful disintegration of the first stage rocket".

"Second stage rocket successfully ignited".

Watching the rocket continuously fly into space on the monitor, the tense nerves of everyone in the monitoring room began to relax.

"Eron, we're going to make it!"

"I failed once last year, and now I am finally going to succeed."

"We will become the world's first private enterprise to successfully launch a rocket."

"Finally, I can confidently seek venture capital financing."

"I think we're going to be famous."

The employees around Elon Musk began to talk about it.

Some enthusiastic staff even brought out the champagne, ready to celebrate.

"Rocket starts to swing"!
"Huh? Are you going to change track?".

"No, it's not time yet."

"The swing is more intense".

"What happened?".

"Ah! Not good, the rocket began to shake violently."

……

"Finished".

"Failed again?".

"How could this be?"

I saw on the monitor screen that the rocket had exploded and exploded with fireworks.

This firework stung the hearts of all SpaceX employees and made Elon Musk's situation even more difficult!
The failure was a fatal blow to SpaceX engineers.

It took them nearly two years to travel back and forth between California and Kwajalein. Even if the next launch is successful, it will be four years after Musk’s original goal.

Musk's wealth accumulated through the Internet industry will soon be spent.

Everyone inside the company knew that SpaceX only had enough money for 1-2 more launches.

It is difficult for SpaceX, which has not succeeded once, to obtain financing.

Although the venture capital money is sometimes spent very capriciously, it is not blindly throwing money.

"Immediately arrange personnel to analyze the cause of the rocket out of control and prepare for this launch."

Although Elon Musk was also very depressed, after a few minutes of relief, he quickly adjusted his emotions.

Back then, when Musk pointed to space, his friends thought he was crazy.

In 2001, Musk had just entered his thirties, broke away from the intrigue of PayPal, and started a new chapter in his life.

Although this failure has cast a shadow over the company's development, it is nothing compared to the nuts we encountered before!
At the beginning, with Musk's budget of 2000 million to 3000 million, he couldn't even complete the rocket launch, let alone think about other things. He could only afford Russian rockets.

So at the end of October 2001, Musk personally went to Russia to investigate how much money it takes to launch a rocket.

In the following four months, they met with the Russians three times. The process was very difficult. The other party had no sincerity in doing business, but just wanted to make a fortune from him, an Internet rich man, so Musk left Russia angrily. .

On the plane back to the United States, Musk sat silently in the front row, fiddling with his computer.Suddenly, he turned around, showed a spreadsheet he made, and said to his colleagues: "Brothers, I think we can build our own rockets."

It turns out that in the past few months, Musk has used professional books such as "Rocket Propulsion Principles", "Astrodynamics Basics", "Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion Aerodynamics" and other professional books to study the aerospace industry and its background. physical principles.

Sometimes, the difference between a genius and an ordinary person is greater than the difference between a person and a dog.

He came to a conclusion - it is also possible to make rockets by yourself, and it should be cheaper than Russians.

So, in June 2002, SpaceX was established in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

The company executives hired by SpaceX can be described as an all-star lineup, including excellent engineers and managers from Boeing, JPL, and TRW. These people were restricted by various rules and regulations in the previous company and could not work freely.

Musk set an almost crazy timetable for the rocket launch plan-two rocket boosters were built in May and June 2003, the rocket fuselage was built in July, everything was assembled in August, and the launch pad was ready in September.

The first launch took place in November 2003, 11 months after the company was founded.

At the time, Musk had received a sum of money from eBay's acquisition of PayPal, and he poured more than $1 million into SpaceX.

However, these budgets are only enough for 3-4 launches, and once a series of failures occurs, it is impossible to start all over again.

Now it has encountered two failures in a row. Although it cannot be said that the company has reached the stage of life and death, the funds are already very tight.

"It is necessary to meet those interested investors again," Elon Musk thought to himself.

(End of this chapter)