SpaceX nearly died on board a C-17 jet above Hawaii.
In 2008, before the company successfully launched a single rocket, two dozen SpaceX engineers were transporting their Falcon 1 rocket to Hawaii in an Air Force jet. From there, a barge would carry him to the company’s launch facilities in the Marshall Islands for yet another launch attempt. It was the company’s last chance: if that failed, SpaceX would be lost.
But when the jet descended before landing, SpaceXers heard “a loud, terrible popping noise,” according to a new book by Eric Berger, journalist and senior space editor at Ars Technica. The rocket was imploding because of a pressure imbalance. Then Zach Dunn, one of SpaceX’s newest engineers at the time, crawled into his belly. His quick fix saved the company – and possibly his own life.
Berger’s “Liftoff” book describes this moment and other wild events from SpaceX’s early years – including the construction of a launch pad on a remote island, a riot staged by engineers trapped on that island without food and the struggle to send a rocket commercial in orbit.
SpaceX finally reached orbit using the rocket itself that almost crashed into the air.
SpaceX engineers faced an emergency mid-flight
As of September 2008, SpaceX was almost broke, according to Berger’s book. The company had failed in all its attempts to launch a rocket into orbit, so it was not winning any contracts. Musk was running out of money to inject SpaceX and Tesla, which were struggling with the start of the recession. SpaceX had enough resources for just one more launch attempt, the book said.
Musk gave his engineers six weeks for the last effort, Berger wrote. When they were ready to transport the California Falcon 1 rocket to the Marshall Islands, engineers huddled in the C-17 jet at Los Angeles International Airport. In the early hours of the flight to Hawaii, they cruised smoothly over the Pacific, leaning back in the cargo compartment seats around the rocket. Someone broke a guitar, according to the book.
But on the descent, loud pops and pings echoed through the cargo area as dents appeared along the rocket’s body. Engineers realized that their liquid oxygen fuel tank was not venting enough air to keep up with pressure changes as the jet descended.
The tank was basically “breathing through a straw,” wrote Berger.
As the pressure in the jet’s cargo compartment increased relative to the pressure inside the rocket’s fuel tank, the Falcon 1 began to collapse.
“The first thought I had was that this thing was going to implode and recover,” said Anne Chinnery, who was managing SpaceX’s launch operations at the time, Berger. “And it would kill all of us who were sitting next to the rocket in the airplane’s jump seats. So I jumped up and told everyone to go ahead of the rocket.”
Dunn, who joined SpaceX as an intern in 2006 and quickly ascended to become a propulsion engineer, was about to save the rocket, its engineers and SpaceX itself.
In the belly of the beast
An engineer asked jet pilots to fly higher, where air pressure was lower. But the pilots had enough fuel to go around the base just one more time before landing. According to Berger, this bought SpaceX engineers about 10 minutes.
They opened the plastic wrap around the rocket and found the C-17’s onboard tool kit.
Dunn told engineer Mike Sheehan to grab his ankles and pull him out if the rocket started to explode, according to the book. It moved to the Falcon 1 passage – the section between the rocket’s massive base, which propels it into the air, and the smaller section that remains in orbit.
In the darkness of Falcon 1’s belly, Dunn crawled toward the liquid oxygen tank, sharp parts of the rocket scraping its back. He reached a large line of pressurization for the fuel tank, twisted it to open it with a wrench, and heard the hiss of air flowing in, according to the book. So he called Sheehan to help him.
“Sheenhan interpreted this as a cry for help, pulling Dunn off the interstate through the tangle of pressure lines and valves,” wrote Berger. “It hurt like hell, but Dunn emerged to find that his efforts were worth it.”
The SpaceXers returned to their seats and the rocket began to inflate before them as the jet descended to Hawaii.
The launch of the rocket that saved SpaceX
Despite having survived the flight, Falcon 1 was damaged due to the implosion. With just a week off, Berger wrote that the SpaceX team rushed to dismantle it, replace the broken parts, repair others and reassemble the rocket.
Then, on September 28, Falcon 1 roared to life on Omelek Island, hoisted itself off the ground and ascended into orbit.
In the control room, the team members “just blew up,” Dunn told Berger. “We were absolutely wild. We were all jumping. Hugging each other. Screaming. It was a fair celebration,” he added.
SpaceX has proved that its rockets can leave the planet. After that, the company gathered enough contracts to maintain the flow of financing.
Dunn remained at SpaceX for another decade, eventually becoming senior vice president of production and launch. Last year, he left SpaceX to oversee manufacturing at Relativity Space, a startup that hopes to automate the rocket production process with 3D printing.
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