SpaceX Celebrates 15 Years Since Falcon 1's Historic Launch To Orbit Amid Challenges

Elon Musk‘s rocket manufacturing company SpaceX reminisced its first successful launch to orbit on Thursday.

What Happened: “15 years ago today, Falcon 1 was the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to reach Earth orbit,” SpaceX wrote on X, formerly Twitter. The post was adjoined by a nearly 2:30-minute long video of the team recounting their experience of living in the secluded Omelek island during the rocket’s development, the multiple failures to launch and subsequent success.

The short video featured VP of Human Resources Brian Bjelde, Senior Propulsion Engineer Flo Li, and VP of Customer Operations and Integration Jessica Jensen.

“All that was there was a launch pad, a very small hangar, an office trailer and basically an outhouse for a bathroom,” Jensen recounted from the team’s time at Omelek.

SpaceX attempted its first launch in 2006 which failed. It failed again in March 2007 and then again in August 2008. After three consecutive failures to launch, the team was low on cash but had a spare vehicle, Bjelde said. The team worked on it and eventually, the first successful launch came in the second half of 2008— on Sept.28.

“For me it was a dream come true because it was something we had been working so hard for, for years…,” Li said.

Why It Matters: “If the fourth one had not succeeded, SpaceX would not exist. It was a very close call,” Musk previously said regarding the onset of SpaceX.

SpaceX has completed 267 launches in total thus far.  In 2020, it completed 26 launches, 31 in 2021, and nearly doubled to 61 last year. For this year, Musk has pegged the total number of launches expected at over 90.

Photo by Sundry Photography on Shutterstock

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