Thread by @2youngBadazz

early spacex history:

im going to do my best to cover here the period of history between founding (~01) and the first successful launch of the falcon i (sept 08).

the sources will be mostly limited to whatever proquest turned up for these years, that is the only news database i have access to.

here is the first article i could find, introducing a fairly serious and believable version of the spacex myth.

so per the last article, founding of the company occurred in april 2002, and by december of that year there were 15 people on the team. i will go over as many of these as i can find in a moment.

this article contains a little more detail about the goals of the company: to cut the price of satellite launches roughly in half. the name of the rocket? the falcon. this is a point of interest, which will also be addressed later.

we also get a nice shout from jeb, and find out that the company is based near LA. lets take a look:

the headquarters was in a converted warehouse at 1310 grand in el segundo.

you can see that there are some interesting neighbors. only a few blocks away are an AFB, northrop grumman, and boeing. if we look down and zoom in, we can see there is also raytheon and the aerospace corporation (a trw spinoff)

if we zoom in to the north, we see that the boeing location is also surrounded by more raytheon

given the rest of the circumstances wrt spacex i think it is clear that it was a cutout project ran by the outsiders a few blocks east, with 'poaching' as a cover for reassigning employees to this project

back to the florida article. it mentions that rather than competing directly with boeing or lockheed for heavy launches, the falcon will compete for smaller launches against the pegasus.

cutting the price roughly from 20 million to 10 million. the story of the pegasus itself is interesting, here is some of the early press:

when its development was announced, the price of launch of the pegasus was supposed to be... roughly 6 million.

the pegasus, notably, was supposed to cut the launch price for small satellites. this being done to satisfy a darpa request for a small airplane-based launcher to launch satellites more responsively

and orbital itself was founded on a very similar premise to spacex, rely on outsourcing and parts that are already tested, make satellite launching cheaper, etc

so spacex's falcon was to compete with orbital's pegasus, the stories of the companies and the rockets themselves are curiously mirrored up to and including that the falcon too was developed with darpa backing - for a responsive rapid satellite launching initiative no less!

but what is really proof that the ruling class designs these plotlines to damage your brain is that the name of this darpa program, created in 2003, is also called falcon

now something that's come up in these threads before was the satellite slump of the post-dotcom era. this '03 article highlights that the big LEO constellation dreams are dead if not sidelined, making spacex an interesting bet.

at some point a comparison is due between the spacex history and the GWOT specifically wrt satellite launches, but there is a lot to cover so anything other than immediate spacex history will be followed up on later with this thread as reference.

also notable from this article is that even as early as march 2003 the plan was always to start with a small launch vehicle and branch out into heavier launches that would compete with boeing and lockheed.

here is another march 03 article describing the LEO goals of the company in full:

and a few more for good measure. the stated goal of the company could not be more clear: to revive the LEO sat industry and slash the cost of launch.

the second article introduces to us some new important locations: we see vandenberg afb and canaveral as launch sites, and a test facility in texas. the facility in texas is in mcgregor, and spacex purchased it from beal aerospace

beal is a company famous for failing to do what spacex attempted to do after it. it serves as a very important part of the mythology, and is referred to countlessly in these early spacex pieces.

lets take a moment and just indulge in this early spacex mythology, and one of the most notable aspects of this which until now hasnt been seen is the dream of becoming a multiplanetary species. this is supposed to be what *really* sparked elon to found the company:

and some elon himself mythology:

people love to talk about the mclaren

anyway a lot of this period of press is the same, restating the same plot, the same risks, etc. mike griffin pops up to weigh in even though he is now at inqtel and not yet nasa administrator. something i want to point out, about griffin, by the way,

wikipedia leaves the timeline of his career very obscured. if you read this, youd probably think he want from inqtel straight from nasa, and you wouldnt know when this happened. but thats not what happened

he went to inqtel more or less straight after *orbital sciences* where he'd been for 7 years, during the 90s LEO heyday, and he left there in 2001. i know i am harping on the griffin and orbital thing but yes it does matter

so i will harp on it a little more before we get back to 2003. the parallels between spacex and orbital go even further when you consider that orbital built the pegasus which it used to launch its own LEO communications network, which just like spacex is doing with starlink

all of which is just to say that i think its a strange rerunning of plotlines that isnt acknowledged as much as i would expect

one more comment on the elon mythology is that the dotcom era, amongst its myriad other functions, was crucial in inflating the current crop of 'billionaires' many of whom have played significant roles in post-crash space developments.

and a connection worth following up on later is that between zip2 and the hearst corporation, with WR Hearst III's dotcom era exploits in mind. he was ceo of the influential '@ home' network as well as partner with kleiner perkins etc. that is enough distraction for now

the early '15' employees of spacex are hard to pin down but some certains are:

jim cantrell,
jason andrews,
tom mueller,
chris thompson,
gwynne shotwell.

some likelys are:
tim buzza,
hans koenigsmann,
bob reagan,
kevin brogan,
mary beth brown.

to limit the already massive scope of this thread i will address these people separately.

by may 2003 the mars dream emerges in full, with 'manned mission to mars' as elon's driving goal - spacex as vehicle to fund mars exploration is definitely something that became stressed more and more as the psyop developed

by june 03 the company had 23 employees, and we see more and more exaggeration of the falcon i's launch price - 6 million has become 'less than a quarter' of the current launch price, which was again actually estimated at 15-20 million per launch.

spacex invested in a small satellite maker by jan 04, though this itself seems strange considering they had no viable rocket yet. this was the first mention i think i found of the inaugural payload for the falcon i:

or rather it was mentioned in oct 03. the payload was to be the tacsat i, a 'low-cost microsatellite' to help deliver sensor information to the battlefield via sirpnet. the projected launch date was march 2004. again very quick timeline that would not even come close to being met

in jan of 04 a *second* rocket was announced to carry somewhat heavier payloads, the falcon 5. meanwhile still no falcon 1.

the falcon 1 was littered with delays, from march to may and then later until at least 2005. the headlines during these lulls consist of a legal beef with northrop, which has some interesting aspects:

spacex says northrop has stolen its trade secrets while supervising falcon development, and northrop says *spacex* has stolen *its* trade secrets from former employees like tom mueller (formerly of TRW which recall was purchased by northrop in 2001 or so)

which to me indicates that indeed some useful work was farmed out to spacex and that there was some plausibly deniable mechanism in place for transferring knowledge back and forth

in feb '05 (by this time the northrop beef was squashed), darpa awarded spacex another (?) contract for rapid response launching and the goal was to launch during summer.

the launch site shifted to the kwajalein atoll which has a very interesting history wrt the strategic defense initiative

another spacex 'beef' in this era was between them and kistler aerospace, who developed a rocket in the 90s intended to launch the planned LEO constellations. kistler went bankrupt, and the contract was put on hold due to spacex' protest

it may be that work done under kistler was repurposed for the spacex operation, much as how beal's mcgregor site was repurposed.

again a theme here is that underneath an outer shell of revolving companies, fake billionaires transferring money around on paper, booming and busting, there is a stable and long term technological plan with a sharp degree of continuity

these antics and actors obscure the rate of progress, the work being done, the true reasons for starts and delays, etc as a kind of kaleidoscope

though the falcon i completed qualification testing in march, the launch was delayed until Q3 of 2005.

to reiterate the pressures of *darpa's* falcon program, their goal was to launch on a 24-hour notice and competitors included lockheed martin so it seems absolutely absurd for spacex to be involved though they had zero launch experience let alone the ability to meet the timeline

despite this they were given a 100 million dollar contract by the usaf towards the same or a similar goal to darpa's

and an agreement with NASA shortly after

by now the mars line was a key part of the elon narrative, coinciding neatly with gw bush's 2004 plan to get back to the moon by 2020 and from there launch manned missions to mars.

stretching the imagination to its limits, spacex announced *a third rocket* in september 2005, the falcon 9 - a true competitor in the heavy launch arena. the initial goal for this rocket was to supply the ISS

recall that the competition in heavy launch was boeing and lockheed. not exactly small fries! but by this time, in 2005, they had announced a joint venture to combine their heavy launch vehicles together - a United Launch Alliance.

naturally this triggered yet another fake beef between spacex and ula

surprising probably no one the falcon launch was delayed again until late november 2005. the falcon 1, launching the falconSAT, no relation to *either* the name of the spacex vehicle *or* darpa's falcon program because the first falconSAT launched in 2000.

the launch was delayed again til december,

yet people had no problems puffing the company up along with its prospective abilities to deliver payloads at absurdly cheap prices

finally, we get an origin story article in earnest recounting the moscow trip mentioned in the earlier threads. the origin of the origin story!

this article focuses on competition between spacex and microcosm - a much more believable space front company. another company to look into, another time.

by jan 06 any contention over the ULA venture was settled, personally i believe this entire absurd competitive narrative between any of these players to be more kaleidoscope.

spacex was to try to launch again in february...

only to fail to launch yet again.

elon himself does give some historical perspective on launch failures, though this is in 2006 and to be fair the rocket wont launch until 2008.

again, despite all of this they were able to ink even more falcon 9 contracts and announced yet another darpa mission to their launch table.

yet much more money was on the table: nasa announced a bidding for ISS resupply worth 500 million dollars

spacex was indeed awarded half of the contract, along with rocketplane kistler - the successor of the aforementioned kistler, aquired by rocketplane in 06

the aforementioned microcosm was struggling at this time despite again its phenomenal on-paper identity compared to spacex

but things arent always as they seem, despite all of the press and contracts the falcon i was delayed yet another time into february 07

and again til march...

around this time spacex moved its hq from el segundo to hawthorne. not as many interesting neighbors, though notably northrop was hq'd there.

in march they brought in a new vp, jeff ward who had worked in the sat company spacex invested in.

another failed march attempt in march as well. this article mentions kimbal's blog, just because there was so much to go through already ive left it out and will examine it separately but i thought this was a nice tidbit:

👍

spacex continued to make progress on the dragon and the usaf finds potential for the merlin engine - again this is important because it shows that for some of the tech developed, there were immediate military use cases beyond completed rocket devices.

its very easy to point the finger and yell 'psyop' but its imo very hard to try to pin down the exact goals and results, at this point just getting as much of the timeline established as possible will eventually help to this end.

by aug 07 things are looking good, the company was adding workers and was cash flow positive with a comfy cushion of launch contracts if it could get a rocket off the ground

the falcon 9 was coming along, and scheduled for first voyage in q4 08. the actual first launch was june 2010, so certainly spacex isnt done making estimates that are vastly earlier than the reality.

they picked up another nice falcon 9 contract to launch comms satellites into GTO, and completed a major design review milestone for the f9 with NASA. this was definitely a happy period for the company

what's more is that unlucky kistler (rpk) was booted from the COTS (iss resupply) program! leaving only spacex and opening up the remainder of rpk's funds.

note that theyve spent around 32 million dollars, i dont know the specific details of any of spacex's contracts but presumably they also are dripping in funds per various milestones

speaking of hawthorne i forgot about this, microcosm also has a factory there. not too surprising considering this whole area is aerospace central but worth noting.

dec 07/jan 08 saw more good news for the F9, but people need tension to be entertained so nasa made a statement re: the threat of having to buy russian rockets in case F9 should fail

in feb 08 orbital scooped the rest of rpk's money though i'm not sure how they are supposed to deliver the same results for ~30 million less than rpk originally had

in april spacex really outdid themselves: they picked up a nasa contract with the potential for a *billion* dollars in launches. nasa, now headed by griffin, truly kept spacex afloat during this initial period

here is their launch table as of roughly april 08. not bad indeed

this is a 2008 article describing the engineering of the dragon capsule, just adding it for the new name (andy ellison) for this early period

things were getting a little comfy for spacex, so another failed launch was due:

this is the one that elon talks about having them on the ropes, but regardless right after they got a nice boost from the founder's fund

though of course bad guy ULA has to gloat about it

but by the end of september, theyd done it! spacex made it into space. mentor mike griffin gives his approval, a true big movie finish to the first part of their saga

this thread is more rote documentation than analysis of any underlying conspiracy, but i believe getting everything down and in the same place will eventually pay off