It's summer,
and it's time for another interview that can stand and carry itself.
And he can do it,
Hans.
Sure.
A few weeks ago,
I led a conversation at Saab,
where we talked to Hans Königsman,
space engineer,
system specialist,
and one of the key people behind SpaceX's success.
Yes.
He was the fourth person to be employed in the company.
And together with three colleagues and a credit card,
they started.
It's an exciting story.
My name is Marcus Pettersson.
My name is Susanna Levenhout.
And you're listening to
Have We Gone to Mars?
I almost two decades worked his king's man on SpaceX as vice president of build and flight reliability.
He has been with and constructed rockets from the ground,
easy fire and developed the reuse technique that has actually changed how the world sees space travel.
And he has failed.
Blown rockets,
lost parts.
And from all this,
he learned how to build something that actually holds.
From Falcon 1 to Falcon 9.
And in connection with the fact that he was in Sweden,
we of course agreed to talk to him.
And I think we'll start from the beginning.
Hans,
how did you end up at SpaceX?
So,
I got a call.
I was in the kitchen.
I picked up and Elon was on the other line.
Asked if I'm interested in working with a new company and I said yes.
And how did Elon get your number?
Longer story.
So
I ran into him a couple of weeks before that.
We met at the amateur rocket weekend in Mojave.
And
I guess I just shook his hand and introduced myself or something like that.
And then he heard my name from two other people.
And then he thought,
well,
maybe I give the guy a call.
And then so after I said yes,
he came by and interviewed me really.
So he actually did.
I mean,
it's pretty known that this.
interview was at my house.
So
I sent everybody away and then I had a two-hour interview with Elon.
And how big was SpaceX at the time you got this call?
They were...
three people and with me there were four people and i say we were four people and a credit card we did have the money basically that's what i'm saying so you had four four people a credit card and an id what was the id that from the beginning so from the beginning elon wanted to um make
humanity interplanetary or basically go to mars i think that's what it what it translates to and um the their first action was to basically develop a rocket
A small one,
but that's what we could do.
We could barely do that with the money that we had.
And then basically build a bigger rocket after that,
and then build a bigger rocket after that.
And if you look back,
I mean,
that's kind of what SpaceX did,
exactly.
Build a small rocket,
Falcon 1,
build a bigger rocket,
Falcon 9,
then build an intermediate big rocket,
which is Falcon Heavy,
and then building the really big rocket now,
which is
Starship. Yes,
and...
In the beginning,
when you got this call and you talked to Elon and he told you he was going to Mars,
basically,
this vision,
was it science fiction or did it feel realistic?
I mean,
of course it was science fiction and crazy at the time.
But on the other side,
I mean,
here's a guy who actually puts some money on the table and wants to build a rocket.
I mean,
who's gonna,
you know,
look at the details here?
Right,
the big picture was definitely the right thing.
So if you work in the industry,
and the way this usually works is you write long proposals and half of them gets denied,
and then you end up with a tiny,
small amount that never is big enough to actually do what you want to do.
And so here's somebody who privately wants to spend his money.
And if he wants to go to Mars,
that's a nice mission in the long run.
But obviously,
I was actually more interested in just getting a small rocket.
with a small number of people worked out.
Can you actually do that?
Can you build a rocket with 200 people?
That's what I was interested in.
Yeah,
and can you take us through the process from that first day of work to the Falcon 1,
if you start there?
Yeah,
I mean,
the first thing we did is start working on the engines,
start working on the gas generator.
I think within a couple of weeks,
we were firing gas generators,
which is the power source for the pump.
And I tried to build a computer so that we can
control the gas generator,
basically.
Yeah,
we were pretty much into hardware right away.
It's interesting.
I mean,
the other side of this is you're mostly busy hiring people.
That's your main job and so my main job was actually hiring people for for the avionics and software and flight safety and guidance and control department.
So how long did it take from day one till the first rocket could be launched?
Let's see we started out in 2002,
I started actually in May,
May 2002 and we had the rocket ready to launch in
March 2006.
It feels pretty short now,
but it was a long time then.
It's amazing.
It's four years.
Well,
I mean,
still four full years.
I mean,
it's like 1,200 days,
right?
Yeah,
no.
I mean,
there's obviously lots of engine development in there.
You get to build the structure,
which is big.
And then all the electronics,
software,
everything.
We did everything pretty much ourselves.
We didn't buy many things.
And why?
It's just hard to get and most of the stuff is too expensive.
The whole problem with space is actually cost.
And if you do buy components,
you're not helping your cost.
Vendors in many cases,
they...
I mean,
they want to help you and sell something,
but fundamentally they just want to sell you something.
And so they're not necessarily completely aligned with you.
And they don't care about Mars.
And so at the end of the day,
we figured if we build stuff ourselves,
like the engines we built,
we build ourselves.
And so we only bought things early on that we really could not do right away.
would have taken too long.
But then later on,
we actually changed those components too.
And now we pretty much,
or now they pretty much,
build everything that goes in the rocket.
I will continue with that.
But I guess because you said something interesting there,
that the suppliers or the companies you went to,
they didn't aim for Mars or they didn't think about Mars.
Did all the people at SpaceX think about Mars?
Not on a daily basis,
but like,
does this get to Mars?
Does this get us to branch faster is a thing and is something that people would say every once in a while.
Do you think that helped the culture on the company doing it fast?
Definitely.
I mean,
number one,
it kind of tells you,
puts you in a working perspective.
I mean,
you're working on something really little and you want to get to a really big thing,
so you better hurry up.
So
I think that's the main thing,
right?
And then also it keeps people motivated.
Going to Mars is a big thing.
Nobody has done this.
I mean,
it's not true.
People have gone to Mars.
JPL has launched multiple spacecraft going to Mars,
yeah?
But no private company,
per se,
has done that.
So on the private level,
that is definitely a new thing.
And so you better get your work done quicker.
Okay,
so back to where we were.
You were developing,
you were building your stuff yourself,
and then we got to Falcon
1 and the first launch.
Can you take us from there until the first one that succeeded?
Yeah,
I mean,
the first one,
the first Falcon 1 had a fire in the engine bay.
It burned through a couple of pneumatic lines and then the engine went out and it came down after 28 seconds of thrust and exploded pretty much on the reef.
We were launching from a small island in the
Marshall Islands.
The atoll is called Kwajalein,
the island is called Omelak.
We launched from there.
where we were basically
getting the debris together on the next day.
It wasn't a great day.
A year later we tried again and we failed on the upper stage control.
There was a wobble,
it was a control problem basically.
Vehicle spun out of control and landed like 2500 kilometers downrange.
Still no orbit.
The third run
We had a new engine which turns off in a different way.
And so we shut down the first stage,
we separated the stages,
and then the first stage came back and hit the second stage.
Not good.
And then the next one we just changed the timing on the stage separation.
And that one actually went to orbit two months or...
Yeah,
close to two months later,
after the third failure.
And so suddenly we were the first liquid commercial vehicle in orbit,
which was a big deal.
And what year are we now at?
Now we're at 2008.
To take us back,
how do you move forward?
Because obviously you worked for four years and then you launched the first rocket and it explodes after
28 seconds.
How do you get back to work and find the motivation after that?
Okay,
you pick up the debris.
You put it in boxes and you store it somewhere where you don't have to care about it anymore for a while.
And then you pick yourself up and get working on the next one.
I'm not sure there's any more of a secret there than that.
And you have to be somewhat self-motivated to get over that.
I mean,
it doesn't really matter how many times you fall as long as you stand up every time.
That's the important part.
I think what you shouldn't do is you shouldn't fail twice for the same thing.
And you shouldn't fail for something that you can read up in books.
And there were lots of things that weren't in books when you started because you needed to invent everything,
or?
So the first failures were basically all design problems,
right?
So you might have actually read up in books in those,
but you're trying to design the whole thing,
and it's like so many things,
and you're running out of time.
And so there are design flaws in the rocket,
and you find them out the hard way.
Other runs we got to Falcon 9,
and
It gets more trickier because now you have a production and you have flaws that are not always there.
They might be probabilistic.
They depend on which part has the flaw or something.
So the early mistakes are usually easy to find and fix.
The later mistakes are usually harder to find.
The reusability,
was that a thing from the beginning when you started?
Yeah,
totally.
I mean...
The first Falcon 1 had a parachute in the first stage.
It took us a while to focus on that.
And then I think,
I'm not sure when we started landing on the ocean,
where we basically pretended the ocean is the land and then we would just try to land on the ocean.
It must have been like,
I don't know,
in the...
first 10 flights of Falcon 9.
And then we refined that.
And at one point we started landing on ships or like drone ships as we call them.
That didn't go over well the first couple of times.
And then they started landing and then they fell over.
And it took us really a long time to get to the point of being able to land.
And the first one that actually did succeed was the
21st flight.
or the 20th flight,
depends on how you count.
And that landed on land in Cape Canaveral.
And that was the end of all the other expendable rockets.
And then you succeeded with Falcon 9.
You flew it and you landed it.
How did you go from there to having a paid customer to actually flying stuff to space?
We always had a customer on Falcon 9.
After Falcon 1,
NASA gave
SpaceX a contract that basically said,
you build Dragon for us,
I mean for NASA,
in order to get cargo up and down to the space station,
and you will build your rocket yourself.
So basically this was like one of these things where you want companies to invest,
and our investment was Falcon 9,
NASA's investment was Falcon
Dragon, I mean.
And it did make sense,
because if you think about it,
Dragon is very much tailored to NASA.
The only customer for that is the space station.
Why would we build a Dragon in that sense?
And then
Falcon 9 can be used in other parts,
and that makes sense for SpaceX to finance.
So when building this,
how do you get your...
The company or the employees,
how do you streamline them to aim for the same goal,
all of them?
Because you did something very hard,
very fast,
if you compare it to the rest of this slow-moving space industry.
I guess you have good communication,
you have open offices,
you have no doors on the offices.
You're all sitting in one room.
I mean,
there's different methods,
right?
And the culture was very much like a
Silicon Valley startup culture,
pretty much,
which has good communication by the way they're organized.
Yeah,
like I said,
no doors,
right?
There's no privacy at SpaceX unless you have your headphones on.
But ultimately,
we were really careful about having good communication and so on and so forth.
And we're also working pretty hard.
And how is it,
it is Elon Musk's company.
So is it top run by him or how does it work in that way?
Pretty much run by him at the end of the day.
I mean
At one point,
day-to-day business was run by Gwynne Shotwell.
But Elon would always have like one or two days in a week to come in and talk and make decisions.
He would actually help make decisions.
I mean,
you would not have a meeting with Elon and not come out with a decision.
So it was really helpful.
Tell us more about your role.
Exactly what was it that you did during your years there?
I ask myself that a lot.
What did I do,
actually?
So I transitioned too,
right?
I mean,
after Falcon 1,
I missed a little bit the Falcon 9 train.
And I became more of a systems person.
And I became a launch.
what I call launch chief engineer.
It's important that it's just launch.
So
I was basically involved in getting the vehicles to fly at the end of the day.
And then out of that came a role that was more like towards reliability.
And then out of that came basically the build and flight reliability,
which is,
you would translate that probably into a quality assurance,
mission assurance role,
which on a high level,
also does the launch chief engineering.
So in other words,
it's also responsible for making the thing fly,
basically.
So my role changed over time,
but it got more system level,
basically less avionics or specific.
But
I'm pretty good on like...
I'm not sure how to say this really.
I'm not really good anymore in building electronics or writing software,
but I'm pretty good at making things together work.
So that was my main job.
And as you said,
you were number four in the company,
and it grew,
and in the beginning it was basically hiring people.
So how much did you grow during your years there?
So in total,
by the time I left in 21,
so that's over almost 19 and a half years,
We were,
I want to say,
13,000,
so 1,300.
In my division,
we were 350.
And how is that divided?
What does the different groups do,
basically?
Yeah,
well,
like I said,
I mean,
the built-on flat reliability does everything that's related to reliability.
It also does a risk management process,
basically,
that's run by the group.
It does the changes,
basically,
it's a change process that's run by the group.
There's lots of reviews that they do.
And then there's lots of anomalies that they do in my own group.
But then there's other groups that,
you know,
that are more traditional like propulsion,
builds propulsion,
production,
you know,
cranks out big rockets,
structures,
does everything that's structural and thermal and some other stuff.
So,
I mean,
there's a pretty traditional division within the groups.
overall as SpaceX,
at the time at least.
You work with rockets,
you work with people.
It's a risk-full business as well,
because you do blow up things in the end.
So how do you work with that and at the same time doing it fast?
How do you manage risk management in a company like this?
The hardest part is actually to get the risk of the people,
and there's different ways.
And then there's people that see risk everywhere and there's people that see no risk at all.
And you got to kind of normalize this a little bit,
mostly through conversation.
But every once in a while I would also look at things that went wrong and then go back and talk to people,
you know,
how did that happen kind of thing.
I know it was always interesting to get this out of people and I got a reputation for,
I guess,
being able to handle that pretty well.
I mean,
everybody in the company knew me and so people would tell me what was going wrong or many people would tell me what they think is wrong and then we would fix it.
If you look back,
what were the biggest problems or the biggest concerns during your time there?
Was there anything you thought was,
okay,
we should really not be doing like this or we should think in another way?
So I think we worked a lot on detail,
on a very detailed level,
like certain components like valves,
and so are just notorious for having problems.
And designing the best valve or something like that was something that was really high on the list.
Engines are always difficult.
They tend to sometimes combust spontaneously.
Things would fail in tests.
I don't know.
I feel like this was not really super unexpected.
That's kind of...
And electronics obviously would sometimes fail because the environment was just too rough,
but they wouldn't fail because they're aged or something.
I mean,
a rocket flies for 10 minutes,
right?
So
I feel like it was all pretty much what we expected.
And wherever you have a lot of energy,
like in a turbopump or so,
those parts are more susceptible to fail than others.
Was there some time,
during all your 19 and a half years there,
that you or the company Big was like,
okay,
we're not going to make this.
Let's do something else with our time.
We did change course a couple of times.
I mean,
there's a couple of examples.
Like,
originally Falcon 9 was supposed to be Falcon 5,
and then we realized we can't get enough cargo to the space station with that.
So we got to be bigger.
And then we basically doubled the engine on the first stage,
or almost doubled,
right,
Falcon 9.
And then obviously that was the trick.
And so many cases we did.
revised decisions and built bigger stuff,
changed it.
And just to be clear,
the number afterwards is the number of engines.
It's the number of engines on the first stage.
Because technically Falcon 9 has 10 engines,
but it's not called Falcon 10,
it's called Falcon 9.
It's the engines that you see when it flies away.
Just to bring it to the listeners here,
what can a growing Swedish company or a startup in Sweden,
what can we learn from the way you did it at SpaceX?
to accomplish what we want to accomplish.
So basically,
I mean,
what people learned,
whether they're in Sweden or somewhere else,
is basically you should probably account for like,
I don't know,
two,
three,
four failures from the get-go,
right?
Before you're really ready to fly something.
And that's actually what you need.
You should try as hard as possible to succeed on the first launch,
yeah?
But on the other side,
you should also not like...
sit around for years and try to analyze this problem,
at one point you got to fly.
And so it's like a trade-off between if you go too fast,
you make too many mistakes and it doesn't end.
You don't have time to fix those things.
If you go too slow,
then you're obviously wasting time by trying to optimize the first rocket,
which is typically you learn so much during first flight that you will redesign it anyways.
So...
In the beginning,
did you reinvent the way you did things all the time?
Or did you also look at your competitors or other companies around you,
how they did it?
I mean,
you do look at others in a way,
those are your starting points,
basically.
You just know this is what a fly computer usually looks like.
But we did start doing,
let's see if you find a lower cost version,
right?
And didn't really...
Try to copy anybody's specific design.
It's also hard to do because most people don't show you their design.
It's all pretty hidden.
And so you're pretty much forced to do more or less your own design.
And
I guess it's particularly innovative.
Not really,
I think,
in my opinion.
I mean,
it's more like trying to find the lowest cost solution to a problem that usually costs a lot more money.
And yes,
there's some innovation in there too.
But honestly,
the real big innovation came later when we started doing Falcon 9 and trying to land it and going more into reusability.
That is the really key innovation of SpaceX.
is to be able to launch the same rocket or the same booster you know
up to 28 times in a row.
That is a big deal.
And people underestimate how cheap that makes rockets.
Some people still don't understand it,
but it's a game changer.
Absolutely.
And after that also we have the Starship,
of course.
If you want to go to Mars,
you need a bigger ship.
You need a substantial ship,
and even then it's difficult,
right?
And then you also need to have,
usually,
rockets that get into orbit.
They're empty,
they have no fuel anymore.
So you need something that actually is fully loaded in orbit because that's when the travel begins.
So Starship fixes two things.
Number one,
it has a heat shield on the second stage so you can re-enter with the second stage.
And it makes both stages reusable.
So now your launch is only the price of fuel and oxygen and basically the operation.
And then the second thing is you can load from a starship that just went to orbit to a starship that is already in orbit and sitting there and refill it basically.
So you can launch a couple of times and refill that particular starship and then you fly that starship to Mars.
And then you're also going to re-enter on Mars,
land there and then get ready to come back or stay there depending on what you want to do.
I wasn't really working with Starship,
honestly.
I was working primarily with the astronauts at the time,
so trying to launch the astronauts safely,
which is a pretty big job,
too.
And so I was working on the Falcon 9 side,
on the Dragon side,
and less on the Starship side.
And also Starship has a different location.
It's in Boca Chica,
down in
Texas, at the Mexican border.
And
I was always at the Hawthorne headquarters,
SpaceX.
And how was it to go from doing flights,
then flying cargo,
and then to flying humans?
A little different.
I mean,
you know your cargo really well then.
No,
I mean,
it's a big deal.
Obviously,
your attitude changes a lot.
So I always thought,
actually,
we don't want to lose cargo either,
right?
But there's a difference if there's a human on board.
And it does make things a little bit different because now it's a human,
it's typically a father or mother,
have kids and whatever.
I mean,
there's all kinds of things that complicate things there and you really,
really,
really want them to come back.
So it's a big deal to fly astronauts.
So a new level of reliability and engineering in my eyes.
And how do you change your way of work with that?
The first human spaceflight on SpaceX was like,
over many,
many years was built up to certify the vehicle with NASA.
And so it was a lot of cooperation with NASA,
also a lot of,
you know,
disagreements and back and forth and get this worked out.
That took a lot of time.
at the end of the day to get the vehicle,
but it did get the vehicle right.
It did produce a very reliable rocket at the end.
And with Falcon 9,
it seemed like you always took small steps forward,
not doing the same mistakes again.
Now on Spaceship,
we've seen a few failures.
Why do you think that is?
I think it's going,
they're trying really hard to get things done in a short time.
so maybe maybe
That's how it looks to me,
basically.
Honestly,
I don't really know.
But they seem to be...
I mean,
they have demonstrated everything that they needed to do at the end of the day,
right,
for a whole mission.
But they haven't put it together in one mission.
And so that's what I'm waiting for.
Maybe...
I guess maybe it works on the next one.
This was number 10 I think right?
Okay maybe the 11th time is the charm.
So when will we see a
SpaceX ship,
a starship land on Mars and fly back?
Now we're flying back away,
that's a complication.
I would say just land on Mars,
2021.
Well,
there's one opportunity before that.
There's one,
28 and 29,
like right at the limit.
But I think that might be really tight.
I think the propellant transfer needs to be worked out too.
So I give them more time and say 31.
Basically.
And then,
well,
for flying back you need,
there's a lot more that you need for that.
You do need,
actually,
people that produce propellant.
You can produce propellant on Mars.
The atmosphere allows you to basically pull methane out of it.
And then you also,
well,
you don't need water for the oxygen part.
So you also need to find water on Mars.
So there's a couple of things that need to be done on Mars to be successful.
But fundamentally,
I think that's going to take a couple more years.
And so
31 and the first few months,
then
33 maybe.
Or maybe even more depending on how things go.
If things go a little bit rough on 31,
then it might be another cycle.
So you can launch every
26 months or something like that.
So that's why we're talking basically launch Windows to Mars.
You can launch in other times too,
but it's way harder to do.
So every other year,
sorry,
every two years rather.
So I think...
31 workers,
35 then people.
I think that seems like a more realistic scheme now.
Is Elon happy about the time schedule,
you think?
If it works out,
I think he will be happy if that actually happens.
If it delays any further,
I'm pretty sure he's not going to be happy about it.
I mean,
the question is,
is Elon happy with like 29 or so?
I mean,
he already hinted it.
It might be difficult in two years to do this,
right?
So that to me looks a little bit like...
Realistically,
I've been too optimistic on some of these estimates too.
So I'm a little bit cautious now.
So just to finish up,
you've been part of building all these rockets and taking people to space.
Would you like to go?
Definitely,
I would definitely go.
Maybe not necessarily to Mars.
That's kind of like a long time.
But yeah,
sure.
Space,
for sure.
Cool,
let's.
Där hör ni.
Det spelar inte så stor roll hur många gånger man misslyckas.
Bara man inte gör det på samma sätt två gånger.
Och att man aldrig misslyckas med något som man hade kunnat läsa sig till i en bok.
Ja,
och med tanke på bok,
det ska ju vi faktiskt släppa en snart.
Men det pratar vi mer om vid ett annat tillfälle.
Ni får se det här som en teaser.
Jag tycker också att vi ska släppa en skiva med vår musik.
Den är skriven av Armin Pendek.
Jag heter Susanna Levenhaupt.
Jag heter Marcus Pettersson.
Har vi åkt till marsen görs på Beppo av Rundfunk Media i samarbete med Saab.
Hallå?
Programmet gjordes av
Rundfunk Media.