Launching a Truck Into Space 144
the Omelek Island, which is a part of the Kwajalein Atoll.
Known as theExecution Islandduring the Second World
War, the atoll is today often called just Kwaj. The area
is military ground. You can see a large concrete building
previously used as a target for laser beams from space, and
a part of the atoll is a target for testing missiles launched
from the US mainland.
Several visitors attended the first launch. You could
see representatives from government agencies and corpo-
rations. Someone who also visited the launch was Elon’s
brother Kimbal. He said that physics is fun, but Elon
suspected what his brother really liked was to visit exotic
islands in the south pacific and fly Huey helicopters.
The island leased by SpaceX used to be a launch pad
during the Cold War. When SpaceX arrived to the island,
they had to cut down the overgrown bushes and trees. Then
they poured concrete to build a launch pad.^284
They were ready to launch Falcon 1. Due to safety
reasons, the drawback with this launch site was that the
launch pad wasn’t on the same island as where the SpaceX-
ers were. When sensors on the rocket detected a glitch,
the launch team had to make a 20-minute boat trip to
fix the problem. SpaceX hadn’t anticipated this delay, so
they hadn’t stockpiled enough liquid oxygen on the island.
Liquid oxygen is used as a fuel component and to cool the
rocket’s helium supply. The launch had to be postponed
until they could import more liquid oxygen from Hawaii.^301
Another problem occurred when they discovered that
not all rocket components were operating properly. The