Launching a Truck Into Space 137
number of employees were now 150 SpaceXers.
While the Saturn V from the Apollo program was a
three-stage rocket, the Falcon 1 had only two stages. You
split a rocket into stages to save weight. After the launch,
and when the first stage has run out of fuel, it will separate
from the second stage and fall back to Earth. The engines
attached to the second stage will now start and power the
rest of the rocket up to space. While the first stage of the
Falcon 1 rocket had a speed of 6 850 mph [11 000 km/h], the
second stage had a speed of 17 000 mph.
To find the engines needed to power the rocket, Elon
contacted Tom Mueller. He was a member of the Reaction
Research Society – a group of amateur rocket enthusiasts.
They launched rockets on a dry lakebed at the edge of the
Mojave Desert. But Mueller was no amateur. He had joined
the group to do all the crazy stuff he wasn’t allowed to do
at his job as a rocket engineer.^278
Mueller’s life story resemble the same story as shown
in the movieOctober Sky. The movie tells the true story of
Homer Hickham, who grew up in a coal mining commu-
nity. Hickham was inspired by the launch of the Russian
satellite Sputnik 1 and decided to become an engineer
despite his father’s negative thoughts. His father wanted
him to become a coal miner, but Hickham didn’t listen to
him and would eventually become a NASA rocket scientist.
The only difference from the movie is that Mueller grew up
in the small logging community St. Maries, Idaho.
The young Mueller built and flew hobby rockets. “I’d
buy them at the local hobby shop,” he said. “I made dozens