Tim Dodd

Well, yeah, Falcon 1 is where it all started.

The original intent and the original idea of SpaceX was Elon wanted to try to get something to Mars.

He saw that NASA didn't have a current Mars plan yet.

And he wanted to go to Mars.

So he decided, how do I best do this?

He literally wanted to, at first, purchase a rocket from Russia.

Then after a foiled attempt at doing that, he decided that he was going to try to develop his own rocket.

And the Falcon 1 is what came out of that process.

And he developed a pretty incredible team.

I don't know how exactly he stumbled upon the team that he stumbled upon that quickly.

But the people that he assembled were amazing.

And they built the Falcon 1.

which was a single Merlin engine followed by an upper stage engine called the Kestrel engine.

Pretty small compared to the things they're working on today, but that Merlin engine continued to evolve into being the power plant for the Falcon 9.

They went from a small lift launch vehicle up into the medium class launch vehicle so they could provide services for NASA.

And that's one of the big things they first kind of hung their hat up was they got the opportunity to fly cargo to the International Space Station under – originally it was called the COTS program, the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services for NASA, which evolved into the Commercial Resupply Contracts.

And that's when SpaceX developed both their Dragon capsule, which is a uncrewed at first spacecraft that can dock to the ISS, and the Falcon 9 rocket that can take it to the International Space Station.

Exactly, yep.

The Falcon 9's the semi-truck, the Dragon capsule's the payload.

You know, it's the thing being dropped off, basically, at assassination.