Strike Three was a defin­ing moment for SpaceX, mark­ing yet anoth­er high-stakes launch on the remote Kwa­jalein Atoll in August 2008. With two pre­vi­ous Fal­con 1 launch­es end­ing in fail­ure, this third attempt was wide­ly regard­ed as the company’s last chance to prove itself. Elon Musk, hav­ing already invest­ed near­ly all of his for­tune into the ven­ture, had warned his team that they could not afford anoth­er fail­ure. Unlike the ear­li­er launch­es, this mis­sion car­ried a par­tic­u­lar­ly mean­ing­ful payload—an Air Force satel­lite weigh­ing 180 pounds, two small­er NASA satel­lites, and a sym­bol­ic trib­ute: the cre­mat­ed remains of James Doohan, famous for play­ing Scot­ty on Star Trek.

As the count­down con­clud­ed and the Fal­con 1 soared into the sky, an air of cau­tious opti­mism filled SpaceX’s con­trol cen­ter in Los Ange­les. Engi­neers and exec­u­tives, includ­ing Musk him­self, watched anx­ious­ly as the first stage suc­cess­ful­ly burned and sep­a­rat­ed, an achieve­ment that briefly ignit­ed cel­e­bra­tions among the team. The launch seemed to be unfold­ing flaw­less­ly, with the boost­er per­form­ing as expect­ed and the sec­ond stage detach­ing as planned. How­ev­er, just moments lat­er, hope turned to dev­as­ta­tion as the boost­er unex­pect­ed­ly col­lid­ed with the sec­ond stage, send­ing the rock­et off course and ren­der­ing the mis­sion unsuc­cess­ful. The cause was soon identified—a flaw in the new­ly designed cool­ing sys­tem of the Mer­lin engine, which func­tioned well at sea lev­el but unex­pect­ed­ly mal­func­tioned in the vac­u­um of space, cre­at­ing a burst of thrust that led to the col­li­sion.

The third con­sec­u­tive fail­ure was a cat­a­stroph­ic blow, and SpaceX’s future now hung by a thread. Musk, already fac­ing finan­cial tur­moil at Tes­la, found him­self at the edge of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al col­lapse. Despite the immense dis­ap­point­ment and the grim finan­cial real­i­ty, Musk refused to allow despair to con­sume him. Rather than plac­ing blame on his team, he took respon­si­bil­i­ty and chan­neled his frus­tra­tion into imme­di­ate action. The very next day, he held a con­fer­ence call with his core engi­neers, inform­ing them that parts for a fourth Fal­con 1 rock­et were already assem­bled in Los Ange­les and instruct­ing them to pre­pare for anoth­er attempt. His unwa­ver­ing resolve in the face of repeat­ed fail­ure served as a ral­ly­ing cry for SpaceX employ­ees, many of whom had begun to ques­tion whether the com­pa­ny could sur­vive.

While some indus­try ana­lysts saw the third fail­ure as an indi­ca­tor that SpaceX was doomed, Musk viewed it dif­fer­ent­ly. He rec­og­nized that every set­back brought them clos­er to suc­cess, pro­vid­ed they learned from their mis­takes. He empha­sized that iter­a­tion and per­sis­tence were the only paths for­ward, refus­ing to con­sid­er giv­ing up despite the immense per­son­al and finan­cial strain. At this point, Musk was so finan­cial­ly stretched that he had to bor­row mon­ey from friends to afford basic liv­ing expens­es, yet his belief in the mis­sion nev­er wavered. He remained con­vinced that reusable rock­ets were the future of space trav­el and that SpaceX, despite its strug­gles, was the com­pa­ny des­tined to lead that trans­for­ma­tion.

Back at Kwa­jalein, the SpaceX team scram­bled to imple­ment cru­cial mod­i­fi­ca­tions based on lessons learned from the failed launch. The cool­ing sys­tem of the Mer­lin engine was redesigned to pre­vent the excess thrust issue that had doomed the pre­vi­ous attempt. At the same time, Musk worked behind the scenes to secure more fund­ing, know­ing that anoth­er fail­ure could mean the end of SpaceX. His sheer force of will and deter­mi­na­tion to push for­ward, even when all odds were stacked against him, became a defin­ing moment in the company’s his­to­ry.

What hap­pened next would not only change the tra­jec­to­ry of SpaceX but also reshape the entire space indus­try. With just one final shot left, Musk and his team pre­pared for what would become the most crit­i­cal launch in the company’s young his­to­ry. The fourth launch, built on the foun­da­tions of resilience and lessons from past fail­ures, would deter­mine whether SpaceX could achieve orbit or fade into his­to­ry as yet anoth­er failed aero­space start­up.