SpaceX has done what no other space agency, public or private, has ever done before — it has managed to land rockets back on earth, catch them with chopsticks, and even plan missions to Mars. And much of this success can be attributed to doing things differently from other space programs.
SpaceX went to some great lengths to save some time to move its rockets from Texas to Florida. As detailed in the book Reentry by Eric Berger, most rocket makers generally move their rockets by sea. This is slow and expensive, so SpaceX tried to do something different — it wanted to move its massive rocket across the US by road.
But it isn’t easy to move a rocket the size of a building on regular roads — SpaceX discovered that their massive rocket wouldn’t fit under a standard freeway underpass. At this point, most companies would’ve given up, and decided to take the slow and expensive route by sea. But SpaceX was made of sterner stuff. Sending the rocket by sea took a few extra months and would delay their plans, so they decided to improvise.
SpaceX engineers first spent a long time finding an “absurd and tortuous” route from Texas to Florida on backroads that avoided any overpasses. But while the route had no overpasses, it had power lines and traffic lines which could come in the way of the rocket. So SpaceX engineers — some of the brightest people in their fields — drove in front of the rocket with a 17-foot pole taped to the bumper of their car. Each time their pole hit something like a power line, they jumped out and used large sticks to lift the power line enough so that the rocket could pass under. They then had to drive off the road (the rocket was too big to pass alongside) to get past the rocket to be in front of it again, and set off until they encountered the next obstacle, when the whole process would repeat.
This “road trip from hell” went at an average speed of 10 miles per hour in spite of the engineers taking turns driving day and night to make it to their deadline: Florida closed its roads to oversized loads at 5 pm on 24th November on account of Thanksgiving. And after 10 days of non-stop driving while pushing aside obstacles, they made it to their destination at 3:21 pm on 24th November, with less than two hours to go.
All the effort did pay off — it would’ve taken a normal company a lot more money and several months more time to send the rocket by sea, but SpaceX got creative in transporting the rocket by road, first finding a long route that avoided any overpasses, and then working extremely hard to make sure the rocket didn’t hit any other obstacles on the way. It’s this combination of creativity and ingenuity that has made SpaceX achieve what no other rocket company has — and if it can maintain its problem-solving and scrappy culture, it could end up taking humanity to Mars.