RatSat
RatSat or DemoSat was an aluminum mass simulator on the fourth flight of the Falcon 1 rocket, launched on 28 September 2008. Ratsat remained bolted to the second stage of the carrier rocket after reaching low Earth orbit. It is an aluminium alloy chamber in hexagonal prism shape with 1.5 m (5 ft) length. The Falcon 1 launch that carried Ratsat to orbit was the first successful orbital launch of any privately funded and developed, liquid-propellant carrier rocket, the SpaceX Falcon 1, something only six nations had successfully accomplished previously. The launch, identified as Falcon 1 Flight 4, was conducted by SpaceX, and also marked the first time the Falcon 1 rocket successfully achieved orbit, after three consecutive failures on the three previous launch attempts. Background Three consecutive flights of the Falcon 1 rocket had ended in failure. In particular, during the third launch of the Falcon 1 in August 2008, the first stage of the rocket after stage separation have residual thrust and slammed into its second stage, resulting in catastrophic damage to the second stage's Kestrel engine. Though the fix for the problem is simple – add a time delay between main engine cut off and stage separation – SpaceX was running out of money and there was much uncertainty that there will be a fourth flight for the company. As for SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk, he was in immense stress financially and personally, as both of his ventures, SpaceX and Tesla Inc., were at risk of bankruptcy due to a series of failures. He was also recently divorced with Justine Musk which after property settlement made him homeless, and also lost their first son due to SIDS. Preparation Shipping to Omelek Right after the third launch failure, Musk made an encouraging speech for the SpaceX employees and told them to launch another rocket in six weeks. According to Musk, this tight schedule was necessary or else the company would be in bankruptcy. The rocket was built out of spare parts laying around in the factory. The fourth launch of the Falcon 1 was supposed to deliver the Malaysian government's RazakSAT satellite, but the Malaysian government has backed out and no other customer was willing to launch on a thrice-failed rocket. Therefore, the SpaceX team had to make a non-functional aluminum boilerplate to simulate the rocket's payload. The boilerplate weighed and named "RatSat" after the last names of Jeff Richichi, Ray Amador and Chris Thompson, who were part of the company's structures team. The design for RatSat's logo was inspired by Ed Roth t-shirts, whom Thompson admired. Normally, Falcon 1's first stage would be shipped by a container to Omelek Island, Kwajalein Atoll, U.S. (where SpaceX launched the rocket) and Falcon 1's second stage would fly out to the island using the Douglas DC-8 aircraft. The first stage was too big to be flown out using a DC-8. However, the tight schedule mandated the first stage to be shipped over air, so after scrambling with military contacts, a