Bulent Altan: Turkish space buff, Elon Musk’s ex-troubleshooter

In September 2008, Bulent Altan, then a 30-year-old aerospace engineer from SpaceX, was facing a do-or-die situation.

At the time, SpaceX – US entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company, known for designing, manufacturing and launching advanced rockets and spacecraft– was facing serious setbacks. Three rocket launches had already failed, and with one more unsuccessful attempt, the company would have been forced to close its doors since it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Altan, along with 20-odd SpaceX engineers, was on board a US Air Force cargo plane from Los Angeles, with the Falcon 1 rocket stowed in the aircraft’s lower compartment. They were heading towards a launch site in the Marshall Islands, determined to send the first ever privately developed liquid fuel rocket into space.

This anecdote carries weight – it captures a pivotal moment in the genesis of Musk’s entrepreneurial journey. And Altan’s contribution may have lingered quietly in archives if he didn’t find mention in the newest published biography of Elon Musk written by the famed American non-fiction writer Walter Isaacson, who has authored best-selling books on the greatest engineering minds like Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs.

In late October, now 46-year-old Altan was in Istanbul, his hometown, and we got a chance to meet him and talk about some of the turning points of SpaceX, which went on to dominate the 21st century space race.

Recalling the Air Force cargo anecdote, Altan says he was chit-chatting with the pilots in the cockpit during the flight and suddenly he heard a loud popping sound.

He ran down to the plane’s cargo hold and found the creaky noise coming from Falcon 1. The $90 million rocket was “imploding” from air pressure.

He rushed back into the cockpit, yelling at the top of his lungs: “We have to go up, we have to go up.”

The rocket was fuel-less, lighter in weight, susceptible to implosion due to the change in air pressure.

The pilots ascended quickly, but they asked Altan to find a solution within 10 minutes since the plane was running low on fuel.

It was a disaster in the making. The imploding rocket could well be a metaphor for an imploding SpaceX, which needed a successful launch to survive.

So what did Altan do in the next 10 minutes?

“We used that time to open up many openings in the rocket, let it breathe… it popped back into shape again, and we landed (safely),” Altan says.

Rockets are fickle. Even the minutest structural irregularity can disrupt their flight. The air pressure had dented the exterior of the rocket and a critical device was dislodged.

Altan thought it was game over. Musk would either shut down the company or ask the factory back in California to rebuild the rocket from scratch.

But Musk surprised Altan, insisting that the same rocket be restored to perfection at the launch site—something unheard of in the history of rocket science.

“He said if you bring that rocket back (to the factory), we will never make it to orbit because the company will not exist. This was a Hail Mary (moment), as they say. We needed to make it happen,” says Altan.

Musk gave Altan and his co-workers six weeks to launch the rocket, or he would shut down the company.

Isaacson wrote in his 2023 book titled Elon Musk that the eccentric Musk allowed his team of engineers to play fast and loose with “quality controls and risk-reduction procedures” after the rocket’s near-implosion episode.

As a result, Altan and his fellow engineers repaired the damaged rocket in five days. They met the deadline well before Musk’s mark.

On September 28, 2008, SpaceX’s Falcon 1 successfully reached orbit.

The 42nd employee

Born in Istanbul to university professors who taught civil engineering, photogrammetry and remote sensing at the Istanbul Technical University, Altan grew up with a deep interest in science.

The plaque that he received when he “graduated” from preschool at age six said Altan “loves everything related to space” and “loves building spaceships and rockets” using blocks and legos.

“The STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] side of things were quite elevated in our family. If I was going to do anything with maths and physics and whatnot, I would always study with my mom, who was very good at that,” he says.

Altan passed high school in 1996 and left for Munich to study computer science and aerospace.

He went on to do his second master’s degree at Stanford University in the US with a focus on aeronautics and astronautics.

The thought of pursuing a PhD after completing his second master’s degree never crossed his mind, he says. PhDs aren’t particularly known for moving the needle when it comes to rapidly evolving scientific disciplines like astronautics—a field that changed fundamentally over the last 25 years.

During his Stanford days, Altan was part of a student group that was building the first CubeSats, nanosatellites that have a mass of no more than two kilograms and are made using off-the-shelf electronic components.

The CubeSat technology was evolving then as satellites at the time used to be extremely big, heavy devices. He realised early on that there was potential to make “very tiny satellites”.

“There was an individual down in Los Angeles, Elon Musk, who was thinking that rockets can be done privately in a completely different – I don't want to say technology—but in a different industrial stack-up… In a different, vertically integrated, quick iteration, frugal, cost-oriented way,” Altan says.

Once Musk interviewed Altan, the SpaceX CEO was desperate to bring him on board. But there was one big problem. Moving to Los Angeles was out of the question for Altan because his wife, Rachel Searles, had a steady job at Google in the San Francisco Bay Area.

When he learned the reason for Altan’s reluctance to join SpaceX, Musk picked up the phone and called Larry Page, co-founder of Google, right away. He asked Page to transfer Searles to Los Angeles. Page obliged.

“My wife went to work the next day and her boss was like, you know, the funniest thing happened. I got a call from Larry… and apparently, you’re working from LA from now on,” Altan says.

He joined SpaceX in 2004 as its 42nd employee.

“We were in a tiny, little office with a small workshop in the back. There was quite a bit of scepticism, as you can imagine,” he says.

Altan took a career risk by joining a start-up. After all, start-ups had never played any notable role in the space industry.

The space industry at the time was dominated by big companies like Boeing or Lockheed Martin. NASA and other global space agencies would sign “cost-plus” contracts with bloated legacy corporations to build rockets and satellites. Cost overruns were normal.

These companies would bill the taxpayer-funded agencies, which would pay them back all costs along with a guaranteed profit.

Musk’s SpaceX aimed to turn the whole business model upside down.

It convinced the government to let private companies bid on specific tasks like launching government payloads into orbit. As opposed to the cost-plus model that lets a contractor make more money if they go over budget, SpaceX ushered in the era of result-based, fixed-price contracts.

SpaceX insisted that it get paid only if and when it delivered the promised goods while using its own capital.

The incentive-based business model forced SpaceX to make innovations like reusable rockets, which led to economies of scale and significantly lower per-launch costs in the following years.

Head of avionics

Musk was aware of Altan’s work on CubeSats at Stanford before he hired him at SpaceX. He knew the Stanford graduate as a “very hands-on person… someone who can work with electronics, with computers, with software”.

Altan ended up spending most of his professional career at SpaceX. He worked there for 10 years, from 2004 to 2014, and then returned in 2016-17 for a shorter stint.

He started off as an avionics engineer and quickly climbed the ranks to head avionics as vice president.

The avionics department builds what Altan says are the “brains of the rocket” by assembling the electrical and communication systems.

But being the head of avionics didn’t mean he stopped getting his hands dirty alongside other engineers. Neither did the professional success make him abandon his scrappy, improvisational techniques from his Stanford days.

His can-do, preserve-at-all-costs attitude was on full display in 2010 when a storm hit the launch pad of SpaceX in Florida’s Cape Canaveral the night before the maiden launch of Falcon 9—the world’s first orbital class reusable rocket.

The unexpected weather event affected the telemetry signal, making the launch of the milestone rocket uncertain.

“When water goes into these very sophisticated antennas, it can do—I wouldn't say damage, but it changes its characteristics,” Altan says.

Musk was there to supervise the launch. Altan, the man in charge of avionics, grabbed “something like a hairdryer”, walked to the launchpad and started waving the device over the antennas to draw the water out of the system.

He did a quick test to ensure the antennas were OK and then used a sealant to cover the area where the cable met the antenna.

“I did that sealing, I did that drawing because the buck stops here. I was in charge of avionics then, and I was going to be the one who does it,” he says.

In his book, Isaacson quotes Musk as asking Altan after he dried the antennas: “You think it is good enough to fly tomorrow?”

“It should do the trick,” Altan replies.

Musk stares at him silently for a while, assessing him and his answer, then says, “Okay, let’s do it.”

The launch went perfectly the next day.

The start-up Altan helped Musk build over the years is now the world’s most successful private rocket company by every yardstick.

Falcon 9 alone has made nearly 400 orbital missions, which makes SpaceX the biggest private player in the space industry.

In the third quarter of 2024 alone, SpaceX was responsible for 27 of the 29 orbital launches in the US.

China, Russia and the rest of the world cumulatively made 28 orbital launch attempts during the same three-month period.

Altan’s wife, Searles, is now an accomplished children’s book author. They have a 10-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son, who are “much more well-rounded” with a “very strong creative side” and an equal passion for mathematics and sciences.

Asked about his likely reaction if his children wanted to go to space as astronauts, his response was telling.

“Oh, I'd be scared… you’re sitting on top of a lot of fuel. Yeah, it’s a very risky endeavour.”

Looking ahead

Altan witnessed a complete transformation of the aerospace industry in the last 20 years, with lean and agile start-ups like SpaceX replacing legacy corporations as the main drivers of growth.

He has now set up a venture capital firm, which raises money from investors to fund start-ups showing high growth potential.

As one of the two founding partners of Alpine Space Ventures, Altan is managing an investment fund of roughly $184 million (170 million euros) raised from institutions, family offices and friends.

“We are investing that money into space start-ups, [in] people who are as ambitious as SpaceX was at the start. We are helping them get their first sea legs under them—or space legs, I’d call it.”

But unlike a typical venture capital firm that invests money in a company and then keeps out of the way, Altan says his fund helps the early-stage companies navigate their way through the space economy and technology.

The fund has so far invested in five start-ups that make satellites, solar panels and rocket propulsion equipment. Three of these investments are in Europe and two are in the US.

“We are investing into the industry, into the machines that are building this ecosystem upon which we’re going to build a whole economy,” he adds.