The Formative Years of SpaceX: Challenges, Innovations, and Vision

What I learned from rereading Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger. 

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Episode Outline: 

—Numerous other entrepreneurs had tried playing at rocket science before, Musk well knew. He wanted to learn from their mistakes so as not to repeat them.

—Elon announces that he wants to start his own rocket company and I do remember a lot of chuckling, some laughter, people saying things like, ‘Save your money kid, and go sit on the beach.’” The kid was not amused. If anything, the doubts expressed at this meeting, and by some of his confidants, energized him more.

—Musk was a siren, calling brilliant young minds to SpaceX with an irresistible song. He offered an intoxicating brew of vision, charisma, audacious goals, resources.

—When they needed something, he wrote the check. In meetings, he helped solve their most challenging technical problems. When the hour was late, he could often be found right there, beside them, working away.

—The iterative approach begins with a goal and almost immediately leaps into concept designs, bench tests, and prototypes. The mantra with this approach is build and test early, find failures, and adapt. This is what SpaceX engineers and technicians did.

—"Here was a man who was not interested in experts. He meets me, he thinks to himself, 'Here is a bright kid, let's employ him.' And he does. He risks little with the possibility of gaining much. It is *exactly* what I now do at Dyson

This attitude to employment extended to [Jeremy] Fry's thinking in everything, including engineering. He did not, when an idea came to him, sit down and process it through pages of calculations; *he didn't argue it through with anyone; he just went out and built it.* When I came to him to say, 'I've had an idea,' he would offer no more advice than to say, 'You know where the workshop is, go and do it.'  'But we'll need to weld this thing,' I would protest.

Well then, get a welder and weld it.' When I asked if we shouldn't talk to sure someone about, say, hydrodynamics, he would say, 'The lake is down there, the Land Rover is over there, take a plank of wood down to the lake, tow it behind a boat and look at what happens.' Now, this was not a modus operandi that I had encountered before. College had taught me to revere experts and expertise. Fry ridiculed all that; as far as he was concerned, *with enthusiasm and intelligence anything was possible.* It was mind-blowing. No research, no preliminary sketches. If it didn't work one way he would just try it another way, until it did. And as we proceeded I could see that we were getting on extremely quickly.  *The root principle was to do things your way.* It didn’t matter how other people did it. It didn’t matter if it could be done better.  As long as it works, and it is exciting, people will follow you."      — Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson by James Dyson (Founders #300)

—Elon personally interviewed the first 3,000 employees of SpaceX.

—His people had to be brilliant. They had to be hardworking. And there could be no nonsense.

—SpaceX operated at its own speed.

—Pony Express ad: “Wanted: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen. Must be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.”

—I’ve never met a man so laser focused on his vision for what he wanted. He’s very intense, and he’s intimidating as hell.

—SpaceX had juice with the best students in space engineering. The freedom to innovate and resources to go fast summoned the best engineers in the land.

—Talent wins over experience and an entrepreneurial culture over heritage.

—He always made the most difficult decisions. He did not put off problems, but rather tackled the hardest ones first. And he had a vision for how aerospace could be done faster and for less money.

—He didn’t want to fail, but he wasn’t afraid of it.

—The speed SpaceX worked at relative to its peers could be jarring.

—No job is beneath us.

—No committees. No reports. Just done.

—Most of all he channeled an intense force to move things forward. Elon wants to get shit done.

—SpaceX likes to operate on its own terms and its own timeline.

—90% of the book is SpaceX failing.

—Elon spent much of the flight poring over books written about early rocket scientists and their efforts. He seemed intent to understand the mistakes they had made and learn from them.

—SpaceX is in this for the long haul and, come hell or high water, we are going to make this work.

—Who knows your customers? Find the person that knows your customers and then hire that person to sell your product to them.

—No work about work, just work. Shotwell wrote a plan of action for sales. Musk took one look at it and told her that he did not care about plans. Just get on with the job. “I was like, oh, OK, this is refreshing. I don’t have to write up a damn plan,” Shotwell recalled. Here was her first real taste of Musk’s management style. Don’t talk about doing things, just do things.

—Within its first three years, SpaceX had sued three of its biggest rivals in the launch industry, gone against the Air Force with the proposed United Launch Alliance merger, and protested a NASA contract. Elon Musk was not walking on eggshells on the way to orbit. He was breaking a lot of eggs.

—A Pegasus launch cost between $ 26 and $ 28 million. SpaceX’s price was $6 million. Musk wanted it front and center on the company’s website. This sort of transparency was radical at the time.

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“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth

Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast