What life has been like for one engineer who works at SpaceX.
What life has been like for one engineer who works at SpaceX.
Key quote:
According to Pearce, the best and the worst things about working for Musk are actually the same. “He doesn’t feel the need to make reasonable requests,” Pearce says. “The whole idea of SpaceX is not reasonable. The idea that a dot-com millionaire could take [US] $100 million and start a rocket company that within 13 years would be taking supplies to the International Space Station, that’s on track to take crew to the International Space Station — that’s not reasonable.”
But SpaceX did it.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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What life has been like for one engineer who works at SpaceX.
Key quote:
According to Pearce, the best and the worst things about working for Musk are actually the same. “He doesn’t feel the need to make reasonable requests,” Pearce says. “The whole idea of SpaceX is not reasonable. The idea that a dot-com millionaire could take [US] $100 million and start a rocket company that within 13 years would be taking supplies to the International Space Station, that’s on track to take crew to the International Space Station — that’s not reasonable.”
But SpaceX did it.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Challenging the dominant superpower of the day to establish a new nation wasn’t reasonable – but it got done.
Building a railroad across a largely unexplored continent wasn’t reasonable – but it got done.
It wasn’t reasonable for two bicycle mechanics to build and fly the first airplane – but it got done.
Going from suborbital flight to the Moon in less than ten years wasn’t reasonable – but it got done.
Successfully challenging convention is what Americans do.
Mr. Musk is clearly a practitioner of the Third Rule of Management: People work to expectations. And he’s very much put his money where his mouth is: that level of commitment can’t be ignored by those in his employ. I can’t imagine a space – oriented person outside of pure science considering work in anything but private space.
Nicely put, Blair.
Coming from a published author, your compliment means much to me. Thank you.
SpaceX is cracking the boundaries of the unknown while accomplishing solid engineering developments. The Falcon Heavy Lift is very exciting.
Money means something to Mr. Musk, money is not even thought about at Nasa, cost overruns are the norm, inflated cost studies are the norm, and indeed, people do work to expectations. NASA was a wonder through the Kennedy and Nixon years that got things done but have turned into nothing more than a bloated overstaffed bureaucracy that enriches contractors and gets nothing done, Robert is right, private space is the United States way forward to space as long as this new breed of space entreprenuers want to earn a buck.
In his book “Road to Freedom,” Arthur Brooks describes that entrepreneurs, when asked about their successes, tend to talk about their failures and hardships. We Americans take failures, hardships, and unreasonable expectations (impossible tasks) as challenges, not impossibilities. Sometimes we succeed spectacularly.
I would add to that list:
Building the “impossible” Golden Gate Bridge.
Building the Panama Canal (which France found to be impossible)
California wines besting the world’s best wines, French wines, in 1976. (Nobody remembers that, but America’s freedoms allowed us to improve our wines, but the French tried to keep their wines the world’s best by forbidding change.)
Building that ‘dominant superpower of the day’ in three centuries from (literally) a backwoods settlement — which couldn’t feed itself — to a power that won WWI, then WWII, then the “cold war.”
No wonder America has a can-do spirit. No wonder we celebrate American Exceptionalism. No wonder Musk came to America — to succeed spectacularly.
The key to the success of the United States is the forgotten word, which only makes us exceptional in that we were the first nation to explicitly celebrate it in law and culture. If we abandon it, however, our exceptionalism will evaporate as quickly as the morning dew.
American exceptionalism? the progressives are running us away from that quaint notion!
Did you read my essay on what makes us exceptional? Once you know what causes the exceptionalism, you will understand a great deal more about what motivates the left.
Yes, I read your excellent essay on freedom and what makes this country exceptional, I take no issue with the fact that freedom was built into our constitution, but our leaders are not protecting this freedom, eventually this spirit of innovation will leave for a more friendly atmosphere, the American people who are voting in these progressives are looking at the short view, the long view is that we are an Roman empire on the verge of a collapse.