Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / President/COO of SpaceX Gwynn Shotwell

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President/COO of SpaceX Gwynn Shotwell · Elon Musk Podcast

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mountaintops or sea floors. Grim, welcome to Stanford, thank
1:02
you very much. I'm really excited to be here.
1:03
Actually, I love this school. I've been looking forward to
1:08
this interview for a very long time as I know have many of my
1:10
classmates. I bit of space nerd.
1:14
I as a kid, would read all the space books over the 60s Apollo
1:17
13, was my favorite movie. I think still is my favorite
1:20
movie, clean cramps. The mystical flight director was
1:22
a childhood hero. So it's really great to have you
1:26
to me space has always been about the next Frontier.
1:30
And testing the limits of what is possible.
1:32
And today, nobody embodies that better than SpaceX and your
1:35
story. So with that, let's get started.
1:39
One of the defining characteristics of SpaceX is
1:42
risk taking, but the same could be said about you joining the
1:44
company 20 years ago. This year after stable career in
1:48
Aerospace, what led you to join SpaceX and take that risk of
1:52
that time. Well, first of all, I want to
1:53
start off by saying, thank goodness.
1:55
I took that risk because I almost didn't in fact, and when
1:59
Ilan asked me to be President in 2008 I almost didn't say yes
2:04
what a mistake that would have been.
2:07
Yeah, so I was in the Aerospace industry are started.
2:09
I started my engineering career. When was it in 86?
2:13
What to Chrysler Motors, went back to school because I was
2:15
unsatisfied with the level of technology that I was working on
2:18
their went back to University. Thought I'd get my PhD wacky so
2:24
that I can't be in school. Again, I'm gonna go back to work
2:27
and so I went to Aerospace and I think I started in 88.
2:29
Interestingly I started on Halloween in 1988 at the
2:33
Aerospace Corporation and my boss wasn't there when I
2:38
started. But came back a week later he
2:39
was on vacation and he said something about flying in on my
2:42
broom in 1988, which you can't say no but he could say it them.
2:47
So the world is changing even if we feel like it's too slow.
2:52
Yeah. So okay, so starting my career
2:53
in 88 in the Aerospace industry and thought had been there for
2:59
roughly 15 years roughly and I thought look it's it wasn't a an
3:04
industry that was vibrant. It was an Innovative.
3:07
We weren't moving quickly. We hadn't gotten back to the
3:09
moon. And I thought, you know, this is
3:11
my last job in the Aerospace industry, working for Ilan.
3:14
If we can't do it at SpaceX, then I'd rather sell real estate
3:18
or be a barista or, you know, something else I did.
3:21
I wouldn't, I didn't want to work in the industry.
3:23
And so I knew this would be my last job in the Aerospace
3:26
industry and it will turn out to be the case.
3:27
So that's super cool. The risk is about risk and I'm
3:31
grabbing around, sorry. So, it seems risky actually, I
3:35
had a very stable job. I owned three percent share of
3:38
the company that I was working for, which is large for for, for
3:43
a, for an employee. And it was a pretty safe job.
3:47
So this was not a safe job and I didn't know Elon well at all.
3:50
In fact at that time but I really kind of jumped off the
3:55
cliff. It was digging around.
3:57
He said he wanted me to join the Company and I said you know I'm
4:00
fine I don't need a job and kind of did there'd for about a
4:03
month. And finally like I'm such an
4:05
idiot I was driving on the freeway in l.a. like what an
4:08
idiot say yes. So I called them on the phone
4:10
and I said, I've been sleeping idiot and he laughed.
4:13
He said welcome to the team. So you have sold on the idea,
4:16
right? Yeah.
4:17
Had a lot of confidence if you thought it was going to be your
4:18
last job. Last job in the industry and Bo
4:22
are not always fair enough, but your first job was vice
4:27
president. So now you have to sell that
4:30
idea to customers. Yes.
4:32
And SpaceX was little more than a pipe dream at the time, right.
4:35
You were many years away from launch.
4:37
What was that selling process like?
4:40
You know, it's interesting when you, when you don't have a
4:42
product, we had an ideal to sell and it came at probably the best
4:46
possible time. You know, we had the events of
4:51
9/11 and Rapid launch low-cost access to space, because it was
4:56
obvious that it was going to be very critical.
4:58
And so it was great Engineers. I am not going to take away.
5:03
In fact SpaceX is the great company and has the great things
5:06
that we do because of our extraordinary staff.
5:08
It's not because me it's not because of Elon and and so I was
5:14
selling the team. I was selling the ideal.
5:16
I was selling the promise and the hope of reasonably
5:19
reasonably priced launch. I still don't think launches
5:23
reasonably priced, but if you go by comparison, it's much less
5:26
than it was before. We're getting there.
5:29
Yeah. So let's talk about launch and
5:32
about the first rocket, right? The first rocket was called the
5:35
Falcon one. You had three unsuccessful
5:38
launches. It was 2008.
5:41
The company was running out of money with the financial crisis.
5:45
You were promoted to president CEO because of promises he had
5:48
made customers at this point. It's already been promoted and
5:52
the company bet the entire company of this one long on the
5:56
fourth launch of the Falcon 1. So let's watch that launch. 5 4,
6:00
3, 2, 1 stage 1. Plus 12 curious.
6:17
This is a lioness, so, it's a life-or-death moment for the
6:22
company, right? Yeah, it's a little more
6:25
dramatic about that launch than I am.
6:27
Actually, I figured we could pull a fifth launch off, but
6:30
that was it, right? Yeah.
6:32
I thought we could get 25. He thought for was it?
6:35
I'm glad we didn't have to test who was right on that one.
6:37
But yeah, it was quite a relief. And what were the months leading
6:42
up to it? Like, well is the well, this is
6:44
a really, this is a So, I think it's a hilarious story.
6:47
I was in Scotland, Glasgow the IAC was having a show in
6:53
Glasgow. So I was in Scotland to
6:56
apologize discuss. Explain to the customers that
7:00
were on the third Falcon, 1 launch that we failed.
7:03
Come basically do a paper about that launch and it was the night
7:06
before my talk. I was in the hotel room with my
7:11
husband at this is not going to get inappropriate my I was
7:15
sleeping, I'm in the bathroom with the shower on typing, a
7:20
proposal for the 1.6 billion dollar contract.
7:24
NASA resupply to the International Space Station.
7:26
We're literally writing the proposal.
7:28
I'm on the phone with my team, back in the u.s. because we had
7:31
to update our pricing and so the I had the shower running so that
7:34
my, you know, poor husband could sleep.
7:37
I'm like punching away talking and then it's like, oh, shoot.
7:40
We're about ready to launch. Right?
7:42
And so I turned away from my proposal on my lap.
7:45
Up top to to the launch and was watching it as we lifted off.
7:51
I ran out to the hotel room and I didn't care.
7:53
If I woke him up at this point, that the stage, we lift it off
7:55
and we were climbing in altitude and and we watched us get to
8:00
orbit and then in my like yoga pants and Jammy top ran down the
8:06
hall, that's probably the most inappropriate thing I'm going to
8:08
say here today but ran down the hall knocked on all the doors
8:11
from my team that was there and we hugged and kissed.
8:15
I think ride and then kind of broke into the bar in the hotel
8:19
because like 2:00 in the morning and they they let us have the
8:23
champagne but it was warm but it was, it was extraordinary.
8:26
It was extraordinary. I've always loved how emotional
8:29
a business. This is right, this is just
8:31
incredible, incredible, emotional moments, right?
8:33
In fact, by the way, to Future entrepreneurs, I think it's
8:36
really important to have these big moments figure out what the
8:41
big moments where you can bring your teams together.
8:43
It cures, a lot of ills. It really helps with morale and
8:47
it's incredible for team building.
8:49
So launches are easy. It's an easy spectacle to do
8:52
that with but I think it's really important to find those
8:55
kinds of moments in the development for your future
8:57
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Ilan, back plays.com Ilan, backblaze.com, Ilan, okay, move
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forward a few years. Your first big kind of
11:13
commercial product was the Falcon 9.
11:14
It was designed signed in part of NASA's needs in mind to
11:17
replace the international that the space shuttle to go
11:20
International Space Station. You're done a number of launches
11:22
already, including seven, resupply missions to the
11:25
International Space Station with NASA, right?
11:28
And the eighth one was also supposed to take critical Food
11:30
Supplies, medical equipment, International, Space Station,
11:33
but that one didn't go as well. Let's watch that video.
11:35
That's this is two minutes into flight.
11:37
It coming back shows vehicle on course on track.
11:52
Poof. Yeah, you wouldn't made it seem
11:54
routine almost at this point, right?
11:57
And then this happens, you're in crisis management mode.
12:01
What's the first thing you do? Yeah, so I was actually at my
12:05
Ranch in Texas on this launch, it was the first launch that I
12:09
was not there that there for ya. By the way, it was also the
12:15
first and only launched that I didn't do my pre-launch.
12:21
Little routine which we can chat about later, but because I was
12:25
in my slippers. And so I think the most
12:31
important thing, when you suffer, something like that, if
12:33
you focus everybody, the job the task at hand, right?
12:36
We had a failure in front of us on elon's birthday.
12:38
By the way, that was his birthday, which is why we don't
12:41
like to launch on his birthday. It's just feels like Bad Karma
12:44
actually, so you get to work. I did do a press conference
12:49
Grunts doing it remotely of course and we started digging
12:55
through data. Of course we obviously I flew
12:57
back to to Hawthorne and pulled teams together and we figured it
13:01
out was it was a weird one that one and then so this was in on
13:07
June 28th 2015 and then we suffered.
13:10
Another failure was not a launch failure on September 1st 2016.
13:15
Not a little over a year later, right?
13:20
We basically blew up a satellite that was sitting on the pad as
13:22
we were going through a pre-launch test.
13:25
So two failures not back-to-back we had had an extraordinary
13:28
success and December of 2015 and we can come back to that as
13:31
well. But this is a this is a point
13:32
that I try to make with students for sure.
13:35
So I think after the CRS 7 that first failure that failure that
13:39
you saw there, I felt very comfortable leading the team
13:43
through the investigation, leading the team through the
13:45
physics and getting to the answer.
13:48
The business was Not really at risk.
13:51
I mean, failures or incredibly impactful.
13:53
I think every failure we've had has either cost us or delayed us
13:57
about half a billion dollars. But I felt like I did a pretty
14:02
good job in that timeframe. I did not do a good job after
14:06
the failure. When we blew up on pet, I was
14:10
much more worried about the business.
14:12
This particular event was much harder to figure out what it
14:16
was, and I definitely showed my not despair.
14:21
That's probably too much. But my concern, I definitely
14:26
wore it on my sleeve or as my husband says, I have a billboard
14:29
on. Forehead and I wore that badly.
14:34
In fact, so my lesson there is, you know, you do certainly don't
14:38
want to be disingenuous with your team and with your
14:42
customers but it's not really helpful to show your anxiety
14:47
when, you know, when you're suffering because your employees
14:50
are suffering worse than you are.
14:51
So it's really better to keep people focused on the business,
14:55
keep focused on doing great things and they had demonstrated
14:58
that they could do great work up till then to.
15:00
So, Oh yeah. So that's a nice little nugget.
15:03
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. So one of the things in
15:06
particular, for this first failure that I find, incredible
15:09
is You got six months without launches which I'm sure you had
15:12
a bunch of schedule that were delayed, right?
15:14
But six months later you are launching a rocket again but
15:18
instead of Simply focusing on getting that rocket and the
15:20
customers pay load up into space successfully.
15:23
You take a huge risk as well and try to land the booster, right?
15:27
Do you have that video and I have that video?
15:30
I know it's your favorite. Yes.
15:53
The Crowd Goes Wild. It was a mosh pit out there was
15:58
so fun. Why was this so exciting?
16:03
Okay so what's key about that is the last launch of the launch
16:07
just prior to that one. We failed, you know, and it's
16:10
disappointing for the employees, it's disappointing for the
16:12
company, but we failed our customer, this launch.
16:15
So we stood down, we discovered, what the problem was, we
16:19
redesigned the rocket to be able to land because the previous
16:23
Rockets really couldn't land in that way.
16:24
So, we completely did a complete upgrade on the Dumb while
16:28
figuring out what we did to fail.
16:31
And then like incomplete view of the public, you go out there and
16:36
you show, are you, are you meant for greatness or you need to go
16:40
back to the drawing board, a little bit.
16:41
So that was a great, a great day.
16:46
It was a great night, we had a lot of champagne at my house.
16:50
That night, probably more than I've ever drank ever.
16:54
I did not feel great the next day but I, Go to work, I went to
16:58
work. Yes.
17:00
So that was an extraordinary moment for the company.
17:02
Just share with us a little bit. Why it's so important to the
17:06
whole business model? Yes, sorry.
17:08
Well, first of all, no one had ever landed a rocket before,
17:11
right? That was the start and the key
17:13
piece of the technology necessary to reuse Rockets.
17:17
So some, I know there are some space nerds out there, but there
17:21
are many of you that are not by the way, if you are a space nerd
17:23
you should wear that proudly. I certainly do.
17:27
But Rockets before SpaceX and to some extent the shuttle did it.
17:31
But but there was there's no fully reusable launch system,
17:35
rocket is launched, and then they either disintegrate in the
17:39
atmosphere. The second stage does or they
17:40
just get dumped into the ocean right now.
17:44
And so imagine what air travel would be.
17:48
Like if you took an airplane from San Francisco to New York,
17:53
and you had to toss the aircraft after that flight, like lie.
17:56
Life and society, and the world would be so different if you
18:01
couldn't reuse your aircraft. And so, we take that same
18:03
approach with space travel that you have to be able to reuse
18:09
your rockets in order to facilitate human access to
18:12
space, which I think is incredibly important.
18:14
So that was the start. And we had tried many times
18:17
before we tried parachutes, but they rip off in this as the
18:24
speeding through the atmosphere. So that, Just an extraordinary
18:28
piece of technology, guidance navigation and control, you
18:31
know, hyper retroactive propulsion, crazy Hypersonic.
18:35
Retropropulsion was just amazing.
18:37
So that was great and it started our ability to Reflow Rockets.
18:43
We didn't refill. I that one that one is sitting
18:45
outside the front of our building in Hawthorne
18:46
California. You can drive by it and see it.
18:49
In fact, it's kind of a neat Monument but we have I don't
18:52
want to say perfected because we have not perfected but we have
18:55
operationalized, the Leti tool and Rockets refurbish them and
18:59
we fly them. Our goal is to be able to do
19:02
that like an airplane. Like I was saying in the back
19:05
room, you know, they said something someone ask something
19:08
about, you know, rocket efficiency, and we're not very
19:11
efficient. We actually aspire to be as
19:13
efficient as the airline industry and that's probably
19:16
horrifying to many of you in the audience because you probably
19:18
don't think the airline industry is particularly efficient but
19:21
it's way better than we are so it's still a nice model to use.
19:26
So after this In 2015, this really became routine, yes
19:29
SpaceX was launching dozens and dozens of trips up into space.
19:33
Every year in May 20-22 being the pandemic.
19:37
He took another huge leap and it involves humans he launched two
19:40
astronauts to the National Space Station.
19:42
The first astronauts to launch on a private vehicle and the
19:45
first to do. So from American soil and any
19:47
vehicle in nine years, right? We were doing with the Russians.
19:50
How did you carry that responsibility and how do you
19:53
prepare the team for it? So First, I keep your head high.
19:58
Don't show your anxiety but I honestly hate crew launch days.
20:02
I just don't like them. It's nerve-racking.
20:05
It's one thing to, you know, to have a have a failure.
20:08
When you've got a satellite even a billion dollar three billion
20:11
dollar satellite on top, you can't put a price tag on the two
20:16
to four people that are sitting on top of that rocket.
20:18
And it's hurtling through the atmosphere.
20:20
So it's quite anxiety-producing. So, was a huge relief.
20:26
Two. Get get dragged into orbit, get
20:29
dragged into the International Space Station and then say,
20:32
Okay, NASA, they're yours. Now until we have to bring them
20:35
back down, hill, six months later.
20:38
So, keep people focused on the work for sure.
20:41
Don't let him show your eggs. That, you know, don't let him
20:43
see my anxiety, even though I've talked about this enough, they
20:45
all know I'm like scared to death during launch day on this.
20:48
Follow your routine. Be keenly aware.
20:52
Make sure you've got employees to feel very comfortable talking
20:54
about. Hey, I might have screwed this
20:57
up. Can we go back and look at the
20:58
data and make sure that I didn't screw this up on the rocket or
21:01
the spaceship. So, Yeah.
21:05
Keep them focused on the business.
21:06
Don't show how nervous you are and pray.
21:12
Even this has become routine. Now I think you've launched four
21:15
trips to the rest position. So like that.
21:17
So we did Bob and Doug and then we just flew crs-4.
21:21
And then we also flew Axiom, and then we did Jared and his team,
21:26
that's true. Okay, so so seven.
21:28
So let's talk about the future then because I don't know, and
21:32
let's talk about Starship. Is the big bet you have a future
21:35
or is this rocket was previously called the big Falcon rocket B,
21:38
FR B FR who chose to rename it. Well, Elon named it the first
21:49
time and you'll on named it. The second time got it.
21:54
It was there was one in between two iits, I think, Interstellar,
21:58
or yeah. So what so different about this
22:02
bed and what That mean for Humanity.
22:04
So the difference here, for those of you that are not Space
22:06
Geeks. This first stage goes up
22:08
delivers the second stage to carry on its way to orbit.
22:12
Comes back. So, we reuse the first stage,
22:14
but the second stage is now reusable.
22:16
It goes to orbit, it drops off. The payload takes people around
22:20
the Moon, takes people to Mars, whatever it is, and then it
22:23
comes back and lands are second stage right now is not reusable
22:26
on the Falcon program. Our third stage.
22:28
If you look at a dragon is reusable, not very
22:31
operationally, right? It lands in the ocean.
22:33
Ian get helicopters and ships to go.
22:36
Get it out of the water. Take it back, clean off the salt
22:39
water refurbish it and we fly it.
22:40
But a dragon takes currently, like, 90 days.
22:43
We're trying to get it down to 45 and then even faster, but
22:46
that's not very operationally. Efficient, Starship is meant to
22:50
launch land on the pad on the pad.
22:55
The arms come and pick up another another Starship, pick
22:58
it up, put it back on the pad and launch within an hour.
23:01
So like an airplane, That's the plan, and it's supposed to take
23:08
us, either to Shanghai or tomorrow's, right?
23:11
That's what police some version of this would take us to another
23:17
star system. Right, which would be so great.
23:22
So I talked with the development of this because it's something
23:24
remarkable about that. As you mentioned it, supposed to
23:27
be fully reusable, I saw many estimates online, but each one
23:31
of these cost, somewhere around 20 million dollars to build that
23:33
might be a wild guess, but your product development strategy
23:37
seemed to be to blow one of these up every few months,
23:40
right? So, let's take a look at start
23:42
here. Number nine, restart, two
23:46
engines flip the Vehicle vertical then transition to one
23:50
engine for the landing burn. So that seems expensive.
24:06
I completely different to how traditional rocket technology
24:08
where it's like, they make the whole rocket as perfect as
24:10
possible. They win test it and they say
24:11
once it's perfect we try to, you know, flight tested, these are
24:14
prototypes that you just keep going.
24:17
What's behind that way of thinking about rocket
24:19
technology. So and this isn't very well
24:22
understood publicly. I'm a little surprised.
24:23
We don't talk more about it. We are much more focused for the
24:27
Starship program on production building the system that will
24:31
build the system, then we are on.
24:33
Rocket technology itself. I didn't touch anything - I
24:40
brake hardware, by water. I so this makes me nervous.
24:45
So we know how to get Rockets to orbit.
24:47
We know how to do that. This is a completely different
24:50
one. But we're very confident in our
24:52
ability, to figure out how to do that, we were much more focused
24:56
on. Can we produce a rocket that can
25:00
get to orbit? Like really produce Falcon we
25:03
produce you know between 7 and 11 Falcon four stages per year.
25:06
We're producing a second stage every week right now.
25:10
But what we want to be able to do is produce a rocket a day or
25:13
come much closer to Of because if you are going to take people
25:17
to Mars, you're going to go in a flotilla or a swarm.
25:21
I don't even know yet. Right.
25:22
The, what the right term is yet, for a group of Starships to head
25:26
to Mars, you're going to need a bunch of them and producing
25:32
five. A year isn't going to get you
25:33
there. You really want to launch
25:35
hundreds on that synodic, period with Mars when you're taking
25:38
people there. So we need to have a production
25:42
system, build Rockets much like a production system to build.
25:45
Maybe not quite so many. I don't think we need a million
25:47
a year, but we need more than a couple hundred.
25:53
It's all about the, yep. So we will get this to orbit.
25:56
I'm not saying that it's easy because it's very different.
25:59
You'll see the way, well, not the orbital part, but the
26:01
Landing part is very different. You know, we belly-flop to
26:04
dissipate the Heat and then come vertical right at the last
26:07
second. It's different from the way we
26:09
do it on Falcon. But we, I mean, we and we did
26:11
it. We stuck a landing bringing, you
26:13
did not know, it wasn't for morbid.
26:16
It was just from altitude was not from orbit, so you're trying
26:19
to do really hard things and I want to talk about what that
26:22
little bit, right? A sex has the most ambitious
26:24
goals on the tightest of timelines, and a quick question.
26:27
What's your latest timeline on getting to Mars getting to Mars?
26:31
I think we'll put people down within the decade, right?
26:34
So you're in charge of. I know.
26:36
I'm crazy. You're in charge of executing on
26:40
that goal to get human beings to Mars within a decade.
26:43
Right? That's more Elon than me.
26:45
But I'm here to help, right? But how do you balance those
26:50
ambitious goals, right? Which maybe you don't comes out
26:53
and says, and getting the team comfortable that is possible.
26:59
So there's a couple of strategies to do that.
27:01
First of all, you always aim high, we have achieved
27:04
everything, we have wanted to never in the timeline.
27:07
We fail on. Line.
27:08
But that feels like the right fell to make as opposed to not
27:11
achieving what you're trying to achieve.
27:12
Technically So you demonstrate that you've been able to do
27:19
these crazy insane absurdly, ambitious things in the past,
27:23
you can continue no pump people up to do it again, and you try
27:27
to pull apart these the seemingly impossible situation,
27:31
and how are we going to design and develop this and you pull it
27:34
into smaller pieces. You build a prototype, you test
27:37
it, you put prototypes, you know, subsystems together and
27:40
you test that and you kind of use a building block approach to
27:43
reach your goals. And the team are very
27:47
enthusiastic about it. Like it's the biggest of gold.
27:51
Its yeah. Rockets are super cool.
27:53
Yeah. So you've been at SpaceX for
27:58
over 20 years now this year? Yeah.
28:00
And now you'll lead a team basically 12,000 people what
28:03
have you learned about your leadership style over the years,
28:07
what do you wish you knew? Now that you knew then that you
28:10
know now, Let me answer the other stuff first I'm not a
28:16
regret or so it's really hard for me to kind of go back and
28:19
say oh I wish I did this thing. I'm a very collaborative leader.
28:26
Actually, I've got some employees here.
28:27
You tell me if I'm a BS artists who are not, I like to get to
28:32
solicit people's opinions, but I'm not afraid to make a
28:35
decision. I need more data than Elon does
28:38
to make a decision. In fact and I don't know whether
28:41
that's experience or or risk-taking, I don't know what
28:45
it is, but I like a little bit more data, but I definitely like
28:49
making decisions I like to hear the conversation until you're
28:52
done. You have to make a decision and
28:54
it's rare that you get people to agree on any topic, right?
28:58
So you collect the best data that you can you listen as hard
29:01
as you can, you ask questions, you bring more data back and
29:04
then you got to go Yeah. Go slightly different question.
29:11
Your job is to run the business, right?
29:12
Sometimes things come up in the organization that are core to
29:16
the culture that are core to who you are as an organization, the
29:20
sexual misconduct allegations against Elon last week, I'll
29:24
just give you one example of that.
29:25
I'm wondering how you think about those moments, those
29:27
moments of truth, and how you think about responding to
29:30
different stakeholders? So I think leaders in any
29:34
business, face, adversity, and Hard challenges.
29:39
And I what's most important is that you first of all, you think
29:43
hard about what happened, what the response is going to be.
29:47
And I think you just have to be really honest with yourself
29:50
about what the right approach is.
29:52
I did send a letter came out last night.
29:55
Very exciting for this particular discussion here.
29:58
I did send a letter to employees, they were screaming
30:01
to hear from me, right? And I was advised to not send
30:04
that letter, not by legal, but by my press team and as such,
30:09
you know, I first of all, I have to speak to the people.
30:12
I have to speak to my employees there.
30:14
You know, the reason why SpaceX is what it is, and I care deeply
30:17
about them, but I knew I would no matter which way I played
30:21
that someone was going to be unhappy with me, but I had to
30:24
say it. I have worked for Ilan for 20
30:27
years. I don't believe he could have
30:29
done. What was what he was accused of,
30:32
but he is in perfect, right? He's in perfect, I'm in perfect.
30:36
And I thought being honest about that was the right approach.
30:38
Regardless of what my team told me to write or not?
30:41
What was left out of that letter, by the way, is the end
30:45
where I basically say we are SpaceX is who we are because of
30:49
you. And if you ever feel
30:51
uncomfortable, or please call me, right?
30:54
So, that part's always left off right at any rate.
30:58
So you face adversity, and I think the only way to get
31:01
through it is to make sure you understand the situation to the
31:05
greatest extent you can. And then be honest with
31:07
yourself, the, and Pick a path and do it and don't be afraid to
31:12
say you made a mistake. If you make a mistake.
31:14
Yeah, I'm Irish that's very Irish, by the way to admit you
31:19
are a dummy and I'm not admitting that in this case, by
31:24
the way. I'm not saying one should be
31:26
willing to do that. Speaking of mistakes, I've heard
31:29
that SpaceX has a culture of feedback, that's something.
31:32
We take very seriously here at the GSB, as well, we have a
31:34
whole class where we learn how to give feedback.
31:37
Feedback is a gift is a continuous motto.
31:39
Of the school almost. I'm wondering how SpaceX
31:43
operationalizes that and the day-to-day.
31:45
So critically important feed 360 feedback and immediate the
31:50
sooner you get feedback, the better off, you are.
31:52
That's a golden nugget of data on how you are impacting your
31:57
co-workers, your company, the the project so that feedback is
32:02
so critical. So give feedback is quickly as
32:05
you can and we always Try to tell people to do it.
32:09
Our review system, we require that you get reviewed 360
32:13
feedback from at least three, you know, sometimes in, you
32:18
know, if you've got employees that have you know, that are
32:20
really great in some areas and really not great.
32:23
In other areas, you try to solicit more feedback to figure
32:25
out what's going on in those areas and try to work with them,
32:28
to figure out how you can get people to this place where it's
32:31
all contribution, all the time. So so it's in our review system,
32:37
We talked about it at the first day of work, please, you know,
32:41
give feedback but engineers and well you know it's not really
32:46
human nature to be willing to look someone in the eye and say,
32:51
hey, that was not helpful, not super helpful.
32:55
Could you do it this way? You know, be objective, try to
32:59
not personalize it in almost every case and and it feedback
33:03
could be technical. It doesn't have to be like, hey,
33:05
you were total jerk to me and I'm really mad.
33:07
At about it. But in almost every case, the
33:10
person at least in my experience person is not mal-intent, not
33:15
intending to do bad things. They either made a mistake, they
33:18
were unaware. So I think approaching it as not
33:22
hurt. Take it at not personal, but
33:23
just talk about how this situation impacted you or how
33:27
this person's work. Cause your work to not be grade.
33:30
You couldn't finish your project or whatever.
33:32
It's just really important. That's exactly what we preach
33:37
here as well. Yep.
33:39
Before we go to Q&A. I know that a lot of great
33:40
questions in the audience. Two questions again about the
33:43
future. First already made a reference
33:45
to this. What comes after Mars?
33:49
Yeah, so we are not working on a ship that yet has the propulsion
33:54
technology to take us to other star systems, but I certainly
33:58
hope that Mars is that example that shows that humans can live
34:03
beyond planet Earth. And that we will focus on
34:07
propulsion Technologies or some way of getting to a place that
34:12
would otherwise take 4,000 or 5,000 years.
34:15
So I'm very excited about that. It will not happen in my
34:18
lifetime. but I hope that some of the work that we're doing
34:21
will kick off the aspiration to go do that like the shows that
34:26
you watch, you know, we can't and they're always want more.
34:30
By the way, Star Wars that what is that?
34:32
I don't start track is not necessarily about war, but it's
34:35
still military. I don't know why it is that way,
34:36
but hopefully we can go there in a civilian way and meet other
34:42
sentient beings and that would be great.
34:45
Yeah. It would be quite something.
34:47
So, for, for the, for this, for the second question, actually,
34:51
want to bring us back to Earth to this Auditorium because many
34:55
of us are thinking about are very immediate future sidekick.
34:59
Morning, I graduate in two and a half weeks as do many of my
35:02
classmates here. Your last view from the top
35:05
speaker of the year you have the stage.
35:08
What advice would you have for us as we embark on the next
35:11
chapter of our lives? So it's a very simple statement
35:13
and I'll follow it up with a couple of examples.
35:16
You want to take risks in your career?
35:20
You absolutely want to take risks?
35:22
Yeah, maybe in your life, too, although you have to balance,
35:24
right? You got to balance it.
35:26
I almost said no, to elim when he asked me to join SpaceX.
35:29
Would have been so I would look back, I'm not a regret.
35:33
ER that is the one thing that I would go back and regret.
35:36
I almost said no. One Ilan asked me to be
35:39
president because I really loved my job.
35:42
My colleagues, my brother and sister vp's were great
35:47
compatriots and I thought it might be weird to be the boss.
35:51
So I almost said no, and I'm so glad that I did it, but it felt
35:55
like a risk to To say, yes there.
35:59
And then this is a more personal risk.
36:03
So, when I first met, my current husband, husband number two,
36:07
sorry, we had our first date and I thought he was roughly, my
36:13
age, roughly my age. And then he said something about
36:16
the Gulf War and you know, wanting to have been a pilot of
36:18
like golf warm, like how and I we're in the car and I looked
36:23
over. I'm like, how old are you?
36:28
And he was about eight years younger than me.
36:31
And I was like not interested. Why would I go out with this
36:35
infant that way? And and luckily, luckily, I
36:44
didn't take that little voice in my head and I took the risk and
36:49
dated a much younger man and happily married.
36:52
So it's not really silly, but a little personal, but I almost
36:56
said I am Not going to date someone that's eight years
36:58
younger than me. That is weird.
37:02
Anyhow, took the risk. Paid off.
37:04
What up? What a great note to end on.
37:06
So with that. Before we close and we are
37:19
almost out of time want to do a traditional view from the top
37:21
lightning round. Okay?
37:23
Ready. I'm very terrible at these,
37:24
okay. Would you rather live in the
37:27
uniform universe or the metaverse?
37:30
I'm not sure what the metaverse is by the way.
37:31
But I think I'm all Universe all the time but a lot of students
37:34
here who know what the better is.
37:35
I don't ya, what are your favorite pre-launch rituals?
37:39
Which you mentioned before Oh I put the inside of my shoes with
37:43
sticky notes that say Scotland on them.
37:45
So I am in Scotland for every launch because we got to orbit
37:49
for the first time when I was in Scotland.
37:52
Yeah. And the only gross thing about
37:54
that is there if I don't take Them out right away.
37:57
You like stepping on paper and it kind of disintegrated and
38:00
then you get like feet paper, all over the place and you
38:04
really have to vacuum it up. It's pretty gross post-launch
38:09
rituals. The post-launch ritual,
38:12
actually, ever celebration champagne every time know every
38:17
launch. Well, we're launching a lot.
38:22
Maybe not every time, maybe not every time.
38:27
Certainly not during the day at work.
38:29
That's an at-home thing. Favorite Space movie Firefly and
38:33
that's the show. But there also is a movie
38:35
Firefly pants down. And you have a Starship at your
38:40
disposal. It's yours.
38:42
You can go anywhere on Earth or into space, what would you take?
38:47
I go to the moon or ventral. And I would like to land
38:53
Successfully. Yeah, I love the moon and why
38:58
the moon and not Mars. Mars is six months further.
39:05
I don't like to Camp so you're traveling for six months.
39:11
Take really camp in the most extreme way humans have ever
39:15
camped whereas camping on the moon it feels like if you hate
39:19
it you just please come home are you can you can put up with it
39:23
for a couple of days and you just get home Mars you're kind
39:26
of stuck for two years. Please welcome me in thanking
39:32
when couple Hey, thanks for listening.
39:37
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