The Orbital Mechanics of Dreams w/ Hans Koenigsmann #63

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Did I say that I said that wrong, didn't I? Yes. Koenigsman. Koenigsman. Yes. Koenigsman. How are you, Hans? I'm good. Very good. How are you? It's it's amazing. We even practiced it, and I said it wrong. So that's what happens. Okay. As always, we do a very brief bio. Hans is a doctor, so doctor, has joy joined SpaceX team as the 4th technical member in 2,002 and developed the avionics guidance and control and software depart and and software departments as vice president of avionics.

He designed the avionics system for the Falcon 1 and supported the early launches as launch chief engineer. His next role was VP of flight reliability for Falcon 9 and Dragon. Hans retired from SpaceX in late 2021 after more than 19 years. He holds a master's from the Technical University of Berlin and a PhD from the University of Bremen in Germany. That said, one thing we've been adding over the past, maybe 15, 20 podcasts is I have no clue what Hans is going to talk about.

Individuals have asked constantly, how do I know the questions? How do we develop this rapport between each other? All we do is get on a call. We talk about what the title will be. And then Hans goes on his own and figures out what direction he would like to take the topic. I don't know what the bullet points he's gonna cover. I don't know the direction he's going to go, and that makes for an unbelievable exchange. That's what makes the podcast so engaging. So let's get started.

Hans, do you have an outline or bullet point set for us to be able to follow? I I do. I do. I I and, you know, looking at it, I wonder if I should spend more time on that. Should I spend more time on it? But anyway, so, why don't you write it down then? My first one is, changes in the space industry and what enabled it. Changes in the hold on. Space industry And what enabled next? The SpaceX effect, question mark. What made SpaceX possible? Why did it succeed where others failed?

Next. Willy Short, The Monopolist. The Monop so I got left to learn to spell these things. Okay. Monopolist? Then I got I'm fine. Okay. Spacex ecosystem and effect beyond space. In fact, beyond space next. And then space commercialization dreams. I think I'm gonna gonna leave it at that. That's good. Well, I I have a feeling we're going to go in a variety of different directions. So let's start with the first one, changes in the space industry, what enabled it, all of that.

Where do you where are we going? So, it's a little bit like how SpaceX basically happened. Right? It was founded in 2002, in in March, and, was founded by Elon Musk, obviously, and, together with, Chris Thompson and, Tom Mueller. And then, I think the next person coming on board, basically, on the technical side was me. They basically, reached out to me, called me in, I wanna say, April, and and asked me if I'm interested. And I didn't really think for, like, more than a millisecond.

And so he said, yeah, right away. Couple of things fascinated me early on. I like the the name Space Exploration Technologies. That kind of was just more than this. It was it was a great name because I worked at a company before that didn't really have a great name. So I love that, and, and and I was I was totally excited about it. It's kind of strange how you and I'm I'm I'm coming basically I I went to school in Germany. I went to college in Germany.

I worked a little bit in Germany on a university institute, and I was actually basically flying building and flying a satellite there with a team, and that was pretty amazing. And then I got hired into Los Angeles. But then I have not done a startup where you basically start with a credit card. Yeah. That's that's kind of what what happens. Right? You have, like, a structure, you have an idea, you have a a vision, and you have a credit card. And then you go to town on that.

There's no structure in terms of, like or no process rather how to buy stuff. You just call people up and buy it. And, okay. So most startups start up with an idea and a structure. That credit card doesn't exist. You Right. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. I know. I know. Credit card. The credit card needs to you find out. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. I I I I I'm I'm with you there. I think I came in at the time where the credit card already exists.

And on on structure, I meant, I mean, just because actually a lot of that is not structured. It's more like a plat maybe like a loose plan for the idea how to get there. Yeah? So I I wanna get to that, but there's one thing I'm I'm gonna this is going to bother me through the whole thing if I don't ask this. You list that you're number 4, but you said Tom Mueller, there's Elon, and then you. Maybe my math is wrong.

That's 3. You you so there's there's, it it was Chris Thompson, Tom Mueller, and Elon Musk. Okay. And then I'm the number 4. Okay. So I'm not saying number 4 because the the the payroll listed a couple other folks, that were working for Elon and other functions. So that's why I'm saying technical number 4. Okay. I'm just, the math didn't I didn't hear the other the charisma. I didn't I was like, how are you doing your math? Okay. So when you say structure, what did you mean by that?

I meant, like, we had the idea of building a small rocket, called, you know, Falcon 9 and, there was that idea was already there. The details were were open. As far as I think, I used the wrong word for that, to be honest, because the lack of structure when you do something like that was what fascinated me mostly. I mean, like, in a company when you buy stuff, there's a process for that, and here, there's nothing. So we had to basically develop that.

But that what I meant is more like we had an idea and we had, like, a a rough plan around it. We thought that's, a rocket with a certain propellant, lots lots and kerosene are the the 2 propounds that were chosen. And, and then we were basically specialists in in our particular areas. Tom Buhle was the engine guy, great propulsion engineer.

Chris Thompson was in structures, and I was a little bit on an avionics, guidance and control software, kind of like the the stuff around it, the system stuff. Yeah. And, and that was basically my area. And, I mean, just to complete, there's also, the next person we hired, was was Tim Buzzer for launch. Not exactly the next person we hired, other people in between too, but on the leadership side. And then then, obviously, Quinn Quinn Chartwell on the business development side.

And the way it was built up was that, we had, Elon hired the leaders first. He hired basically 5 people that, had some experience but were still open to new ideas. You know, not people people that were, like, in their mid careers, I would say, maybe. I was I was pretty much 40 at the time, and we were all about the same age. So I had some experience. I I knew how to build things, but not enough to really be set in my way.

Although, you you end up figuring out 40 people tend to be pretty set set in their ways. Yeah. Exactly. You think you're not really set, but you are set in your ways. But at the same time, I didn't really work for big aerospace, and so and so I feel like I was still perceptible for that for that start up, you know, by, yeah, overall. But it was definitely a learning curve for me too to, to figure out what to do to be more effective in a start up. Can I ask how you were found?

So I ran into you on on a on an amateur rocket event, earlier that year, early 2002. Just introduced myself, And then I think you heard my name from both Chris Thompson and then another friend, from JPL in terms of, like, I'm I'm good at avionics or something like that. Okay. And so he just gave me a call. It was like a double recommendation, and, he knew me, from just shaking hands.

Okay. That's a Yeah. When you at this point, you're going back 20 years ago, and I wanna get into more of the details. But when you you heard that it didn't have structure, it was a start up, was it something where you were just saying, this is exactly what I was looking for or I have no clue what I'm doing? What where were you? It was a mix of both. I mean, on on one one side, what I what I wrote before is actually, was off often associated with finding funding.

And, and it annoyed me a little bit because I'm not good at that. I I'm a technical person. I I hate figuring out where to get the money for this. And he is a he is a guy who wants to invest, and he basically put the money on the table and said, here's the money that should be enough for, like, 3 flights. You go and and do that. Yeah. And I love that. That part, I really loved. So no struggle there. The struggle was more like, okay. How do we exactly do that?

Yeah. And and how do we do this in a way that's best for the company? That that was more that was more difficult Mhmm. In that sense. But but overall, I mean, you figured out a way. Right? We the first the first year, I would say, was like a mix between trying to hire people, and we really tried to hire, talent. Like, the smartest people we could find straight from school, Because those people, you can you can teach them. You can train them.

And, the fact that they are smart helps you getting to the best answer for for any of the problems you have along the way. And then the guidance along, the guidance how to do this was supposed to come from the, 5, leaders that Elon hired first, among them, me. Had you hired had you hired a big team before? No. No. So, yeah, actually, hiring is a very difficult thing. I I had to catch up pretty quickly what's important, what not.

I did over over my lifetime at SpaceX, I did hundreds of interviews. My my guess is 600, 700. Yeah? And I I learned I learned how to do this, but in the beginning, I think it was I was mostly uncomfortable with that. Didn't really know what to ask. Elon is actually pretty good at that. So he was a good good teacher at that. And, and and he he had those riddles. And I I love the idea, because they're also objective.

Not necessarily for somebody to solve the riddles, but for somebody how to work the riddles. So in other words, I give you a riddle and then and then you you would work through the riddle, and I care more about how you work through this. Yeah? You're not you're not, you're not telling me you got this and you don't. And, you know, if you have a question, you ask me and or you you say I need help here. That's what I'm looking for, actually. More than actually, somebody saying, oh, the number is 5.

Yeah. It's it is the interesting dynamic is, and you could tell me if I'm wrong, I bet a lot of people in an interview are afraid to ask the questions. Right. Because they wanna they don't wanna look like they don't know. I wanna work with them, basically. I want I'll tell them, look. I mean, I I give you that riddle. I wanna work through this with you. Yeah? And then and then try to break that. If I if that doesn't work out, then then people people are under stress.

I understand that, and the pressure, but I wanna see how they work under pressure. That is an important part. I I I have a I have a quote in front of me that I've I keep. It's actually, like, plastered across a light. It says, the smartest person in the room is the person who asks the best questions of themselves and of others. Right. Right. And it's fascinating that you were looking for the to see it how well they wanted to ask questions. That that's I love that.

I I always ask at the end, do you have any questions for me? And I'm really disappointed that people don't, because that tells me a little bit, like, they haven't really thought this through. Even if they're stupid questions, you still want Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. Totally. I I mean, it could be like, how do you how do you like working here, for example? Yeah. Or, I mean, things that that are really in of interest to somebody who who who starts to work there. Yeah. How is the team?

How is it working with Elon? How is this and that? Yeah. And and then but I bet there's a 1,000 questions, and people tell me, no. I don't have a question. That's kinda, like, weird. It it, I know I'm interviewing you, but I'll share a small story. When I was about 18 years old, I got called by someone introduced me for to run a help run a rock quarry. You know, they break stone and big trucks in the city. And I the guy calls up. He says, sure. I'll have an interview with you. You can come down.

What time would you like to meet? And I said, I don't know. At 9 o'clock? And he said, oh, my day's half over, but I'll meet you then. And at we're an hour away from this quarry. And at 6 AM or 5 AM, it was some ungodly order. He calls us as my schedule has changed. I need to see you in 1 hour. Now it's an hour drive. So I showered in 2 and a half minutes. I was out the door driving like a bat out of hell to get there. I get there. He makes me sit in a room for about 45 minutes.

We go through the interview. And at the end of the interview, he says, do you have any questions for me? Because he's more or less packing up. And I said, yeah, I got a bunch of questions. And he said later, they weren't questions about RockCore. You didn't know enough. But he said, just the fact that you were asking questions was what I really loved. Right. And so it's funny that you saw that transact, which is I think is really cool.

I think individuals have to realize, hey, Gotta ask questions. There's a lot we all don't know. So, here's one. Best, best tire and worst tire without giving names if you that's okay. Sorry. Best tire. What was the best tire that happened? Like, how did you find somebody, and what was the worst tire going through this process for you? I don't know.

I mean, in in the beginning, actually, we we we, Elon overrode me a couple of times because I was looking for different different qualities than than him, and he was actually right in in some, some of those. And I felt like I made the wrong decision. So that that that was something that I I I struggled with.

And then what always fascinated me is, like, you have somebody in an interview presenting themselves from a really, I guess, good side, and then the person that comes in, like, a month later to work is somebody totally different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that always was something where I thought, okay. Maybe the process is not working that way.

Maybe we should, you know, have an interview in somebody's car or so what you know, like, in a in a more personal environment, so you can you can actually figure out that person better than otherwise. It goes both ways. It, it can be better or worse. Like, Elon actually interviewed me at home, and and that was basically only because we didn't have an office at the time, but it also gave him insight into into how I live. Right? And how I, you know, what's on my bookshelf and and stuff like that.

And and so I think that's actually it can be really valuable. It can be really good. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You you get a sense of who they are. Right. Will you I mean, was this just one of those exciting things for you? Like, you said to yourself, hey. Wow. This is something I think will be game changing, or was it going back, I know it's not easy to remember that exact things. I don't think I had the vision, frankly. I and I'm not a I'm not I think this is not my thing.

I'm I'm I'm I'm somebody who sees the technical problem and gets to work on it. Yeah? So my my thought was, oh, that would be really cool to show that you can actually build a rocket with, like, hundreds of people and and make it work instead of, like, 10 thousands of people, but what used to be the case. Right? So I thought I thought that was really, really cool.

And the the other thing I really like is the visual concept that we had, in terms of, like, engine, propellant, you know, technology on on on the pump, turbo pump, and so on and so forth, was something that resonated with me because I thought, okay. This is really this is really a good approach. I think I think this has actually, a chance to succeed. Yeah. So I was excited about that. Also, the money, the investment basically was on the table. And so so I I really like that too.

It give gives us a shot at focusing on the technical work and not getting distracted by trying to find the money, the entire time. So there were a bunch of things that I really thought were exciting. Yeah. I'm looking at what, I first time kind of looking at your, your write up when I wrote this up for your intro. Avionics Guidance Control software departments, and yet you had a propensity.

So far, you've said it a few times, you were really interested in the engineering and the science behind the building too. So to know the propellants, to know the turbo pumps, was that something that was always part of your history? No. I think it came a little bit like how I worked at the the company previously, tried to have a certain concept, and and I thought this is there's a weakness here.

And then you come across the new concept that SpaceX basically proposed, and it takes care of that weakness. And they go, wow. Okay. This is really great. Yeah. So it's it's kind of things you learn and things that make sense on a global level. I do have a a tendency to step back and look at that from a from a certain distance and to evaluate it on a more like on a system level, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And and, You weren't in the weeds of the engineering, but you were in the concept of what was going on that was necessary Correct. Because you had to have the software run properly. You had the guidance control, had to work. So maybe you can add input or you were in meetings and you heard them discussing it. And, the the you've ever watched the movie The 13th Warrior?

No. With Antonio Banderas, very quickly, this guy gets captured, and he is not from the northern he's not from the northern part of Europe. He is, from Arabian or Arab culture, and he didn't understand language. But he sat around the fire. He listened, and he listened, and he listened, and he figured out the language. And that's how he was able to start to communicate with them. So probably that was a an an osmosis that was happening with you. That's an interesting process.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, here, I had, like, my my my my peers, basically, and I could ask them questions. And we did actually work well together. The the team of the, you know, 5 VPs, basically, and Elon worked really well together in the beginning, I thought. And we had to we had to draw boundaries. We had to say, okay. I do this. You do that. How does this work for you? Can I give you whatever? Can I give you the the the the power in that form or something like that?

Yeah. And and and we basically had to do all these things and discuss that. And it helped that we we kind of liked each other basically as as a team member. And, and that, I think, got us partly also to success. Okay. So let's let's jump back to the changes in the space industry and what enabled it. So Right. You've got this new job. It's 20 years ago, 20 some odd years ago. And what what was evolving?

So so the the thing was basically to build to build basically a conventional rocket for for that matter. There was nothing particularly, interesting in in Falcon 1, and as a last year I've seen. But there was this one element that Elon really wanted, strongly, and that was reusability. And so so there was always a parachute on the first stage. The idea was to have the first stage come back and then at one point in time deploy the parachute and land it.

Yeah. And so we spent we spent a significant amount of time and money on getting the parachute into the, the first stage. And, I think at the beginning, this was a little bit, well, not not thought out, basically, and not really well designed at all. It was more, like, symbolic for that matter, but, it was something that became more and more serious as time went on. So if you know the history of SpaceX, I mean, the first three rockets failed.

We had we had, you know, other things to do than than recover the stages or rather we had to recover them from a state that we didn't wanna recover them from. But we, we we basically blew up the first three, launches. And, and we learned along the way on how how to launch a rocket and and not to. And that approach was also a little bit different because people, people tend to basically build the rocket and then kind of test it until you you are a 100% sure it works.

And even then, it mostly doesn't work. Mhmm. But we we launched at a at a time where you would think, oh, well, this is not necessarily to be successful, but it's rather necessary to learn how to be successful. So it's this iterative design, that, you know, it's more pronounced today than at the time, but it was somewhat like an early version of, of the iterative design that we did. And, basically, on the first rocket, we learned certain things and we implemented them for the second rocket.

And the on the second rocket, we did other things, that didn't go well, and we implemented those for a third rocket and so on and so forth. And, on the third rocket that we had a we had a new engine, and it didn't didn't go very well for a different reason. The engine worked great, but it didn't go out really quickly. It, it went out, like, in a slow way. And by that time, we had already separated the first and the second stage, and and then we basically rear ended the second stage.

That was bad. So so we learned we learned another thing. And then after that, we pretty much, you know, fixed the the timing and, before the rocket went into orbit. And so, that that moment was pretty, pretty interesting and, of course, exciting for when you worked there for, like, a couple years, and and we're used to basically collecting debris. And and suddenly, here you are, and the thing actually comes around and, and comes over you again on a on an orbit. And and, that was pretty amazing.

It was a a wild party after that too. So I, some questions off of the this little segment that you added. Number 1, where did the concept or who created the concept that you're not going to build in, clean rooms and you're gonna be more manufacturing oriented? The not not the one that's I bet there's a story out there. I've never heard it. So I'm just asking the question. Is there a time where you were sitting in the meeting and someone said, screw it. Let's just do it this way.

Or was it not thought out or what just happened? That's the first Yeah. No. No. It was it was definitely, there was a lot of, discussion in the beginning. I do we buy a clean room and and stuff like that? And then and then I think, Elon pushed for not having this and and and, building it, like, basically, like, in a in a in a in a normal clean place. Yeah. We we it it kind of resonated with with us that we think we can do that. We don't need a clean room.

We we don't, you know, believe in this really, I guess, fancy space technology, you know, that that you usually see. But but we learned along the way, actually, there are reasons for clean rooms, and there are places where you do want a clean room. For example, you wanna be clean when you assemble your electronics. You wanna be clean when you assemble your your, certain certain components on the propulsion system. And in particular, you wanna be clean in your tanks.

Your your propellant tanks should really be clean. There should be no screws in there, like loose or something like that. Yeah? And I know I know it's hard, but it's a big thing. Right? It's it's gonna happen. I mean, the the tank's ran a rock quarry, so I understand that. But Yeah. Yeah. I I'd never even thought of a screw being in the side of it inside of a tank. Yeah. I mean, that because that screw will go into your pump and then take bad things in the pump. Not a good thing. Yes. Right.

Exactly. I mean, it's the same it's totally it's trivial, but because, like, on your car, you do the same thing. Right? There's a filter there, that catches basically any little screws Yeah. Along the way to the to the to the engine. Yeah. Or, you know, you could be electric too. But, but, anyways, yeah, anything these things basically have to kept be kept clean. So we learned it basically from the perspective of, what is really necessary. That that is something we need to keep clean.

And other stuff, well, we we, we assemble them basically in in a clean environment, but not a clean room. Yeah? Right. It's Big difference. You keep you nice you keep you deep. Exactly. Mhmm. Exactly. Keep your shop clean. Basically, that's just like a like a a common common sense, thing. So you you don't have dirt in in your in your threads and the connections and stuff like that. But it doesn't have to be like a clean room per se.

Yeah. But there's certain things that do need a clean room per se. The the next question that came through now, I believe and you could tell me if I'm wrong. And I I don't study this, so don't don't make assumptions that I know all of these things. I believe it was the 3rd rocket that blew up at about 2 minutes and 19 seconds. Correct? That sounds somewhat right. It could be a little bit later than that. The first one's for a, 28 seconds.

The second one actually went to substantial velocity and several minutes into the second burn. And this the third one basically finished the first burn and then never never started the second one. Okay. So and I'm I'm actually opening up a page because I wrote something about this a long time ago. I'm gonna see if I could find it in in the second. It it typically, the time of the first stage burning out is a 180 seconds.

And so it would be, like, close to 3 minutes, but, you know, we're talking couple of seconds. Yeah. Yeah. So because, the it it's not the point there, but that was the I was in I had gone to NASA. And by the way, I think I told you that NASA named us. We we I traveled there almost every month for 5 years. Yeah. One of the things that, I was sitting at a meeting and one of the teammates walked in and said, c c c David, space is hard.

And and I looked at him and then said, no. Space is not hard as far as I know, and I'm not a space fanatic. Uh-huh. As far as I know, we're pretty good when we get up there. I mean, people just don't die. Things work when they get there. They're pretty well thought out. I said, space is harsh. Earth is hard. We have we have the technology. We have a deep gravity well. We have the cost. We have the politics behind it. We have the engineering that has to be put together.

And I listed a whole bunch of things. I said, space is not hard. It's harsh. Earth is hard. How did you I mean, this is the 3rd rocket. You had said just a moment ago, you had enough money for 3 rockets. Yeah. What went through your mind when that 3rd rocket didn't make it? I thought that was the end of it. Maybe maybe that was that was too little, but because, you know, Elon said he's in for 3 rockets, and then and then this was the third one.

And, I I I kind of knew we built a 4th one at this on the side too. Right? So it's not that I didn't know this, but I thought, well, okay. That's it. And, I don't know. I think I was more frustrated on the first launch. On the 3rd launch, on the other side, we we had already 2 failures, and and we, I guess, what I wanna say we got used to that. But but, we we we learn to to learn out of our failures more than than, than before.

And so we knew what what what we we made wrong pretty quickly, and we we think we were ready to do this. And then, yeah, I mean, Elon basically surprised me at least by calling everybody in the meeting room and said, okay. You guys have, like, I think it was 6 weeks or 8 weeks, to go back. We have we have another rocket, finished, and I want you to launch it basically and, and get to all of it, paraphrased here.

And then the time frame was so short that we actually usually, we ship we ship the rocket with the with the with the ship. And, and this time, we basically decide, okay, we gotta rent an airplane and fly it down there. And and so we can actually meet that that schedule. And that's what we did. We we flew the 4th rocket out on the c 17. There was some excitement because we, the pressure inside the cargo bay of the, c 17 changes faster than the rocket can equalize the pressure.

And so we we buckled the tank, basically, inside the the airplane. That was, that was not fun. And then we we landed and, pulled the rocket out basically and had to basically fix it inside, which which was doable. But, it was, somewhat unexpected and took us a little bit longer than than otherwise. Yeah. I was actually not on that flight, but, yeah. So I I just I did look it up. It was, what I had written was this is way back, so you gotta imagine.

A micro adjustment can determine a win by a nose or a loo or a loss. SpaceX Technologies founded by natives, South African Elon Musk, who also founded PayPal and Tesla, that are putting satellites in space at a fraction of competitors' cost. Its first two $6,000,000 rockets failed, and the 3rd suffered a loss by a nose, an altitude of 217 kilometers, when a single line of code did not allow enough time for commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation.

You know, it's slightly slightly slightly slightly wrong in the details. Okay. Well, I'd like to ask. Sure. This is what happened. That was the news that was out there at the time. This was 3rd flight. Right? So so so what happened is we we changed the engine concept from a, an ablative engine that basically erodes as as coolant. Yeah. And, basically, it eats away the engine into an engine that was regenerative. So in other words, the engine had, like, cooling channels around it. Yeah?

And and it was a logical change. It made sense because that's what you can reuse, and, that's also the better technology and so on and so forth. But what we didn't really consider was that when you turn this engine off, it takes, like, 1 and a half to 2 seconds for the thrust to die down. Okay. The other engine thrust went died down basically like a like a step. It was like, from from from whatever, £70,000 thrust to 0 in in, like, milliseconds. Yeah. Or maybe maybe 50 milliseconds or so.

Yeah. And then this one really took its time. And then we had the stage separation. When you separate the stages, you don't wanna wait much lot much time because you're you're you're drifting. You're not thrusting. You're you're kind of like you have this whole rocket that's without control. Right? And so engine out, separate, engine on. And that's what you want. So but from the first engine, that obviously took, like, so fast.

The whole sequence was, like, I don't wanna say it was, like, maybe half a second a second or something like that. Yeah? Bang bang. And for the newer engine, it should have been engine out, wait, separate, and go. Yeah. And and and so, basically, it was not a line of code that was wrong. It was not the shutdown that was wrong. The shutdown worked fine. It was the fact that we separated too early or too fast, and, and that was basically just a a number that you could configure.

And, and we changed the number, and, it worked on the next one. There was no other change. That was it. It was just a number that changed. What what are, let's see, commanding main engine shutdown and stage separations was kind of the quote that was pulled out of something. Yeah. And the commanding main, main engine shutdown, I don't think was the problem at all. That didn't change. Oh, okay. It's a state it's a state separation. I mean, it's a nitpick, but, No.

No. No. I'm I'm glad you're saying it. This was this was pulled out of an article. I don't tend to write things that come from other places that I don't have firsthand knowledge of. So I'm confirming what was written here, and this is what was in the major publications out there. Right. Right. So they so let's take it from where you were at that point so we It's not totally wrong. I mean, it has it has definitely to do with the state separation, and so on. You changed one number.

You just said it. You changed Yeah. One number. The the message in that little paragraph that was written is that it's amazing how a single tiny adjustment or item Yeah. Can make all the difference in the world. And that was that was the message of that paragraph is that That's true. It it could have been a line of code. It could have been Yeah. The way it was written could have should have been. A timing number had to be changed. Yeah. I mean, exactly.

And I mean, that's just a thousand ways to screw this up. Right? Obviously. And and and you just have to to get it right in order. That's probably what the fascination of rockets is also. There's just no room for anything. It's just very unforgiving. You you have to be pretty much perfect in order to get to orbit.

And if you are if you make mistakes on on the other side, like, if you wait too long, yeah, well, then it doesn't get to orbit because you wasted all your time, like, drifting around, and you lost you lost altitude and velocity in that time that you had to had to basically add on the burn during the burn, and now you don't have enough propellant. Yeah? Yep. This is the equivalent of, and all the energies are high and people quote that often.

Yeah. But it's also the fact that if your car has 500 miles range, and it doesn't matter whether it's electric or gas. Yeah. And you you just determine, I'm gonna I'm gonna fill up gas at 500 kilometer or 500 miles, whatever the number the unit is, and not earlier. This is the equivalent of that. Yeah? And maybe, like, you give yourself maybe you give yourself, like, a, tiny percentage of margin. You give yourself another 5 miles. You go at 4:95. You you fill it up. Right?

But even then, you the entire the entire drive, you think, is that right? Am I gonna do this? Am I gonna be okay? That's the equivalent of of what, what markets basically are, in my opinion. And the gas station is closed when you arrive. Well, that too, of course. Yeah. We have whatever. You forgot your credit card. Right. You forget about that. So, you were talking about the the you fixed the timing. So you had this was the first, the second, the third rocket you learned.

Yeah. The new engine, now you fix the timing. And we're we're talking about the the industry changing. What happened next? So, the industry changed, well, a little bit more with Falcon 9 in that sense. We Falcon 1, was kind of like the learning rocket for SpaceX. Falcon 9 was the one that was the well, I don't wanna say the real thing because Falcon 1 was pretty real, but you know what I mean. It was like the one that could be commercially, was commercially viable. Yeah?

And then even Falcon 9, we learned a lot because there's different versions of it. And as as time went on, we went from the first version that just, you know, was built quickly and and made it to orbit. It it carried the capsule dragon, basically. Yep. And then and then we started looking at this reusability in more more detail. Right? We try to actually, be where the rocket lands, And then we realize, oh, the stage completely burns up.

We need to add, you know, we need to add more protection on the engine so that it doesn't burn up between the engines. It's a media heat shield. And, and you also need to slow down a little bit. That's what what the entry burn does, basically, and and so on and so forth. And so we learned these things. And then somewhere into, Falcon 9, I wanna say probably flight 14, 15, something like that.

We started landing it on a on a, on a barge, which we call drone ships because they are somewhat autonomous. So we we kept the barge or the township at the spot and then tried to hit it with the first stage and and, slow it down.

And at the beginning, that was, often almost comical because the stage would land, sideways, or it would basically hit it hard and blow up and, would create great footage for for, you know, people that wanna look at at fire and explosions, but it wasn't, making progress towards landing. Only slowly, I would say. And then it took it took some time to develop the the the algorithms and and make the rocket land.

And and it really landed, the first time, actually, when we tried it on land, on on solid ground at the Cape after a pretty miserable year. There was flight flight 21. I think it's actually quoted differently in in some some references. But, the accounting was different outside than inside. I forgot what year that was. Was it 15? Who came up with the concept of the drone ship? So, when you land, there's 2 ways to land. Right? The rocket goes in a certain direction. Yeah?

And if you land forward, then you don't have to turn the velocity around and go back to land. Yeah? And so there's some some clear benefit if you land on a ship. I actually don't know who came up with that, concept, but it was pretty early. It's possibly been a year a couple a couple years since then. But it's a lot it's a logical choice. If you don't wanna go back, then you go forward. Whereas then you don't have your your opponent expenses. I'm it's just simply less than if you go back.

Yeah. And then you have the ability to be able to manage and maneuver because you've got more propellant. Correct. Correct. So yes. I mean, an obvious propellant is is valuable because you do need it. You don't want to spend it for, for the recovery. You wanna spend it for, basically, your pay land your payload. Right? Yeah. That's that's the main thing. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out what year that was. It was 2015. Exactly. That that's okay.

And it's one of those, you know, ideas come from some place. Somebody says, why don't we? Well, you can't basically have the you talking about? And they said, no. Why don't why don't we land on the ocean on a boat Right. That's all autonomous, and everybody says you're crazy. Right. Can we do that? It's I mean, I I credit Elon with the reusability overall and to push this all the time. Yeah? It's clearly that was clearly his his thing.

And on the landing, Lars Blackmore, did did a lot of work on the algorithm. But there were lots of people involved overall in this in this thing. By that time, we were also a pretty big team. I'm gonna guess maybe a 1000 people, maybe even more. I would love to see actually how many people we were over time and and how how it grew. But we had a pretty miserable year in that that year. We had a, a group flight actually fail on the way to the space station, in June of 2015.

And then we went through, like, figuring out what happened for, like, several months. And then we had another the so, basically, the the return to flight launch was the one in late December, and it was literally, like, the last day the range was open because there was they closed at Christmas and, and then that's it for the year. And so there was, like, a a true sense of we gotta get this done now or we we will not achieve anything this year.

And, and then we basically that was the launch that landed successfully on land, for the first time. And so so it was a miserable year that ended really on a high note. I remember that because I I took a flight back and I flew basically straight to Mammoth Lakes for skiing, and I was so happy. Yeah. So so how was when you're talking about industry changing, what you have all of these pieces. What Yes. Is changing along the way? So so here's the thing that changed. Right?

You could it took a while, for that. But you you you recover a stage, you land the stage, and then you inspect it. You kind of make assessment whether you can launch this again or not. And then you do launch it again. When you do that, you're basically safe to building another stage, another first stage, yeah, which is the biggest part on the rocket. So that's something that SpaceX does now on a regular basis. There are stages that have flown 20 times and more, I think.

No. 20 times, I think, is the the the record right now. They landed 300 rockets. It's just amazing. Yeah? And how reliable it has become. And they basically they didn't build the amount of first stages, you know, when when they launched a 100 times last year, they didn't build a 100 first stages here or 94, I think, was the number. But but they they built basically, you know, a fraction of that, a 10th of that or even less.

Yeah. And and that clearly saves some money, and that clearly changes the economics of that. Yeah. That that is, I think that was the that's the fundamental change in the industry that that, by reusing a rocket, in a way that the reusability is actually, rapid and and quickly and, and something you can do in a couple of weeks and not not take it completely apart. If you do that, then you can you can save, building the booster over and over again and throwing it away.

And, I think Elon compares a lot to, you know, imagine you would fly fly, you know, commercial with an airplane, and they would they would throw the airplane away at the end of the flight. That would be a rather expensive flight. Well, and the way the airline industry is going right now, that might not be a bad idea in Well, truth. And we we made it. Yeah. Reusability does require reusability does require reliability. And it's kind of like, also reusability also helps for you reliability.

So because you can actually look at it and you can get more data, so so it it kind of helps you with with reusability and over and over using things many, many times, you also gain gain a lot on on reliability. It's kind of like, it goes hand in hand, basically. But you you do know. I mean, there's no way other people have attempted to do some type of Yeah. Usability. Well Oh, totally.

It's something happened here, and I'm not gonna call it magical, but something happened in the leadership, something happened in the group that you were able to figure it out where the the graveyard is probably pretty full of a a lot of organizations who've said, oh, we gotta have a reusable rocket. Yeah. It's not I mean, it's not a big graveyard. It's a pretty small cemetery. But but at the end of the day, you're right.

Most of the people are those little ones that you drive by when you're Exactly. Because it's gone. Yeah. So a couple of things, the reason for that. Number 1, it's hard to build rockets that go to orbit. Yeah. And then it's also hard to build. It's it's even harder to build rockets that come back, because now you you did this big accomplishment getting to orbit. Do you have the energy to actually land the rocket here or land the the booster? And then, obviously, Falcon 9 had 2 stages. Yeah?

And, and Falcon 9 reuses the 1st stage, the the booster and, and the, and the fairing. So the top part basically. Yeah. But it doesn't it doesn't reuse the 2nd stage. Yeah. Other vehicles basically reuse the second stage. The space shuttle was basically the upper stage of the whole shuttle stack. And, and that's even harder than flying the booster back and landing the booster. So that that when you start with the you know, I feel like, the shuttle was an attempt at that, but it was so difficult.

It was so complex that, and it also was a human space flight vehicle. So that that all made it difficult to make changes, to adapt for it to push, the envelope, because there was always a concern about the astronauts in there. And so so by having a, uncrewed, like, vehicle basically to test this, I think you you you had the luxury of testing it.

Yeah. You could, you could test it also without endangering the the, the main mission because the the landing happens after the the mission for the booster. So there are a couple of things that that Falcon 9 did, right and that other people try to, I guess, maybe to be too ambitious or too complex. It's also how do you land? Do you land vertical? Do you land horizontal? In one case, you you're basically trying to build an airplane and the rockets together. Yep. Absolutely. Right?

Landing vertically seems now almost like the easier part. So so Did you talk about horizontal? We yes. We we we looked at different concepts, and and, you know, it's, it's complex. It's it's difficult. Yeah. Because you need wings, basically. You need something riding left. And and so it it seemed easier to just just, reverse the, reverse the the movie of a launch, basically. And I That's a good way to say it. Yeah. Right. Well, people said that we did that.

We're just showing the the the video of the launches in reverse. It's a it it changed going to the second half of your bullet this bullet is that you said, and it enabled it. Yet with all the, with all, meaning small group, but with all the rocketry organizations out there today, it it's not completely enabled. There's this Yeah. It's it's a belief. Yes. They can do it, but we still haven't. We're only doing well, how many the European Space Agency. How many flights are they putting up?

How many spikes are all the others putting up? How many is Rocket Lab putting up? I mean, Firefly. And I'm not picking on them. Please don't take them that way. I'm just saying Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's it's okay. I I wouldn't call it enabling it. I think what I would kind of phrase it as if I was to have to kinda title it is, is it shows possibilities. It demonstrates possibilities that one organization has been able to make this happen. Correct. Well, yes.

And and and it also showed the way how to do this. But, you know, it's the work is not completely done yet. There's still a second stage that's thrown away, and that still is pretty expensive. So you're absolutely right. It's it's not completely done. But it does it does show that, that you can do that, and and so it does enable, a different type of vehicle. And that enables lower cost, and that enables more spaceflight.

So so the interesting thing, however, is that it's not the first rocket that becomes cheaper. It's when the second rocket lands and gets reusable that it gets cheaper. Does that make sense? It's an exponential curve because you've you've more or less taken a huge chunk of the costs because it now can go up a second time and the third time becomes bonus. The 4th time I meant more like the the market the commercial aspect of that because the prices don't go down. The prices don't go down now.

Right, the space of flash pretty much and survival of a commercial company hangs in that balance. Correct. And to be fair, I mean, when you build something like that, you have a huge you spent a huge amount of money on on, on the development, and you need to recover that. So that's the reason why the price does not go down right away. But there's also the other reason of of, other records costs like, x. And then, obviously, the the first reusable rocket is gonna cost x minus $1. Right?

Mhmm. So it's gonna be it's gonna undercut the other rockets just by a little bit. And then if you have 2 reusable rockets in the world, well, then it gets interesting because then they're gonna drive the price down to whatever is is is sustainable in the long run. And that's gonna be substantially under the the the the numbers that you have now. I would I'm not an economics person. I'm only playing 1 on a podcast, but it's it's the perception of the possibilities, I think, is the huge part.

Yes. It's dropped cost significantly. It's yet it's given individuals and organizations this kind of metric, and you're old enough to know of the Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile. Physiologically and psychologically impossible to break the 4 minute mile. And then this one guy goes out, breaks a 4 minute mile. In the short time, everybody starts breaking the 4 minute mile. So It's it's really interesting. Seen that, though, the same in that same vein.

I've been I've been very cautious with the word impossible too in the meantime. I I would not dare to say that because so many things happened that we thought were impossible, whatever, 10, 20, 30 years ago. And and so the word impossible and and to be quoted in in connection with the word impossible is not a great, no. It's not Those things don't live very long. Yeah. Not not great. Yeah. Doesn't they don't age very well, I think, is the right term. No. It it doesn't.

And people haven't learned that lesson through history. So when, the this is just a forecast. It doesn't go anywhere. Another agent coming here. This, by the way. No one's gonna hear this. Is when from what you've learned, how far are we from the the total rocket being completely resalvage? Yeah. So so first of all, I I think actually, one thing that I learned is that the true problem on space flight or space technology was always cost, not the physics.

Yeah. I know that that that rocket people say, oh, it's the physics and and and and so on and so forth. But looking back, it seemed to me we we solved almost everything except the cost. There was always a problem, and that's still still is a problem. Yeah? So having said that, I don't think we are far away from the complete reusability with, I mean, that gets you to Starship. Yeah. Right?

The Starship and then there's also a little bit, a much, much smaller player, but still, you know, close to my heart too, is, stoke space. I'm building a reasonable second stage. That's probably more out there. But, but fundamentally, those are the 2 that actually trying to fix this problem completely. Yeah. It's funny that you you actually went back to it's space is not hard. It's harsh. It's the challenges on Earth. It's Right. That's the cost. Said was. It's Yeah. It's the politics.

It is the cost factor. It is the deep gravity. I mean, all these things are part of it, but they all happen in atmosphere. All of these things that go wrong are happening out on this earth. They're not happening up there. Now things do go wrong. They always do when you're out to see things go wrong.

But what you just said was the big part is that economic side of it, which until it's overcome, until it's proven that those numbers can work, it will be a high risk venture requiring a lot of insurance, requiring a, a a certain type of investor pool, and requiring the understanding that you're gonna lose a lot of money to get that rocket up. Because as we've seen, we'll name names, but the rockets go up and they go sideways. And the rockets Let me. They don't work the same way.

Yeah. Let me let me go back to the title in this case. Right? The object mechanics of dreams. Because, honestly, this is part of the problem. So you have dreams. You you your dream is to make it fully reusable and so on and so forth. And you have a lot of, you can do a lot of things, right, as long as you have the money for it. So so I think that that dream is a possibility, but it always has to happen within the orbital mechanics. It always has to happen within the physics.

And so so but what started as a, you know, collection of, like, contradictory words, is actually not that bad, when I look at it again now. But yeah. Yes. Because what you just said, which came from you, from your head, is that this is the huge challenges all often that economic level. How do you manage the personnel, the hiring, the firing, the technology, put it all together into something that actually goes up that works when it hits when it hits That is Correct.

That that that is actually really interesting because, so the Rocket Business has a lot of personalities. You need people that are driven, and and and so that comes often with, like, more personalities. And then you have people working with personalities work together in close spaces for, like, fighting over over resources. And, I always look at companies basically and wonder how they are when the first the first time it goes wrong. Because that's where the true value of the team shows.

It's not in the beginning. It's not 1st year. It's not when the coffee is free. And and there's Friday Friday Friday dinners or Friday ranches rather. That's the good time. And that's easy to to to have, a great company then. It's when the first time it goes wrong. How does it do they still, you know, work together? Is that still good? And that's where it really that's where the rubber hits the road. And you see if the team is still good. And I must say looking back at SpaceX, it did that.

The team always pulled together. Yeah. The the team always came came in a circle and and that how do we fix this? How do we get this right? And that's that's the unique part, in my opinion, of SpaceX, and that I at least experienced as unique. Yeah. How how well it worked together as a team and how good it was in solving problems at the time. Yeah. So I mean, obviously, I'm out for, like, two and a half years now. Yeah. But that's So Yeah.

But even in even out two and a half years, you have all of this. I I'm gonna I'd like to know when that first thing happened, what you were feeling. Like, number 3, Rocket. You said that you thought this was over. You you had these accidents or mishaps of things. How did you what was your propensity going into these meetings? You had to have I don't know. You had to have your own pep talk. You had to have a pep talk to yourself saying Right. Hey, I'm gonna go in this way. I'm gonna make it work.

What was yours? I I kind of thought, oh, we had a good one. We had we had some some good times. Didn't quite make it. And and, if he shuts it down now, I can totally understand that. Yeah. Because there was he always said that early on. And so so it's just fair, if you if you if if if you would shut it down now. But, I mean, the truth is, there was no no intention to shut it down. It was just like, let's go fix this one thing and and and show that actually it was just one thing.

Yeah. And we gave everything. I was exhausted, basically, at at that time too. I was just exhausted and and and and and just cruising along on autopilot. I needed a break, and I I did take, like, a week just to test to recover from that. But those launches are exhausting. The but I can tell you the worst one was for me the first one. And and there was a specific reason why the first one was so bad. The first one for was my my first big failure.

The first time I basically worked on something, build it up, you know, and then and then it didn't work. And I thought, wow, not I can actually fail. And that that that knowledge or something. And before that, I worked on a satellite, and, and and it actually worked. Yeah. And I worked on other projects that didn't quite go so well, but they never really failed so spectacular than this one. And so And in and in the media. Well, it because it was we we launched from the Marshall Islands.

You know, Kwajalein was the is the, is the place's name. So it was a little bit outside, but it was it was definitely in the media and the the in the, the space space media. But it would have been very gross if you would have launched from the from the cape. Oh, yeah. Alright. It would have been, like, endless.

And and so from that perspective, I think, actually, it came to work together pretty well that we launched on a little island and, and, you know, people didn't really pay that much attention to what happened down there, gave us a chance to recover. But on a personal level, I thought the first one the first failure was more significant than the 3rd, because I wasn't used to that.

Yeah. You should the one way when you when you go to college and, and start working in technology, you should get used to failure. And and you should look at it as a, as a chance to learn more than as a, oh, I did this wrong. I'm I I suck at this. Yeah. So it's, the opportunity to learn, I think is something that is not always in in people's mind when when that happens. One of my sayings, I've got quite a few.

So excuse me if I keep on saying is, I've made more I've made I happen to make more good mistakes than bad mistakes. Mhmm. Yeah. Because I'm constantly making errors. Something goes wrong, something has to be fixed that hasn't done the right way, wrong location, wrong person, trusted somebody, shouldn't have trusted somebody, didn't have enough capital. There's always a challenge in there. How do you how did you pull yourself out of that first one?

Well, I guess over time, you you start looking at what actually worked or what actually, was good. And and then you you kind of resort to I mean, your choices are pretty pretty you have only have 2 choices, right, either give up and go home. Or you you you you bite the bullet, and you learn what you'll what you had to learn and just keep going. I mean, they're okay. It's a 2x chance. You can't just keep going without learning. That's possible too. Yeah. It is.

I think I think part of the grief and part of the, the process after that is actually converting, what happened into something you can learn from and and make it useful. And that just takes time. So in my case, it took a month. And then after that Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It took it took a while. And then and they come back on here and and go, okay. We know what we learned. Let's try this again, this time better. Yeah. I mean, you make mistakes all the time. You you you're totally right.

And but also, you know, the the there's this other proverb of the the notes, from Bill Gates actually, success is a lousy teacher. I think it's from Yes. It is. Right? And and there's it's from him. But, yes, it's a quote. Definitely definitely, I can't see how that how that come combines with Microsoft in the beginning. Right? And and sometimes someone gets so cocky that they go so far in terms of successes that they can't unravel. Right. And turn it around. They they built, built, built.

And then that's the only thing they've ever done. It doesn't improve. And then there's other people very early on their career. They have tons of failures. And I failure is not the word that I like. It's more of a you've had things in good go the way you'd like and you have to sit back and contemplate. Who are you? How are you gonna move this forward? Is it important to you? What decisions are you making in your life? What do you have to learn? Who do you have to talk to?

All of those factors come in, and it can become a habit of of change. Correct. And and you learn through I mean, it's basically a risky thing. Right? What do you do? You build building rockets building new rockets and launching them is a a thing that is very, very risky. And you kind of learn how to deal with that. For for me, at least, that's that's what came out of that. I learned a lot about taking risks and, I guess accepting some some residual risk.

And and also, you know, doubt doubt yourself to some extent. Always double check because it's amazing how many mistakes, you know, one makes. There's a couple of things that that make you I think that make you a better engineer if you have some your your your fair, fair share of failures, and we're able to learn from them. That's that's the important part. I mean, just because things failed, doesn't mean your experience.

It just means, like, that you things failed and you were actually able to learn from them. That's that's the the the crucial part. Just so you know, what's running through my head is you have that low wing plane that you're working on. Oh, yeah. Let's make sure that we review all of that. So you don't get a second chance when you're up on a low wing prop. And and you you you're right. I mean, like, every time I fly, whatever. There's little things.

I forgot to turn the timer on when the FAA lands. You need us to figure out on when you can shut down the engine. And it's in the checklist. I didn't read the checklist. Or I I went over that line and check this. Like, oh, shit. I mean, it should really, really, really do this next time. Yeah? And then one day, it's perfect. And you go, okay. This was a good day. We we were flying a low wing with my instructor. We flew it's about 6 hours drive by, by car.

But we flew from upstate New York to Vermont, landed on top of a mountain, did, took my kids, were there with my wife. So with with their cousins, we ended up giving, we did landing and takeoff just to give the kids a whole experience. Right. And then we had to fly back and we're flying back and it looks clear. We have to go over the Adirondacks Mountains, which are about 4,000 feet. Mhmm. And we enter into it and the ceiling drops from 6,000 feet to 4,000.

So now we're going through the mountains, but it becomes dark and our entire dashboard goes blank. Yeah. It went dark. The lights blew. We couldn't see our altitude. We couldn't see our speed, and we didn't have a flashlight. How did you get out of that? We I was I I he had to do is he had the, the maps. And what we did is we looked for lakes that reflected the light. And then he navigated through whatever he could see by the moonlight that would come through, and I'd aim to the lake.

If I could see a lake, it meant there was no mountain in the way. I mean, that was a that was our that was the lesson. We and we also went from a tailwind of about 65 mile. It was about 65 to now a headwind. It took us forever. You know, you go into a plane that goes a 120 knots, a 100 and 40 knots. And now we got a headwind. We it took us 3 hours to get out of it. I was exhausted. And as soon as we got out, we triple clicked on the yoke. You know, got a we got the, an airport lit up.

I went, oh. Yeah. Now I know where we are and we flew home. So those little things, sometimes you have to make sure. So bring me a flashlight, always a lesson in deploying. Yep. That's true. So here's the next one you had was we're way past the, you know, the 3rd launch where we're into 90 some odd launches. A big big targets for SpaceX factor. Why did why succeeded and fail? How did it grow from that? And I don't know. Where do you wanna go on this one?

SpaceX, why it succeeded and failed that whole measure. Is that so is that the the second bullet is where where you are? That's the second. Yes. Because I think I think part of that was already, already talked about that to some extent. I mean, there's a certain discipline and and grit within the company that that makes the team able, that the team works together work together very well, I thought, is is definitely one one huge factor of that. Let's see what else.

The the the one of the really big parts is also that SpaceX had a mission that didn't end with, like, a a launch, a successful launch. It was a mission. The mission is to to make, humanity interplanetary. And, and and so it's it's a very long term vision. And, and that helps that that that is incredibly inspiring and, and keeps the team really Is that is that yours? Is that yours? Well, that's obviously Elon's. The What's yours? Well, mine was very smaller. Mine was like what I said earlier.

Like, let's see if you can can get get this launched with, like, 200 people, build it, and and launch it. And and and so well, I, you know, I think I think the Mars Mars version, I adopted that by now. And, and so I I think that changed over time. But like I said, it was it was definitely a change for me to go from the more practical, you know, let's see if you can make this work to a vision that is just, that I won't probably see before the end of my lifetime.

So what yet the company has grown a lot to when you retired. I mean And to now, there's over 13,000 employees. So how did you make it in my head, the way you've told the shared the story is it had grown, but you still were kind of this ragtag group of individuals trying to take on the world and make things happen. So so that made a huge jump. There's you're no longer the company. By the time you left was no longer that small ragtag crew. Let me get let me get to that in a second.

I just wanna correct what I said earlier. There's a likelihood that I don't see this in my lifetime. That's it's also a likelihood that I see this in my lifetime. Definitely. Yeah. But but, there's definitely a chance that I I I won't see this. But either way, you're in a company from basically 4 to, let's say, 14,000 just times better. Maybe it's 13 or maybe it's 12,000. Whatever the number really is. Doesn't matter. It's Yeah. Exactly.

It's really interesting, because suddenly, when when you have 4 people or when you're 10 or when you like, a 100 people, people know you. Yeah? And and they don't judge you by the car you come in, and they don't judge you by, by your first impression. They know, you know, this is Tom. This is Hans and whatever, Tim. And and and they know you're good at that, you're bad at that. You have whatever certain certain characteristics. Let's say this way.

Yeah. And and so so it's like it's like a family, basically. Yeah. And and you don't have to have this. But when you get more people, suddenly, it's important to well, you can either introduce yourself and and and and work with everybody new, or you you you get titles and whatever to for people to, show who you are. Yeah. And it's like a silly thing early on. But later on, it's actually something, oh, this is the VP of of Build A Liability. Give him some credit for whatever he says.

So listen to the end, basically, so he doesn't have to explain this to you every time. It's like the the title serve for serve for bigger companies, for that aspect that you know somebody really well on a smaller company. Does that make sense? Mhmm. Yeah. So that's one of them. Also, the other thing is that I learned is, like, I gotta be really careful what I'm saying because people will take what I'm saying and and present it to me later in a in a way and form that I didn't anticipate.

And now suddenly I'm in a bind. Yeah? Uh-huh. People people listen to me more than I expected that. And sometimes I say things where I say, okay. This was a joke or or I really didn't mean it that much. I had to learn that basically, oh, you gotta be careful with what you say. You better be you better be yourself all the time. Yeah. You better be So sorry. The the way you phrased it kinda got me twisted.

You said first, you know, you when you start to speak, they listen to you because you've got this, and they'll let you finish because of reliability. And then you've got this careful. I'm saying this, and it puts me in a bind. Right. That sounds like, wow, you could end up with people not throwing out new ideas, someone who's not going to risk their career saying, I'm not gonna this Hans guy, he's gonna really not accept anything I do out there.

So I'm gonna gonna let him talk for 25 minutes even though he shouldn't be talking. He should shut up and listen to me for a moment because I got this new idea I wanna propose. Right. That can happen, obviously. I mean, that that obviously is is a is a risk that in bigger companies and higher, executive positions, people move more cautiously. How did you stop it? Well, so it's interesting. I I guess I guess at the end of the day, I decided to just be more myself anyways.

Yeah. So in other words, I will not I I don't think I changed that much. So I I did not I'm I didn't really mince my words. I still in fact, I did speak up more often later than early on. Yeah. I did I did say I did I did, verbalize my opinion, more clear later on. And there's a different reason for that, which is basically, you got to see that are coming from, like, a German culture of, like, you know, you need you have one job and you're providing your family, and so on and so forth.

You don't so you don't take a lot of risk in your job. And then as time went on, you know, we basically pay off your house or something like that, you realize, oh, I can actually speak up here. I mean, this is way more important than my job security. And that's when you become really valuable for the company. And you actually forget, you're not afraid to get to be fired.

Yeah. And and I always say that people are really effective if they're not afraid of of of getting fired Because then they basically tell you what they think. They don't play games. They don't, they're not careful. It's basically a lot of those people, just simply because we started early and and and we're commercially successful, I would say. But, for me, that was an interesting phenomenon on the personal side where where I realized, oh, like, I I can take on new jobs.

Like, for example, one of the jobs I took on was, doing these press conferences. Yeah. That's usually a really good way to get fired. Yes. And but I I thought that I'm I was pretty senior at the time, and and, I didn't want people getting fired that that just started or so. Yeah. And and, also, I knew somewhat well what SpaceX wanted to say. And so I said, well, let me try this here. And it turns out, actually, it wasn't bad. I was actually pretty good at the press conferences.

And so for many years, I I had that job that, I did the NASA press conferences together with, like, a counterpart on the NASA side. It's an awkward it's an awkward, press conference typically, and and, it's a little bit stressful. But at the end of the day, I I learned to deal with that, and, I'm glad I did this because this is totally different from what I what my personality is otherwise.

Yeah. The fact that I I speak publicly and say my opinion, and so is not what I would have done 10 years ago. I I changed over time. Goldsmith. I think you knew that. That's Rosa Herman. My father was Benno Gunther Goldsmith. He went by Gunther Gunther. Yeah. So, yeah, I have that I have that whole German side of me. 6 generations or 7 generations we will retract back. But the the yes.

The European style of German today, I believe, and I'm really making a broad statement here, is you do something wrong that stays with you the rest of your career. Yeah. And you're right. Correct. I'm not saying this incorrectly. No. You are. I mean mistake go ahead. Yeah. They they also used to have jobs for life. Right? I mean I mean, they would do basically one job, and and they would stick with that job for their lifetime. That was quite common.

Yeah. I don't think that that's the case today. Yeah. And you came over to, the states, and now you're getting a whole different perspective Correct. Of possibilities. Correct. It's everything's different, and I'm trying to align myself with that. Or or basically trying to make make sense of what I what my instincts are, which are not necessarily good, and what my my head says is good. Again, your instincts are not good. You've made more good decisions than bad decisions. No mistakes.

You've just kind of Yeah. That all you gotta do is 51%, and you keep on moving forward. Right. Well, that one percent makes a big difference. So anything else with, moving forward a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At your perspective. I don't want this is not an Elon perspective or SpaceX perspective. You went from a small team to a large team. You went to multiple roles within the organization. You were responsible for all different types of categorical, important parts of the development.

How how did, you know, the VP of flight reliability, the Falcon 9 and Dragon. You chi the launch chief engineer. You had a lot of responsibilities to hear. You are moving around. How did that how was that for you? Well, I I largely did this, because I was always interested in the anomalies or stuff that goes wrong. Right? And so so if something goes wrong, I'm naturally somewhat attracted and trying to figure out why did it go wrong. And not I'm not just looking at the technical reason.

I'm also trying to figure out how how did that that human made the the decision. Like, what caused them to do this decision versus that decision? And, and then and then trying to fix it on a company level basically. And and that kind of gave me that, a lot of credibility with the team too, because I was really involved technically. And I really tried to understand what happened without trying to put blame on somebody. So I did that a lot.

I did, Falcon 9 had 22 major anomalies on on 2 different flights. 1 of them actually exploded on the launch pad. That was a really it was a really rough one. And then, Dragon had a, an anomaly and a static fire actually on the ground just before we were flying flying humans. And, and you think, wow. I mean, it's, we better fix we better fix all of that and then that we actually catch everything. Yeah. Is that all? I mean, Falcon 9, is pretty reliable now and so is so is, so is Dragon.

So, it it looks like we did pretty good job in in driving the the the the figures out, but you never know. So anyways, that that was my main my one of the the things that I really thought was interesting. And then also to convey this to, like, the whole company. Here's what I want you guys to do. I want you to be, whatever, super careful on in this area or super clean in in the other area and and these things.

Trying to trying to steal steal this without or control guide this without any any real control. Yeah. But those people don't work for me. They work for other people, and I'm still trying to to, make them better, trying to influence the company culture there. Those are those are pretty good good challenges, basically, that happened. And then and then, of course, you know, the other thing that that, started as we were going into human spaceflight, and so we were starting to work with NASA.

And now we had another player, and, and that was pretty much well, one aspect was to explain to NASA why this works the way we think it works. So lots of lots of, parallel, you know, places to work on. The I I have this picture of you were, like the way you said it, convey to the whole company, careful and clean, steer and control, you know, the the influence that you had. You sound like a a grandfather walking through the facilities. I felt like one. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's some truth to it.

Yeah. Because you you sounded like one as you were saying. Yeah. I don't know. It was basically at the end of the day. My my function was to convey convey the lessons of Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 to a lot of people that have not had the lesson. A little kinda a big version of Yoda. I wish. There certain things you all can do. I can't. So let's hit on the monopolist. Yeah. This is more like a thing. What is the definition for you? So it's funny.

I mean, SpaceX SpaceX SpaceX at the beginning, you know, was laughed at and predictable and critical. And, and there's actually nice there's great videos about, like, oh, this usability thing will never work. And, you know, like, a lot of a lot of comments that, didn't age well. And and then here we are and and and the market basically completely flipped around. Basically, everybody flies flies with SpaceX, including, Europe. You know, the the last 2 Galileo satellites flew with with SpaceX.

And and, and then suddenly the people flip around and say, oh, SpaceX is a monopolist. And they built they built a monopoly, and, and I was thinking, wait a second. This is not because of SpaceX. SpaceX didn't aim to be a monopolist. Yeah? It's just because you guys did not do your stuff. You just didn't you weren't able to build your your next rockets, and you failed in in a way that's way worse than just failing a rocket. Yeah? Because you didn't you didn't see the trends.

You just completely ignored it. And SpaceX was always open about this. SpaceX always said we do this because we think this is the way to to, to commercial space and and and being sustainable in the long run. Yeah. We we think reusability is the way to go. And everybody else was just ignoring that. And then the moment it is successful, people say, oh, yeah. You you're a monopolist.

So I would I I, I despise those comments, because they reflect more about the people that say those comments than than anything else. But it is a comment that's out there. And in my opinion, SpaceX is not a monopolist. A monopolist is somebody who does this, you know, with with, a certain amount of, you know, evil intent, and and that was absolutely not the case.

The fact that it might be a not monopoly, but everybody is free to to buy the more expensive rockets that don't use the technology that was basically proposed by SpaceX for many, many years. That's my comment on monopolist. I'm a little bit bitter about that. No. No. And also, you you obviously thought a lot about it. How would you do it? How would you have done or how would you and I'm talking from Project Moon Hut.

Yeah. I'm talking and you don't you've seen some of I think I sent you the 2 videos. There's a little bit you've learned about us. You haven't seen behind the curtain. You haven't seen the work we've done. And what people have seen have said, there's nothing like this out there. I mean, we have people I shared with you the names who have said, I've seen every project on the planet. There's nothing like this. We're very quiet, partially, because of this not monopolistic.

By the the first response. Yeah. Right. The first response, the, we had one person who said immediately after seeing what we're doing, well, you don't shouldn't show it to me because I already understand all these things. And I might I wanted to say, but I didn't wanna be a jerk. Yeah. Oh, so you've done it already? What do you mean? That's because they haven't. And no one's done what we're asking in Project Moon Hut and the different areas we're looking at. No one has.

So how if you were to say from what you've learned and what we've got going, and you haven't seen a lot, what type of lessons would you I would I would actually not change anything. I would just say, hey, in the end, if you're actually successful, the the the best compliment you can get is that people call you a monopolist and just ignore it. Yeah. So so that's basically basically the right response to that is to shrug your shoulders and say, well, that's kind of your fault too, at most.

Yeah. And and just let let it go otherwise because otherwise, it's not really positive and not really helping you in any way. People will eventually eventually catch up. I mean, there's no question that sooner or later, there's gonna be a company that that builds the fully usable rocket 2 and, or finds ways to to make it even even more effective or something like that. Yeah? But, and then, I don't know. Maybe maybe the SpaceX's will say, hey, you're a monopolist. Right.

They then they will split it. One of the things that, we do is when we have a conversation with an individual is they will say, well, I've never heard of you. I don't know what you're working on. Why don't I know? And this is from around the world. And what I do is I say, I, you gotta see, let me show you something on my screen. And I open up the podcast series and I say, do you know anybody here? And they, and I'll give them the link also saying, scroll it.

And they say, oh God, I know 20, 30 percent of the people on here. And all I say is, interesting. All of these people know about us. I wonder why you don't. That's all I say. It's there's a lot of people out there, and it's, it's always difficult to, to, you know, competing with all all other projects there. So so definitely as more there's always always something to learn. And then our own memories are just not, you just read through this once and then you forget about this sometimes. Right?

Mhmm. This I do. And so our memory is leaky too. But yeah. No. I can I can I can certainly see that? That was basically that was all that I wanted to to say on the monopolist thing. It's really not worth that that much. Yeah. No. But it is. It was something that interesting. You take it this way, Hans. You got to write bullet points. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You get you only came with 5. People come with 7, they come with 9, they come with the most was, I think, it was 18 or 20.

That that was kind of interesting because they had whatever that number 18 or 20. By the time we got to number 10, they had already answered a lot of the others. And they'd said, no. No. We've already covered that one. No. No. No. We've already covered that one because it was actually embedded in their previous call. You only had 5, and you put this as a bullet point. So there's something inside of you that's even my take. I'm just making it up here.

I think there's something inside of you that is kind of disappointed with society or disappointed with maybe these things where people aren't willing to take risks or I I think there's something else. But, you know, if you wanna try and think about it, you you only you only gave 5. Well, I think I'm I'm I'm a little bit I do believe in brevity. So, I I do think that many things can be done shorter and and boil it down to the essence. And that, that that's true for books too. Right?

There's there's a lot of books you could probably boil down to, hey, if you wanna make it short, you can do this on 10 pages and not on not on 200. And I'm I'm more like the 10 page person, in in that in that sense. Okay. I don't think it depends on more. I just not I just looked at it. Okay. So the next one, SpaceX ecosystem, the space. Where are we going with this? So this is interesting. So as time went on, SpaceX has, I guess, has some turnover.

People leave, and, and, peep people go through this school of SpaceX, so so to speak, and and then they build companies. Right? And, there's plenty of examples out there whether it's, you know, the latest one comes to my mind might not be completely accurate there. It's Commonwealth. So there's lots of lots of SpaceX that are at Commonwealth. But there's also companies that are founded by by SpaceX as like, like Impulse from from Tom Mueller.

And, to some extent, there's lots of people with relativity. Lots ABL is also from the next SpaceX. So, and so there's plenty of companies that did this. Yeah? And and I didn't realize this in the beginning, but then outside of SpaceX, I realized, wow, there's a whole system here. No ecosystem. It's like like a 100 companies, and and they still if you if you're from SpaceX, basically, they always listen to you, and they're always, like, interested in, hey.

Do you know any people, that can work here or something like that? Yeah? And and that system is really, really interesting. SpaceX built something beyond space and beyond SpaceX, by doing that, by by sending people through this, you know, school to some extent and then turning them into entrepreneurs and, and and building other compact come come, other complicated, you know, high-tech companies that are successful. Right? In some cases, it's still outstanding whether they're successful or not.

But at least they they they know what to do and they have a plan and so and so. I find that really interesting and really, exciting too, actually. So I thought I thought it's worth mentioning. So it's, and it's also, like, in terms of, like, location, not that different because the the the companies also are founded around SpaceX. That's literally SpaceX founded companies around SpaceX.

And Yeah. And, and that's that's just an interesting development, that I I feel like it gives me hope too that, you know, even if people are, like, working at SpaceX, there's other jobs next by. It it creates an economy, basically, that is way way more than just space. What are the what are the few that you see hopeful promise for some of the things that you want to happen beyond Earth? Well, so the the ones the ones that are beyond space in that sense are energy. Right?

I mean, there's radiant and there's there's coming with fusion, fission and fusion, basically. And and if those companies are successful, they have a huge impact here on this planet, and and for, you know, to some extent also to space. And that's what I meant by that. It's like space SpaceX is somewhat narrowly, in in terms of, like, rockets and, and and human space flight, you know, capsules and so on and so forth.

But then beside that, the the spin offs basically or the the the companies that come from its, people leaving, also doing energy, also looking at, as one that that had a pizza automation, totally different topics. Right? I totally create I saw the pizza automation one. Yeah. I think I've seen that one. Right. And so and there's all kinds of things where people try to apply whatever they learn at SpaceX and say, oh, this is a better company because I I learned that at SpaceX at SpaceX. Right?

So I think that's great. I think that's that's not it's just more like a more like a a thing that goes beyond, beyond just the the the influence of of SpaceX that I anticipated. Do you still keep in touch with a lot of the individuals? Yeah. Definitely. I mean, my whole my whole, friend, you know, all the circles were somewhat connected to to SpaceX, One way or the other. And in many What's the most go ahead. Oh, go ahead.

As I say, out of the whole ecosystem, what do you see as the most promising for some of the things that you would like to see? I mean, you brought up, energy, fission, and fusion. Is there anything that you're seeing out there that you just say, you know, that's the type of thing that needs is gonna make it will be a game changer? Well, Fusion definitely would be. So That's the output of it. But is there a company out there that you feel is that far along that they can make that change?

The trajectory of a SpaceX, you feel that they're going to make it? I I don't think I'm smart enough to actually assess that. And that's okay. I was just asking a simple question. You you you listen. You listen to a company and then you go, oh, this sounds really good. Yeah. I mean, they they pick the points and, like, in in particular on on fusion and fission, I'm I'm I got my high school education, but that's pretty much it. Yeah. I can't tell if that's now is that a path that is successful?

Because I'm missing a little bit like the knowledge I had on Rockets where I knew, oh, this is not gonna work. This is gonna work and so on and so forth. Yeah. Like like that that technical background, they don't have that in other areas, obviously. When you were younger, just the way you said that phrase, when you were younger, did you have a rocketry propensity or space No. Desire? Was that no? No. So I'm actually I'm actually I'm I'm I'm a I'm a failed pilot. I I I wanted to be a pilot.

My eyesight wasn't good enough, before LASIK. And, and so I became an engineer. So I was more like, interested in in flying airplanes, satellites. Rockets came later. And if you think about this, I'm I'm I'm my my technical background is a little bit guidance and control. Right? And the guidance and control person is actually the pilot. That that kind of occurred to me very later that that maybe I I'm not the pilot of the rocket, but I'm kind of that.

So Yeah. It's it's, my good friend who I grew up with who actually was my best man in, at my wedding. He big guy. I mean, built like a tank. And he wanted to go into the military. And because he was color blind, he cannot go in the air force, the navy, or the army for what he wanted. So he went into the marines. And that was the choice he the only one he can make because you can't see wires. Right. You can't see coloring of wires. There's very specific needs you have.

He ended up becoming a presidential guard for the president of the United States. So he was he was that good at what he did, but he in that scope. But, yes, a simple thing like eyesight or, you know, flat footed or, you know, have a challenge with your back means you can't do certain things. But in some some sense, it might be for the better. You know, who knows? But I think I would have loved to fly on a daily basis too. You mean, like a as a commercial pilot as compared to Yeah.

Has your has your plane taken off? The one that you Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's definitely, I've I've I can't I can't fly daily if the weather's good enough. And I'm assuming there's a flashlight in there or will be by I do actually. No. I have, like, a I had, headlight. It's the like, you know, something we can attach to my head, so I don't have to need to hold it. And that's infrared. We yeah. Ours was ours was a rental, so we didn't have the the, components in there.

But, yeah, headlights are good one. I, this is when I did I started flying this 20 some odd years ago, and I don't even think never even thought of a head strap on light, but that's a a good idea. So the the last one that you had on the list was space commercialization and the drains that go along with that. What do you where'd you wanna go with this?

So, so the the interesting effect is actually, so when we built Falcon 9, I always thought, like, the launch the launch customer always quoted as, as the holding back the industry. Right? Because the launch cost are so expensive, blah blah blah. And so whiskey, insurance, and so on and so forth. That's where the cost are. And then we built Falcon 9, and and, obviously, we were we were cheaper than other guys, but it didn't trigger now a lot of, big satellites, being built.

But it did what triggered it was the, forgot the name. How they call it this program where they have a ride share. Maybe it's called ride share. That that triggered a lot of small companies and and small satellites at the end of the day because those people are agile. But I was disappointed with the fact that, you know, not not too many people said, oh, we can now launch a bigger satellite or take advantage of Falcon 9. My conclusion was the industry is really, really slow.

And and something like Falcon 9 even if Falcon 9 would be half the cost, it would not have changed the, the the, you know, what what the industry was basically trying to build and sending trying to send up there. In fact, I mean, like NASA took many, many years to just take advantage of Falcon 9 despite despite our experience and reliability at that time. Everything is very, very slow. So the dream is more like, like, I wish this would have been faster.

I wish the industry would have been, you know, more responsive. And, to some extent, basically, it forced also SpaceX to become their own customer. That's what what Starlink basically became. Right? Starlink became a a new satellite, like, adopted for Falcon 9, and nobody else would build it but SpaceX.

So if you if you think forward that one day, you know, this might be, the launches might be, whatever, 20, 30,000,000 and for a 100 tons and not for, like, 20 tons, metric tons in this case, then then what does that mean? What is the dream here? Right? The dream is obviously we build we build, satellites that are heavy and just quick and they are cheap.

And, and we build vehicles that can launch maybe maybe 50 people, right, and, and give them a ride for, like, like, a bay or something like that and microgravity and and stuff like that. So there's lots of stuff that can happen with that if the rest of the industries industry sees the opportunities and actually jumps on that, And, and it's not as slow as they used to be. That's that's my my main point on that. It's it's funny because and you just did it.

I don't, there's there's one side that's funny. The other one is just more pragmatic. You said they didn't build more satellites. They didn't I don't think the understanding of the benefits or the possibilities with satellites are as widely known as individuals might think. So to say, we're gonna build more satellites Yeah. There's still a cost. It's not cheap.

But even within the industry, I I felt like, maybe maybe that's that's an industry that's kind of like, not moving along or not not really being successful because of other effects. Because of, you know, people looking more at, less at broadcasting and and more and more at streaming, which is a little bit more difficult with satellites to do.

But, the the it just it just in contrast, if you look at the small satellites, on on really tiny satellites that take care of, that take advantage of SpaceX ride shares, that industry grew really quickly, and and that's, there's a lot happening there. But on the on the old players, on the on the big, communication companies, those were pretty much unimpressed by Falcon 9, it seems.

I mean, there's a couple that worked with us, but it took a long time to take advantage, and the satellites are still the same. They're getting bigger and bigger, maybe, but, there's not a lot of, like, technology upgrades that is related to Falcon 9 on that. So either way, I just I just think that, the the industry did not really take advantage of that. Maybe rightfully, because they wanted to see if this actually plays out okay.

But, like, going forward on on Starship, I'm curious what happens then. If Starship is just sitting there and then nobody really wants to wants to fly it because nobody has a 100 ton satellites or if people start thinking about this a little bit earlier and start, you know, preparing payloads for that. I know I know of of some efforts that basically are tailored towards Starship, and so I think that's a that's a great thing. I just wish it would be But it's it's like without the dream Right.

Using Elon's words of going to Mars and and having a 100 people per Starship, which those numbers are, you probably have heard of, questioned by a lot of individuals who don't know where it will be. Right. But that whole premise that without that, I mean, if you really look around, and I I don't study the space ecosystem, the dreams are not big enough Yes. That's true. To fulfill a and that's that's where I was going with this. You went immediately to space tourism.

And it's almost like the industry believes that's the holy grail. Well, it's gotta be space tourism that brings everything together. And it's almost as if you're a tool guy, I'm a tool guy. I got all Milwaukee tools. I've got s wing hammers. I've got all the some really crazy, you know, $300 hammers. I got all these tools because I wanna do something with them. There you can build something. I have roofing hammers, and I have drywall hammers.

But it's almost as if we're building hammers and saying we're hoping that people find Right. What to do with that. And the first thing they say is space tourism. Like, come on. Come on. We're we're building a potential. And I'm not just talking about SpaceX. I'm talking about people in general. We're trying to build these this new ecosystem of possibilities. And the dreams are the size of I can't even think of an analogy, of a car. They're they're not the dream. Right. So we need bigger dreams.

We need people that that dream bigger and and take advantage of that. And and some of them do. I mean, to be fair, there's people that are definitely looking at at Starship and it's, it's, their dreams are are based on that. And, we we just I don't I just don't don't see that very much. I I wish it would be more. Right? What if you if it was I mean, you've got to have thought about it. How would you build a different ecosystem?

Do you what would because you kept on bringing up satellites and Right. Satellites are satellites. It's it's not gonna be the the the breakfast of champions. You're not gonna submit your look. You know, in the morning, hey, did you know we put up that satellite? By the way, it was all top secret because it was a military satellite. What's the what's the next what's the It's gonna be more more, tailored towards Moon and Mars. Right? And it may not be a satellite.

Maybe just a container with, like, signs signs stuff, or maybe it's a it's a it's a place to actually stay stay overnight on the on the moon or it's a lander. There's lots of lots of, hardware that we can launch then cheaply. It also should make the, the hardware cheaper itself, because mass is not that that super relevant anymore. It's still relevant, but not that much.

And and so maybe maybe that lowers the cost and it goes it boils boils down to basically the the problem is cost and not and not physics. To some extent, can be can be can be whatever the whatever was started out on the launcher side to make the launcher cheaper, can we do this on other, components that you need for space exploration too? And, you know, starting with space tourism, I mean, at the end of the day, it's people going back and forth.

It's people going to Mars, people going to moon, and and the there's there's space tourism around the the planet might just be the the beginning part of, of, like, of of that. You you sound a little bit like a store have some historical side of you. If you look throughout history, it wasn't tourism that drove Right. Society to expand. It was expansionism. Correct. It was the desire to do something in a different place place Correct. In a different land to create an ecosystem.

We as you've heard, it's called Mearth, Moon and Earth. In our ecosystem, it's you have to bring something to the moon and something back to the from the moon to the Earth. Right. And you that's what happened throughout history. Someone went to go find something, did something, brought it back. And, again, this is immediately mining. Correct. In many cases, it's mining. Yeah. Bigger. Yeah. Yeah. Can you not think any bigger than that?

No. No. It's, Well, I mean, it's it is a little bit, like, whatever the 1600 or forgotten. They were basically just where where the sailboats became, I guess, more more reliable that you could actually book book a trip and actually, most likely, you get there at the end. Right? So so it's a little bit it's it's that time where you, where you have the means to actually do the trip. And then what you actually gonna do with that is not totally clear. It just gets you to moon, just gets you to Mars.

And then the the the opportunity is there. Yes. Mining is 1, but there might be so many others that, that that might happen. It's not it's not even clear right now what that might be. The challenge is if you're talking about building something that takes years to develop, and and you talked about it, cost, investment Right. Risk. If you don't have it in the in the sites, You cannot take on those risks. Right. Because you're basically building for a hope that an ecosystem will evolve behind you.

And that's a very difficult way to create, and you can have a dream of it. Oh, if we do this, then everybody will come. But that doesn't happen that way for most software applications, for most products that are built. They they build it and people don't buy it. They don't use it. They don't find application for it. And you're already saying that with potentially with the Starship, you're sharing that to some degree with the Falcon is you're saying we built it.

We thought an ecosystem would fill in the back. And if you you're you're on Starlink right now. By the way, it did cut out a few times, but we're good. Oh, good. That's okay. I just thought you'd like to know. We did have a, we've had a few of them in there, but we'll get over The you said that one reason that that was built or it it opened up the doors to this is you had excess capacity. Right. Alright. So it's not fulfilling that dream. Does that bother you at all?

And I'm not trying to put you down the road, Max. I don't think it's a serious question. I I I I yeah. I think it is a serious question. But I think, basically, I don't think it's the I don't think there's anything wrong with the approach. It's just the industry is slower than you think. And you are working with, like, conventional industry or or, you know, legacy industry, basically. It's not always start ups.

And so by definition, those they they wait wait and see if this actually does work out, and and that just takes longer than than than I would have expected, basically. That's that that is more my conclusion than, oh, this product is not the right product. I still think it's the right product, And I still think that Starship is definitely the the right the right, product for for space travel. But it just may take a little bit longer for industry to catch on and actually see the opportunities.

And then and then finally, you know, utilize it in ways that nobody ever imagined before. So that that is more my conclusion than than saying, oh, maybe it doesn't catch on like a like a software app that nobody wants. And again, I'm sorry if it's Yeah. That way. I was just thinking about ecosystems have to evolve fast enough to be able to maintain its existence. And there are mothballed rockets, not rockets, there's mothballed planes or mothballed boats. Right.

That they they don't get the full duration because they didn't find that expanse. And for me, not a space person, I look and I say, we're the International Space Station. We're still not as far as the dreams that everybody talks about. And we were supposed to have many of these dreams happen in the year 2000 or the year 1990 or in the eighties, and they didn't transpire. Do you when you think of the future and again, doesn't have to we're not talking paid right here in terms of your ideas.

I'm asking you, in your opinion, do you see this slow moving group pushing away the Russians because of everything? I'm not gonna get into political side. Soyuz was shipping to the International Space Station for a decade to fulfill to fill the gaps. So The story with Elon and not getting the rocket pricing that he was looking at, is is well known. Do you think that politics is more getting in the way? Do you think it's the technology getting in the way?

Do you think it's the human nature getting in the way? Where where are you seeing it? It's probably a combination of these. It's it's probably human nature in the way that people wanna look at, is this really working kind of thing? Yeah. But but actually, I do see I do see also, things changing overall. I mean, there's talk about, like, more space stations. Right? I I'm actually working on the on the private space station project, vast space, too.

I mean, so there there's definitely efforts, that that go in the direction of let's use that, commercialize it, and and make it better than the one that, you know, we had so so for so long. Yeah. And and, honestly, the ISS is pretty amazing. I mean, it did an amazing job over the last, 20 almost 30 years. Right? 25 years, I think. So, so, so, anyways, I mean, it it the the lessons out of that, to take those lessons and make it better, is basically what I what I do see.

But, like, is this really I I wish it would be fast enough. It would be faster. Right? I'm just impatient is I think the main thing, if I look at that. But that's not a bad thing. I I think that you and I are a similar age in that I think our generation does not we don't look to slow down. I I don't sit around and say, well, you know, good for retirement by the way. I don't think about it at all. I'm planning our plans, which you saw on the website is a 40 year plan. So that's 40 years from now.

It's a long time for many people. But to us, it's just, well, that's the plan that we're working. So, yeah, it's a combination of all of those that are challenging to make us move forward. So other you went through a journey with us to for this podcast. Is there anything you learned about yourself or anything you learned about that, you wanna know or anything that was interesting that Well, like I said I would highlight. I, you know, don't don't you use the word impossible very carefully.

Oh. Oh. Then what do we have? It's, infinite possibilities and infinite resources. So our we're bringing the age of infinite. Often people talk about the 4th industrial revolution. And what is that? Faster computers and more data? That's that's not a an era. That's not a development. Project Moon Hut is a string in the age of infinite infinite possibilities and infinite resources.

And we have that at our fingertips if we just, as human species, shifted a few of our constructs to be able to make that happen. So, yes, impossibility is impossible is not a good word. So great. Look, I appreciate you being on a call with us and taking the time. So I want to thank you. And I'd like to thank everybody out there who was listening in today. I hope that in some way, shape, or form, you learned something that will make a difference in your life and especially in the lives of others.

The Project Moon Hot Foundation is where we're looking to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon. We were named by NASA Project Muna, but we're an Earth focused organization through the accelerated development of an Earth and space based ecosystem. Then we're going to turn those innovations and the paradigm shifting thinking from the endeavor back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. If you wanna go to the website, you scroll down about 2 thirds of the way down.

There's 2 videos on the left hand side. There's 3 across if you wanna hear where Project Moon had started. But the first two was what we have individuals watch to know more about us, and then we tend to have conversations with individuals. And we have people all over the world working with us. In so many different categories of development, it's actually incredible.

From intellectual property to, immersive technologies going all the way through to platforms as well as building the box of the roof and the door on the moon. So, Hans, the question for you is, what's the single best way to get a hold of you? Good question. I think I think I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on, LinkedIn for, like, somebody's on LinkedIn, and, I guess, Instagram a little bit too. But, yeah. That's those are the best ways, I think. Perfect.

For those of you who would like to connect with us, you can reach out to me at [email protected]. You can connect with us, on Twitter at at projectmoonhut or David Golds, at at Goldsmith. We've got LinkedIn. We've got, Instagram. You can reach and find us there in all these places. So for everybody out there, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening. Hello, everyone. This is David Goldsmith, and welcome to the age of infinite.

Throughout history, we've seen humanity undergo transformational shifts that are so impactful, they define entire ages. Just recently, you've lived through the information age and what an incredible journey it's been. Now think about it this way. You could be very well in the midst of another monumental shift, the transition into the age of infinite. We're talking about an age that transcends the concepts of scarcity and abundance.

It introduces a lifestyle rich with infinite possibilities, enabled by a new paradigm that links the moon and earth into a term that we call Mearth. The synergy was created by a new ecosystem and a new economic model propelling us into the era of infinite possibilities. Sounds like a plot of an extraordinary sci fi story, doesn't it? But this is a story you'll see unfold in your lifetime. This pods podcast is brought to you by the Project Moon Hunt Foundation.

We look to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon through the accelerated development of an earth and space based ecosystem, then to turn the innovations and the paradigm shifting from that endeavor back on earth to improve how we live on earth for all species. If you're interested in more information, visit our website at www.projectmoonknot dot org, where you can check out our 40 year plan, our work, and so much more. Incredible, incredible programming has been done on the site.

We're a nonprofit. So while you're there, if you consider make a donation for the cause, that would be phenomenal. Now let's dive in today's podcast. Great title, The Orbital Mechanics of Dreams. And today we have with us Hans Kuugesmann. Did I say that I said that wrong, didn't I? Yes. Koenigsman. Koenigsman. Yes. Koenigsman. How are you, Hans? I'm good. Very good. How are you? It's it's amazing. We even practiced it, and I said it wrong. So that's what happens.

Okay. As always, we do a very brief bio. Hans is a doctor, so doctor, has joy joined SpaceX team as the 4th technical member in 2,002 and developed the avionics guidance and control and software depart and and software departments as vice president of avionics. He designed the avionics system for the Falcon 1 and supported the early launches as launch chief engineer. His next role was VP of flight reliability for Falcon 9 and Dragon.

Hans retired from SpaceX in late 2021 after more than 19 years. He holds a master's from the Technical University of Berlin and a PhD from the University of Bremen in Germany. That said, one thing we've been adding over the past, maybe 15, 20 podcasts is I have no clue what Hans is going to talk about. Individuals have asked constantly, how do I know the questions? How do we develop this rapport between each other? All we do is get on a call. We talk about what the title will be.

And then Hans goes on his own and figures out what direction he would like to take the topic. I don't know what the bullet points he's gonna cover. I don't know the direction he's going to go, and that makes for an unbelievable exchange. That's what makes the podcast so engaging. So let's get started. Hans, do you have an outline or bullet point set for us to be able to follow? I I do. I do. I I and, you know, looking at it, I wonder if I should spend more time on that.

Should I spend more time on it? But anyway, so, why don't you write it down then? My first one is, changes in the space industry and what enabled it. Changes in the hold on. Space industry And what enabled next? The SpaceX effect, question mark. What made SpaceX possible? Why did it succeed where others failed? Next. Willy Short, The Monopolist. The Monop so I got left to learn to spell these things. Okay. Monopolist? Then I got I'm fine. Okay. Spacex ecosystem and effect beyond space.

In fact, beyond space next. And then space commercialization dreams. I think I'm gonna gonna leave it at that. That's good. Well, I I have a feeling we're going to go in a variety of different directions. So let's start with the first one, changes in the space industry, what enabled it, all of that. Where do you where are we going? So, it's a little bit like how SpaceX basically happened. Right?

It was founded in 2002, in in March, and, was founded by Elon Musk, obviously, and, together with, Chris Thompson and, Tom Mueller. And then, I think the next person coming on board, basically, on the technical side was me. They basically, reached out to me, called me in, I wanna say, April, and and asked me if I'm interested. And I didn't really think for, like, more than a millisecond. And so he said, yeah, right away. Couple of things fascinated me early on.

I like the the name Space Exploration Technologies. That kind of was just more than this. It was it was a great name because I worked at a company before that didn't really have a great name. So I love that, and, and and I was I was totally excited about it. It's kind of strange how you and I'm I'm I'm coming basically I I went to school in Germany. I went to college in Germany.

I worked a little bit in Germany on a university institute, and I was actually basically flying building and flying a satellite there with a team, and that was pretty amazing. And then I got hired into Los Angeles. But then I have not done a startup where you basically start with a credit card. Yeah. That's that's kind of what what happens. Right? You have, like, a structure, you have an idea, you have a a vision, and you have a credit card. And then you go to town on that.

There's no structure in terms of, like or no process rather how to buy stuff. You just call people up and buy it. And, okay. So most startups start up with an idea and a structure. That credit card doesn't exist. You Right. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. I know. I know. Credit card. The credit card needs to you find out. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. I I I I I'm I'm with you there. I think I came in at the time where the credit card already exists.

And on on structure, I meant, I mean, just because actually a lot of that is not structured. It's more like a plat maybe like a loose plan for the idea how to get there. Yeah? So I I wanna get to that, but there's one thing I'm I'm gonna this is going to bother me through the whole thing if I don't ask this. You list that you're number 4, but you said Tom Mueller, there's Elon, and then you. Maybe my math is wrong.

That's 3. You you so there's there's, it it was Chris Thompson, Tom Mueller, and Elon Musk. Okay. And then I'm the number 4. Okay. So I'm not saying number 4 because the the the payroll listed a couple other folks, that were working for Elon and other functions. So that's why I'm saying technical number 4. Okay. I'm just, the math didn't I didn't hear the other the charisma. I didn't I was like, how are you doing your math? Okay. So when you say structure, what did you mean by that?

I meant, like, we had the idea of building a small rocket, called, you know, Falcon 9 and, there was that idea was already there. The details were were open. As far as I think, I used the wrong word for that, to be honest, because the lack of structure when you do something like that was what fascinated me mostly. I mean, like, in a company when you buy stuff, there's a process for that, and here, there's nothing. So we had to basically develop that.

But that what I meant is more like we had an idea and we had, like, a a rough plan around it. We thought that's, a rocket with a certain propellant, lots lots and kerosene are the the 2 propounds that were chosen. And, and then we were basically specialists in in our particular areas. Tom Buhle was the engine guy, great propulsion engineer.

Chris Thompson was in structures, and I was a little bit on an avionics, guidance and control software, kind of like the the stuff around it, the system stuff. Yeah. And, and that was basically my area. And, I mean, just to complete, there's also, the next person we hired, was was Tim Buzzer for launch. Not exactly the next person we hired, other people in between too, but on the leadership side. And then then, obviously, Quinn Quinn Chartwell on the business development side.

And the way it was built up was that, we had, Elon hired the leaders first. He hired basically 5 people that, had some experience but were still open to new ideas. You know, not people people that were, like, in their mid careers, I would say, maybe. I was I was pretty much 40 at the time, and we were all about the same age. So I had some experience. I I knew how to build things, but not enough to really be set in my way.

Although, you you end up figuring out 40 people tend to be pretty set set in their ways. Yeah. Exactly. You think you're not really set, but you are set in your ways. But at the same time, I didn't really work for big aerospace, and so and so I feel like I was still perceptible for that for that start up, you know, by, yeah, overall. But it was definitely a learning curve for me too to, to figure out what to do to be more effective in a start up. Can I ask how you were found?

So I ran into you on on a on an amateur rocket event, earlier that year, early 2002. Just introduced myself, And then I think you heard my name from both Chris Thompson and then another friend, from JPL in terms of, like, I'm I'm good at avionics or something like that. Okay. And so he just gave me a call. It was like a double recommendation, and, he knew me, from just shaking hands.

Okay. That's a Yeah. When you at this point, you're going back 20 years ago, and I wanna get into more of the details. But when you you heard that it didn't have structure, it was a start up, was it something where you were just saying, this is exactly what I was looking for or I have no clue what I'm doing? What where were you? It was a mix of both. I mean, on on one one side, what I what I wrote before is actually, was off often associated with finding funding.

And, and it annoyed me a little bit because I'm not good at that. I I'm a technical person. I I hate figuring out where to get the money for this. And he is a he is a guy who wants to invest, and he basically put the money on the table and said, here's the money that should be enough for, like, 3 flights. You go and and do that. Yeah. And I love that. That part, I really loved. So no struggle there. The struggle was more like, okay. How do we exactly do that?

Yeah. And and how do we do this in a way that's best for the company? That that was more that was more difficult Mhmm. In that sense. But but overall, I mean, you figured out a way. Right? We the first the first year, I would say, was like a mix between trying to hire people, and we really tried to hire, talent. Like, the smartest people we could find straight from school, Because those people, you can you can teach them. You can train them.

And, the fact that they are smart helps you getting to the best answer for for any of the problems you have along the way. And then the guidance along, the guidance how to do this was supposed to come from the, 5, leaders that Elon hired first, among them, me. Had you hired had you hired a big team before? No. No. So, yeah, actually, hiring is a very difficult thing. I I had to catch up pretty quickly what's important, what not.

I did over over my lifetime at SpaceX, I did hundreds of interviews. My my guess is 600, 700. Yeah? And I I learned I learned how to do this, but in the beginning, I think it was I was mostly uncomfortable with that. Didn't really know what to ask. Elon is actually pretty good at that. So he was a good good teacher at that. And, and and he he had those riddles. And I I love the idea, because they're also objective.

Not necessarily for somebody to solve the riddles, but for somebody how to work the riddles. So in other words, I give you a riddle and then and then you you would work through the riddle, and I care more about how you work through this. Yeah? You're not you're not, you're not telling me you got this and you don't. And, you know, if you have a question, you ask me and or you you say I need help here. That's what I'm looking for, actually. More than actually, somebody saying, oh, the number is 5.

Yeah. It's it is the interesting dynamic is, and you could tell me if I'm wrong, I bet a lot of people in an interview are afraid to ask the questions. Right. Because they wanna they don't wanna look like they don't know. I wanna work with them, basically. I want I'll tell them, look. I mean, I I give you that riddle. I wanna work through this with you. Yeah? And then and then try to break that. If I if that doesn't work out, then then people people are under stress.

I understand that, and the pressure, but I wanna see how they work under pressure. That is an important part. I I I have a I have a quote in front of me that I've I keep. It's actually, like, plastered across a light. It says, the smartest person in the room is the person who asks the best questions of themselves and of others. Right. Right. And it's fascinating that you were looking for the to see it how well they wanted to ask questions. That that's I love that.

I I always ask at the end, do you have any questions for me? And I'm really disappointed that people don't, because that tells me a little bit, like, they haven't really thought this through. Even if they're stupid questions, you still want Oh, yeah. Oh, totally. Totally. I I mean, it could be like, how do you how do you like working here, for example? Yeah. Or, I mean, things that that are really in of interest to somebody who who who starts to work there. Yeah. How is the team?

How is it working with Elon? How is this and that? Yeah. And and then but I bet there's a 1,000 questions, and people tell me, no. I don't have a question. That's kinda, like, weird. It it, I know I'm interviewing you, but I'll share a small story. When I was about 18 years old, I got called by someone introduced me for to run a help run a rock quarry. You know, they break stone and big trucks in the city. And I the guy calls up. He says, sure. I'll have an interview with you. You can come down.

What time would you like to meet? And I said, I don't know. At 9 o'clock? And he said, oh, my day's half over, but I'll meet you then. And at we're an hour away from this quarry. And at 6 AM or 5 AM, it was some ungodly order. He calls us as my schedule has changed. I need to see you in 1 hour. Now it's an hour drive. So I showered in 2 and a half minutes. I was out the door driving like a bat out of hell to get there. I get there. He makes me sit in a room for about 45 minutes.

We go through the interview. And at the end of the interview, he says, do you have any questions for me? Because he's more or less packing up. And I said, yeah, I got a bunch of questions. And he said later, they weren't questions about RockCore. You didn't know enough. But he said, just the fact that you were asking questions was what I really loved. Right. And so it's funny that you saw that transact, which is I think is really cool.

I think individuals have to realize, hey, Gotta ask questions. There's a lot we all don't know. So, here's one. Best, best tire and worst tire without giving names if you that's okay. Sorry. Best tire. What was the best tire that happened? Like, how did you find somebody, and what was the worst tire going through this process for you? I don't know.

I mean, in in the beginning, actually, we we we, Elon overrode me a couple of times because I was looking for different different qualities than than him, and he was actually right in in some, some of those. And I felt like I made the wrong decision. So that that that was something that I I I struggled with.

And then what always fascinated me is, like, you have somebody in an interview presenting themselves from a really, I guess, good side, and then the person that comes in, like, a month later to work is somebody totally different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that always was something where I thought, okay. Maybe the process is not working that way.

Maybe we should, you know, have an interview in somebody's car or so what you know, like, in a in a more personal environment, so you can you can actually figure out that person better than otherwise. It goes both ways. It, it can be better or worse. Like, Elon actually interviewed me at home, and and that was basically only because we didn't have an office at the time, but it also gave him insight into into how I live. Right? And how I, you know, what's on my bookshelf and and stuff like that.

And and so I think that's actually it can be really valuable. It can be really good. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. You you get a sense of who they are. Right. Will you I mean, was this just one of those exciting things for you? Like, you said to yourself, hey. Wow. This is something I think will be game changing, or was it going back, I know it's not easy to remember that exact things. I don't think I had the vision, frankly. I and I'm not a I'm not I think this is not my thing.

I'm I'm I'm I'm somebody who sees the technical problem and gets to work on it. Yeah? So my my thought was, oh, that would be really cool to show that you can actually build a rocket with, like, hundreds of people and and make it work instead of, like, 10 thousands of people, but what used to be the case. Right? So I thought I thought that was really, really cool.

And the the other thing I really like is the visual concept that we had, in terms of, like, engine, propellant, you know, technology on on on the pump, turbo pump, and so on and so forth, was something that resonated with me because I thought, okay. This is really this is really a good approach. I think I think this has actually, a chance to succeed. Yeah. So I was excited about that. Also, the money, the investment basically was on the table. And so so I I really like that too.

It give gives us a shot at focusing on the technical work and not getting distracted by trying to find the money, the entire time. So there were a bunch of things that I really thought were exciting. Yeah. I'm looking at what, I first time kind of looking at your, your write up when I wrote this up for your intro. Avionics Guidance Control software departments, and yet you had a propensity.

So far, you've said it a few times, you were really interested in the engineering and the science behind the building too. So to know the propellants, to know the turbo pumps, was that something that was always part of your history? No. I think it came a little bit like how I worked at the the company previously, tried to have a certain concept, and and I thought this is there's a weakness here.

And then you come across the new concept that SpaceX basically proposed, and it takes care of that weakness. And they go, wow. Okay. This is really great. Yeah. So it's it's kind of things you learn and things that make sense on a global level. I do have a a tendency to step back and look at that from a from a certain distance and to evaluate it on a more like on a system level, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And and, You weren't in the weeds of the engineering, but you were in the concept of what was going on that was necessary Correct. Because you had to have the software run properly. You had the guidance control, had to work. So maybe you can add input or you were in meetings and you heard them discussing it. And, the the you've ever watched the movie The 13th Warrior?

No. With Antonio Banderas, very quickly, this guy gets captured, and he is not from the northern he's not from the northern part of Europe. He is, from Arabian or Arab culture, and he didn't understand language. But he sat around the fire. He listened, and he listened, and he listened, and he figured out the language. And that's how he was able to start to communicate with them. So probably that was a an an osmosis that was happening with you. That's an interesting process.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, here, I had, like, my my my my peers, basically, and I could ask them questions. And we did actually work well together. The the team of the, you know, 5 VPs, basically, and Elon worked really well together in the beginning, I thought. And we had to we had to draw boundaries. We had to say, okay. I do this. You do that. How does this work for you? Can I give you whatever? Can I give you the the the the power in that form or something like that?

Yeah. And and and we basically had to do all these things and discuss that. And it helped that we we kind of liked each other basically as as a team member. And, and that, I think, got us partly also to success. Okay. So let's let's jump back to the changes in the space industry and what enabled it. So Right. You've got this new job. It's 20 years ago, 20 some odd years ago. And what what was evolving?

So so the the thing was basically to build to build basically a conventional rocket for for that matter. There was nothing particularly, interesting in in Falcon 1, and as a last year I've seen. But there was this one element that Elon really wanted, strongly, and that was reusability. And so so there was always a parachute on the first stage. The idea was to have the first stage come back and then at one point in time deploy the parachute and land it.

Yeah. And so we spent we spent a significant amount of time and money on getting the parachute into the, the first stage. And, I think at the beginning, this was a little bit, well, not not thought out, basically, and not really well designed at all. It was more, like, symbolic for that matter, but, it was something that became more and more serious as time went on. So if you know the history of SpaceX, I mean, the first three rockets failed.

We had we had, you know, other things to do than than recover the stages or rather we had to recover them from a state that we didn't wanna recover them from. But we, we we basically blew up the first three, launches. And, and we learned along the way on how how to launch a rocket and and not to. And that approach was also a little bit different because people, people tend to basically build the rocket and then kind of test it until you you are a 100% sure it works.

And even then, it mostly doesn't work. Mhmm. But we we launched at a at a time where you would think, oh, well, this is not necessarily to be successful, but it's rather necessary to learn how to be successful. So it's this iterative design, that, you know, it's more pronounced today than at the time, but it was somewhat like an early version of, of the iterative design that we did. And, basically, on the first rocket, we learned certain things and we implemented them for the second rocket.

And the on the second rocket, we did other things, that didn't go well, and we implemented those for a third rocket and so on and so forth. And, on the third rocket that we had a we had a new engine, and it didn't didn't go very well for a different reason. The engine worked great, but it didn't go out really quickly. It, it went out, like, in a slow way. And by that time, we had already separated the first and the second stage, and and then we basically rear ended the second stage.

That was bad. So so we learned we learned another thing. And then after that, we pretty much, you know, fixed the the timing and, before the rocket went into orbit. And so, that that moment was pretty, pretty interesting and, of course, exciting for when you worked there for, like, a couple years, and and we're used to basically collecting debris. And and suddenly, here you are, and the thing actually comes around and, and comes over you again on a on an orbit. And and, that was pretty amazing.

It was a a wild party after that too. So I, some questions off of the this little segment that you added. Number 1, where did the concept or who created the concept that you're not going to build in, clean rooms and you're gonna be more manufacturing oriented? The not not the one that's I bet there's a story out there. I've never heard it. So I'm just asking the question. Is there a time where you were sitting in the meeting and someone said, screw it. Let's just do it this way.

Or was it not thought out or what just happened? That's the first Yeah. No. No. It was it was definitely, there was a lot of, discussion in the beginning. I do we buy a clean room and and stuff like that? And then and then I think, Elon pushed for not having this and and and, building it, like, basically, like, in a in a in a in a normal clean place. Yeah. We we it it kind of resonated with with us that we think we can do that. We don't need a clean room.

We we don't, you know, believe in this really, I guess, fancy space technology, you know, that that you usually see. But but we learned along the way, actually, there are reasons for clean rooms, and there are places where you do want a clean room. For example, you wanna be clean when you assemble your electronics. You wanna be clean when you assemble your your, certain certain components on the propulsion system. And in particular, you wanna be clean in your tanks.

Your your propellant tanks should really be clean. There should be no screws in there, like loose or something like that. Yeah? And I know I know it's hard, but it's a big thing. Right? It's it's gonna happen. I mean, the the tank's ran a rock quarry, so I understand that. But Yeah. Yeah. I I'd never even thought of a screw being in the side of it inside of a tank. Yeah. I mean, that because that screw will go into your pump and then take bad things in the pump. Not a good thing. Yes. Right.

Exactly. I mean, it's the same it's totally it's trivial, but because, like, on your car, you do the same thing. Right? There's a filter there, that catches basically any little screws Yeah. Along the way to the to the to the engine. Yeah. Or, you know, you could be electric too. But, but, anyways, yeah, anything these things basically have to kept be kept clean. So we learned it basically from the perspective of, what is really necessary. That that is something we need to keep clean.

And other stuff, well, we we, we assemble them basically in in a clean environment, but not a clean room. Yeah? Right. It's Big difference. You keep you nice you keep you deep. Exactly. Mhmm. Exactly. Keep your shop clean. Basically, that's just like a like a a common common sense, thing. So you you don't have dirt in in your in your threads and the connections and stuff like that. But it doesn't have to be like a clean room per se.

Yeah. But there's certain things that do need a clean room per se. The the next question that came through now, I believe and you could tell me if I'm wrong. And I I don't study this, so don't don't make assumptions that I know all of these things. I believe it was the 3rd rocket that blew up at about 2 minutes and 19 seconds. Correct? That sounds somewhat right. It could be a little bit later than that. The first one's for a, 28 seconds.

The second one actually went to substantial velocity and several minutes into the second burn. And this the third one basically finished the first burn and then never never started the second one. Okay. So and I'm I'm actually opening up a page because I wrote something about this a long time ago. I'm gonna see if I could find it in in the second. It it typically, the time of the first stage burning out is a 180 seconds.

And so it would be, like, close to 3 minutes, but, you know, we're talking couple of seconds. Yeah. Yeah. So because, the it it's not the point there, but that was the I was in I had gone to NASA. And by the way, I think I told you that NASA named us. We we I traveled there almost every month for 5 years. Yeah. One of the things that, I was sitting at a meeting and one of the teammates walked in and said, c c c David, space is hard.

And and I looked at him and then said, no. Space is not hard as far as I know, and I'm not a space fanatic. Uh-huh. As far as I know, we're pretty good when we get up there. I mean, people just don't die. Things work when they get there. They're pretty well thought out. I said, space is harsh. Earth is hard. We have we have the technology. We have a deep gravity well. We have the cost. We have the politics behind it. We have the engineering that has to be put together.

And I listed a whole bunch of things. I said, space is not hard. It's harsh. Earth is hard. How did you I mean, this is the 3rd rocket. You had said just a moment ago, you had enough money for 3 rockets. Yeah. What went through your mind when that 3rd rocket didn't make it? I thought that was the end of it. Maybe maybe that was that was too little, but because, you know, Elon said he's in for 3 rockets, and then and then this was the third one.

And, I I I kind of knew we built a 4th one at this on the side too. Right? So it's not that I didn't know this, but I thought, well, okay. That's it. And, I don't know. I think I was more frustrated on the first launch. On the 3rd launch, on the other side, we we had already 2 failures, and and we, I guess, what I wanna say we got used to that. But but, we we we learn to to learn out of our failures more than than, than before.

And so we knew what what what we we made wrong pretty quickly, and we we think we were ready to do this. And then, yeah, I mean, Elon basically surprised me at least by calling everybody in the meeting room and said, okay. You guys have, like, I think it was 6 weeks or 8 weeks, to go back. We have we have another rocket, finished, and I want you to launch it basically and, and get to all of it, paraphrased here.

And then the time frame was so short that we actually usually, we ship we ship the rocket with the with the with the ship. And, and this time, we basically decide, okay, we gotta rent an airplane and fly it down there. And and so we can actually meet that that schedule. And that's what we did. We we flew the 4th rocket out on the c 17. There was some excitement because we, the pressure inside the cargo bay of the, c 17 changes faster than the rocket can equalize the pressure.

And so we we buckled the tank, basically, inside the the airplane. That was, that was not fun. And then we we landed and, pulled the rocket out basically and had to basically fix it inside, which which was doable. But, it was, somewhat unexpected and took us a little bit longer than than otherwise. Yeah. I was actually not on that flight, but, yeah. So I I just I did look it up. It was, what I had written was this is way back, so you gotta imagine.

A micro adjustment can determine a win by a nose or a loo or a loss. SpaceX Technologies founded by natives, South African Elon Musk, who also founded PayPal and Tesla, that are putting satellites in space at a fraction of competitors' cost. Its first two $6,000,000 rockets failed, and the 3rd suffered a loss by a nose, an altitude of 217 kilometers, when a single line of code did not allow enough time for commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation.

You know, it's slightly slightly slightly slightly wrong in the details. Okay. Well, I'd like to ask. Sure. This is what happened. That was the news that was out there at the time. This was 3rd flight. Right? So so so what happened is we we changed the engine concept from a, an ablative engine that basically erodes as as coolant. Yeah. And, basically, it eats away the engine into an engine that was regenerative. So in other words, the engine had, like, cooling channels around it. Yeah?

And and it was a logical change. It made sense because that's what you can reuse, and, that's also the better technology and so on and so forth. But what we didn't really consider was that when you turn this engine off, it takes, like, 1 and a half to 2 seconds for the thrust to die down. Okay. The other engine thrust went died down basically like a like a step. It was like, from from from whatever, £70,000 thrust to 0 in in, like, milliseconds. Yeah. Or maybe maybe 50 milliseconds or so.

Yeah. And then this one really took its time. And then we had the stage separation. When you separate the stages, you don't wanna wait much lot much time because you're you're you're drifting. You're not thrusting. You're you're kind of like you have this whole rocket that's without control. Right? And so engine out, separate, engine on. And that's what you want. So but from the first engine, that obviously took, like, so fast.

The whole sequence was, like, I don't wanna say it was, like, maybe half a second a second or something like that. Yeah? Bang bang. And for the newer engine, it should have been engine out, wait, separate, and go. Yeah. And and and so, basically, it was not a line of code that was wrong. It was not the shutdown that was wrong. The shutdown worked fine. It was the fact that we separated too early or too fast, and, and that was basically just a a number that you could configure.

And, and we changed the number, and, it worked on the next one. There was no other change. That was it. It was just a number that changed. What what are, let's see, commanding main engine shutdown and stage separations was kind of the quote that was pulled out of something. Yeah. And the commanding main, main engine shutdown, I don't think was the problem at all. That didn't change. Oh, okay. It's a state it's a state separation. I mean, it's a nitpick, but, No.

No. No. I'm I'm glad you're saying it. This was this was pulled out of an article. I don't tend to write things that come from other places that I don't have firsthand knowledge of. So I'm confirming what was written here, and this is what was in the major publications out there. Right. Right. So they so let's take it from where you were at that point so we It's not totally wrong. I mean, it has it has definitely to do with the state separation, and so on. You changed one number.

You just said it. You changed Yeah. One number. The the message in that little paragraph that was written is that it's amazing how a single tiny adjustment or item Yeah. Can make all the difference in the world. And that was that was the message of that paragraph is that That's true. It it could have been a line of code. It could have been Yeah. The way it was written could have should have been. A timing number had to be changed. Yeah. I mean, exactly.

And I mean, that's just a thousand ways to screw this up. Right? Obviously. And and and you just have to to get it right in order. That's probably what the fascination of rockets is also. There's just no room for anything. It's just very unforgiving. You you have to be pretty much perfect in order to get to orbit.

And if you are if you make mistakes on on the other side, like, if you wait too long, yeah, well, then it doesn't get to orbit because you wasted all your time, like, drifting around, and you lost you lost altitude and velocity in that time that you had to had to basically add on the burn during the burn, and now you don't have enough propellant. Yeah? Yep. This is the equivalent of, and all the energies are high and people quote that often.

Yeah. But it's also the fact that if your car has 500 miles range, and it doesn't matter whether it's electric or gas. Yeah. And you you just determine, I'm gonna I'm gonna fill up gas at 500 kilometer or 500 miles, whatever the number the unit is, and not earlier. This is the equivalent of that. Yeah? And maybe, like, you give yourself maybe you give yourself, like, a, tiny percentage of margin. You give yourself another 5 miles. You go at 4:95. You you fill it up. Right?

But even then, you the entire the entire drive, you think, is that right? Am I gonna do this? Am I gonna be okay? That's the equivalent of of what, what markets basically are, in my opinion. And the gas station is closed when you arrive. Well, that too, of course. Yeah. We have whatever. You forgot your credit card. Right. You forget about that. So, you were talking about the the you fixed the timing. So you had this was the first, the second, the third rocket you learned.

Yeah. The new engine, now you fix the timing. And we're we're talking about the the industry changing. What happened next? So, the industry changed, well, a little bit more with Falcon 9 in that sense. We Falcon 1, was kind of like the learning rocket for SpaceX. Falcon 9 was the one that was the well, I don't wanna say the real thing because Falcon 1 was pretty real, but you know what I mean. It was like the one that could be commercially, was commercially viable. Yeah?

And then even Falcon 9, we learned a lot because there's different versions of it. And as as time went on, we went from the first version that just, you know, was built quickly and and made it to orbit. It it carried the capsule dragon, basically. Yep. And then and then we started looking at this reusability in more more detail. Right? We try to actually, be where the rocket lands, And then we realize, oh, the stage completely burns up.

We need to add, you know, we need to add more protection on the engine so that it doesn't burn up between the engines. It's a media heat shield. And, and you also need to slow down a little bit. That's what what the entry burn does, basically, and and so on and so forth. And so we learned these things. And then somewhere into, Falcon 9, I wanna say probably flight 14, 15, something like that.

We started landing it on a on a, on a barge, which we call drone ships because they are somewhat autonomous. So we we kept the barge or the township at the spot and then tried to hit it with the first stage and and, slow it down.

And at the beginning, that was, often almost comical because the stage would land, sideways, or it would basically hit it hard and blow up and, would create great footage for for, you know, people that wanna look at at fire and explosions, but it wasn't, making progress towards landing. Only slowly, I would say. And then it took it took some time to develop the the the algorithms and and make the rocket land.

And and it really landed, the first time, actually, when we tried it on land, on on solid ground at the Cape after a pretty miserable year. There was flight flight 21. I think it's actually quoted differently in in some some references. But, the accounting was different outside than inside. I forgot what year that was. Was it 15? Who came up with the concept of the drone ship? So, when you land, there's 2 ways to land. Right? The rocket goes in a certain direction. Yeah?

And if you land forward, then you don't have to turn the velocity around and go back to land. Yeah? And so there's some some clear benefit if you land on a ship. I actually don't know who came up with that, concept, but it was pretty early. It's possibly been a year a couple a couple years since then. But it's a lot it's a logical choice. If you don't wanna go back, then you go forward. Whereas then you don't have your your opponent expenses. I'm it's just simply less than if you go back.

Yeah. And then you have the ability to be able to manage and maneuver because you've got more propellant. Correct. Correct. So yes. I mean, an obvious propellant is is valuable because you do need it. You don't want to spend it for, for the recovery. You wanna spend it for, basically, your pay land your payload. Right? Yeah. That's that's the main thing. Yeah. I'm just trying to figure out what year that was. It was 2015. Exactly. That that's okay.

And it's one of those, you know, ideas come from some place. Somebody says, why don't we? Well, you can't basically have the you talking about? And they said, no. Why don't why don't we land on the ocean on a boat Right. That's all autonomous, and everybody says you're crazy. Right. Can we do that? It's I mean, I I credit Elon with the reusability overall and to push this all the time. Yeah? It's clearly that was clearly his his thing.

And on the landing, Lars Blackmore, did did a lot of work on the algorithm. But there were lots of people involved overall in this in this thing. By that time, we were also a pretty big team. I'm gonna guess maybe a 1000 people, maybe even more. I would love to see actually how many people we were over time and and how how it grew. But we had a pretty miserable year in that that year. We had a, a group flight actually fail on the way to the space station, in June of 2015.

And then we went through, like, figuring out what happened for, like, several months. And then we had another the so, basically, the the return to flight launch was the one in late December, and it was literally, like, the last day the range was open because there was they closed at Christmas and, and then that's it for the year. And so there was, like, a a true sense of we gotta get this done now or we we will not achieve anything this year.

And, and then we basically that was the launch that landed successfully on land, for the first time. And so so it was a miserable year that ended really on a high note. I remember that because I I took a flight back and I flew basically straight to Mammoth Lakes for skiing, and I was so happy. Yeah. So so how was when you're talking about industry changing, what you have all of these pieces. What Yes. Is changing along the way? So so here's the thing that changed. Right?

You could it took a while, for that. But you you you recover a stage, you land the stage, and then you inspect it. You kind of make assessment whether you can launch this again or not. And then you do launch it again. When you do that, you're basically safe to building another stage, another first stage, yeah, which is the biggest part on the rocket. So that's something that SpaceX does now on a regular basis. There are stages that have flown 20 times and more, I think.

No. 20 times, I think, is the the the record right now. They landed 300 rockets. It's just amazing. Yeah? And how reliable it has become. And they basically they didn't build the amount of first stages, you know, when when they launched a 100 times last year, they didn't build a 100 first stages here or 94, I think, was the number. But but they they built basically, you know, a fraction of that, a 10th of that or even less.

Yeah. And and that clearly saves some money, and that clearly changes the economics of that. Yeah. That that is, I think that was the that's the fundamental change in the industry that that, by reusing a rocket, in a way that the reusability is actually, rapid and and quickly and, and something you can do in a couple of weeks and not not take it completely apart. If you do that, then you can you can save, building the booster over and over again and throwing it away.

And, I think Elon compares a lot to, you know, imagine you would fly fly, you know, commercial with an airplane, and they would they would throw the airplane away at the end of the flight. That would be a rather expensive flight. Well, and the way the airline industry is going right now, that might not be a bad idea in Well, truth. And we we made it. Yeah. Reusability does require reusability does require reliability. And it's kind of like, also reusability also helps for you reliability.

So because you can actually look at it and you can get more data, so so it it kind of helps you with with reusability and over and over using things many, many times, you also gain gain a lot on on reliability. It's kind of like, it goes hand in hand, basically. But you you do know. I mean, there's no way other people have attempted to do some type of Yeah. Usability. Well Oh, totally.

It's something happened here, and I'm not gonna call it magical, but something happened in the leadership, something happened in the group that you were able to figure it out where the the graveyard is probably pretty full of a a lot of organizations who've said, oh, we gotta have a reusable rocket. Yeah. It's not I mean, it's not a big graveyard. It's a pretty small cemetery. But but at the end of the day, you're right.

Most of the people are those little ones that you drive by when you're Exactly. Because it's gone. Yeah. So a couple of things, the reason for that. Number 1, it's hard to build rockets that go to orbit. Yeah. And then it's also hard to build. It's it's even harder to build rockets that come back, because now you you did this big accomplishment getting to orbit. Do you have the energy to actually land the rocket here or land the the booster? And then, obviously, Falcon 9 had 2 stages. Yeah?

And, and Falcon 9 reuses the 1st stage, the the booster and, and the, and the fairing. So the top part basically. Yeah. But it doesn't it doesn't reuse the 2nd stage. Yeah. Other vehicles basically reuse the second stage. The space shuttle was basically the upper stage of the whole shuttle stack. And, and that's even harder than flying the booster back and landing the booster. So that that when you start with the you know, I feel like, the shuttle was an attempt at that, but it was so difficult.

It was so complex that, and it also was a human space flight vehicle. So that that all made it difficult to make changes, to adapt for it to push, the envelope, because there was always a concern about the astronauts in there. And so so by having a, uncrewed, like, vehicle basically to test this, I think you you you had the luxury of testing it.

Yeah. You could, you could test it also without endangering the the, the main mission because the the landing happens after the the mission for the booster. So there are a couple of things that that Falcon 9 did, right and that other people try to, I guess, maybe to be too ambitious or too complex. It's also how do you land? Do you land vertical? Do you land horizontal? In one case, you you're basically trying to build an airplane and the rockets together. Yep. Absolutely. Right?

Landing vertically seems now almost like the easier part. So so Did you talk about horizontal? We yes. We we we looked at different concepts, and and, you know, it's, it's complex. It's it's difficult. Yeah. Because you need wings, basically. You need something riding left. And and so it it seemed easier to just just, reverse the, reverse the the movie of a launch, basically. And I That's a good way to say it. Yeah. Right. Well, people said that we did that.

We're just showing the the the video of the launches in reverse. It's a it it changed going to the second half of your bullet this bullet is that you said, and it enabled it. Yet with all the, with all, meaning small group, but with all the rocketry organizations out there today, it it's not completely enabled. There's this Yeah. It's it's a belief. Yes. They can do it, but we still haven't. We're only doing well, how many the European Space Agency. How many flights are they putting up?

How many spikes are all the others putting up? How many is Rocket Lab putting up? I mean, Firefly. And I'm not picking on them. Please don't take them that way. I'm just saying Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No. It's it's okay. I I wouldn't call it enabling it. I think what I would kind of phrase it as if I was to have to kinda title it is, is it shows possibilities. It demonstrates possibilities that one organization has been able to make this happen. Correct. Well, yes.

And and and it also showed the way how to do this. But, you know, it's the work is not completely done yet. There's still a second stage that's thrown away, and that still is pretty expensive. So you're absolutely right. It's it's not completely done. But it does it does show that, that you can do that, and and so it does enable, a different type of vehicle. And that enables lower cost, and that enables more spaceflight.

So so the interesting thing, however, is that it's not the first rocket that becomes cheaper. It's when the second rocket lands and gets reusable that it gets cheaper. Does that make sense? It's an exponential curve because you've you've more or less taken a huge chunk of the costs because it now can go up a second time and the third time becomes bonus. The 4th time I meant more like the the market the commercial aspect of that because the prices don't go down. The prices don't go down now.

Right, the space of flash pretty much and survival of a commercial company hangs in that balance. Correct. And to be fair, I mean, when you build something like that, you have a huge you spent a huge amount of money on on, on the development, and you need to recover that. So that's the reason why the price does not go down right away. But there's also the other reason of of, other records costs like, x. And then, obviously, the the first reusable rocket is gonna cost x minus $1. Right?

Mhmm. So it's gonna be it's gonna undercut the other rockets just by a little bit. And then if you have 2 reusable rockets in the world, well, then it gets interesting because then they're gonna drive the price down to whatever is is is sustainable in the long run. And that's gonna be substantially under the the the the numbers that you have now. I would I'm not an economics person. I'm only playing 1 on a podcast, but it's it's the perception of the possibilities, I think, is the huge part.

Yes. It's dropped cost significantly. It's yet it's given individuals and organizations this kind of metric, and you're old enough to know of the Roger Bannister breaking the 4 minute mile. Physiologically and psychologically impossible to break the 4 minute mile. And then this one guy goes out, breaks a 4 minute mile. In the short time, everybody starts breaking the 4 minute mile. So It's it's really interesting. Seen that, though, the same in that same vein.

I've been I've been very cautious with the word impossible too in the meantime. I I would not dare to say that because so many things happened that we thought were impossible, whatever, 10, 20, 30 years ago. And and so the word impossible and and to be quoted in in connection with the word impossible is not a great, no. It's not Those things don't live very long. Yeah. Not not great. Yeah. Doesn't they don't age very well, I think, is the right term. No. It it doesn't.

And people haven't learned that lesson through history. So when, the this is just a forecast. It doesn't go anywhere. Another agent coming here. This, by the way. No one's gonna hear this. Is when from what you've learned, how far are we from the the total rocket being completely resalvage? Yeah. So so first of all, I I think actually, one thing that I learned is that the true problem on space flight or space technology was always cost, not the physics.

Yeah. I know that that that rocket people say, oh, it's the physics and and and and so on and so forth. But looking back, it seemed to me we we solved almost everything except the cost. There was always a problem, and that's still still is a problem. Yeah? So having said that, I don't think we are far away from the complete reusability with, I mean, that gets you to Starship. Yeah. Right?

The Starship and then there's also a little bit, a much, much smaller player, but still, you know, close to my heart too, is, stoke space. I'm building a reasonable second stage. That's probably more out there. But, but fundamentally, those are the 2 that actually trying to fix this problem completely. Yeah. It's funny that you you actually went back to it's space is not hard. It's harsh. It's the challenges on Earth. It's Right. That's the cost. Said was. It's Yeah. It's the politics.

It is the cost factor. It is the deep gravity. I mean, all these things are part of it, but they all happen in atmosphere. All of these things that go wrong are happening out on this earth. They're not happening up there. Now things do go wrong. They always do when you're out to see things go wrong.

But what you just said was the big part is that economic side of it, which until it's overcome, until it's proven that those numbers can work, it will be a high risk venture requiring a lot of insurance, requiring a, a a certain type of investor pool, and requiring the understanding that you're gonna lose a lot of money to get that rocket up. Because as we've seen, we'll name names, but the rockets go up and they go sideways. And the rockets Let me. They don't work the same way.

Yeah. Let me let me go back to the title in this case. Right? The object mechanics of dreams. Because, honestly, this is part of the problem. So you have dreams. You you your dream is to make it fully reusable and so on and so forth. And you have a lot of, you can do a lot of things, right, as long as you have the money for it. So so I think that that dream is a possibility, but it always has to happen within the orbital mechanics. It always has to happen within the physics.

And so so but what started as a, you know, collection of, like, contradictory words, is actually not that bad, when I look at it again now. But yeah. Yes. Because what you just said, which came from you, from your head, is that this is the huge challenges all often that economic level. How do you manage the personnel, the hiring, the firing, the technology, put it all together into something that actually goes up that works when it hits when it hits That is Correct.

That that that is actually really interesting because, so the Rocket Business has a lot of personalities. You need people that are driven, and and and so that comes often with, like, more personalities. And then you have people working with personalities work together in close spaces for, like, fighting over over resources. And, I always look at companies basically and wonder how they are when the first the first time it goes wrong. Because that's where the true value of the team shows.

It's not in the beginning. It's not 1st year. It's not when the coffee is free. And and there's Friday Friday Friday dinners or Friday ranches rather. That's the good time. And that's easy to to to have, a great company then. It's when the first time it goes wrong. How does it do they still, you know, work together? Is that still good? And that's where it really that's where the rubber hits the road. And you see if the team is still good. And I must say looking back at SpaceX, it did that.

The team always pulled together. Yeah. The the team always came came in a circle and and that how do we fix this? How do we get this right? And that's that's the unique part, in my opinion, of SpaceX, and that I at least experienced as unique. Yeah. How how well it worked together as a team and how good it was in solving problems at the time. Yeah. So I mean, obviously, I'm out for, like, two and a half years now. Yeah. But that's So Yeah.

But even in even out two and a half years, you have all of this. I I'm gonna I'd like to know when that first thing happened, what you were feeling. Like, number 3, Rocket. You said that you thought this was over. You you had these accidents or mishaps of things. How did you what was your propensity going into these meetings? You had to have I don't know. You had to have your own pep talk. You had to have a pep talk to yourself saying Right. Hey, I'm gonna go in this way. I'm gonna make it work.

What was yours? I I kind of thought, oh, we had a good one. We had we had some some good times. Didn't quite make it. And and, if he shuts it down now, I can totally understand that. Yeah. Because there was he always said that early on. And so so it's just fair, if you if you if if if you would shut it down now. But, I mean, the truth is, there was no no intention to shut it down. It was just like, let's go fix this one thing and and and show that actually it was just one thing.

Yeah. And we gave everything. I was exhausted, basically, at at that time too. I was just exhausted and and and and and just cruising along on autopilot. I needed a break, and I I did take, like, a week just to test to recover from that. But those launches are exhausting. The but I can tell you the worst one was for me the first one. And and there was a specific reason why the first one was so bad. The first one for was my my first big failure.

The first time I basically worked on something, build it up, you know, and then and then it didn't work. And I thought, wow, not I can actually fail. And that that that knowledge or something. And before that, I worked on a satellite, and, and and it actually worked. Yeah. And I worked on other projects that didn't quite go so well, but they never really failed so spectacular than this one. And so And in and in the media. Well, it because it was we we launched from the Marshall Islands.

You know, Kwajalein was the is the, is the place's name. So it was a little bit outside, but it was it was definitely in the media and the the in the, the space space media. But it would have been very gross if you would have launched from the from the cape. Oh, yeah. Alright. It would have been, like, endless.

And and so from that perspective, I think, actually, it came to work together pretty well that we launched on a little island and, and, you know, people didn't really pay that much attention to what happened down there, gave us a chance to recover. But on a personal level, I thought the first one the first failure was more significant than the 3rd, because I wasn't used to that.

Yeah. You should the one way when you when you go to college and, and start working in technology, you should get used to failure. And and you should look at it as a, as a chance to learn more than as a, oh, I did this wrong. I'm I I suck at this. Yeah. So it's, the opportunity to learn, I think is something that is not always in in people's mind when when that happens. One of my sayings, I've got quite a few.

So excuse me if I keep on saying is, I've made more I've made I happen to make more good mistakes than bad mistakes. Mhmm. Yeah. Because I'm constantly making errors. Something goes wrong, something has to be fixed that hasn't done the right way, wrong location, wrong person, trusted somebody, shouldn't have trusted somebody, didn't have enough capital. There's always a challenge in there. How do you how did you pull yourself out of that first one?

Well, I guess over time, you you start looking at what actually worked or what actually, was good. And and then you you kind of resort to I mean, your choices are pretty pretty you have only have 2 choices, right, either give up and go home. Or you you you you bite the bullet, and you learn what you'll what you had to learn and just keep going. I mean, they're okay. It's a 2x chance. You can't just keep going without learning. That's possible too. Yeah. It is.

I think I think part of the grief and part of the, the process after that is actually converting, what happened into something you can learn from and and make it useful. And that just takes time. So in my case, it took a month. And then after that Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It took it took a while. And then and they come back on here and and go, okay. We know what we learned. Let's try this again, this time better. Yeah. I mean, you make mistakes all the time. You you you're totally right.

And but also, you know, the the there's this other proverb of the the notes, from Bill Gates actually, success is a lousy teacher. I think it's from Yes. It is. Right? And and there's it's from him. But, yes, it's a quote. Definitely definitely, I can't see how that how that come combines with Microsoft in the beginning. Right? And and sometimes someone gets so cocky that they go so far in terms of successes that they can't unravel. Right. And turn it around. They they built, built, built.

And then that's the only thing they've ever done. It doesn't improve. And then there's other people very early on their career. They have tons of failures. And I failure is not the word that I like. It's more of a you've had things in good go the way you'd like and you have to sit back and contemplate. Who are you? How are you gonna move this forward? Is it important to you? What decisions are you making in your life? What do you have to learn? Who do you have to talk to?

All of those factors come in, and it can become a habit of of change. Correct. And and you learn through I mean, it's basically a risky thing. Right? What do you do? You build building rockets building new rockets and launching them is a a thing that is very, very risky. And you kind of learn how to deal with that. For for me, at least, that's that's what came out of that. I learned a lot about taking risks and, I guess accepting some some residual risk.

And and also, you know, doubt doubt yourself to some extent. Always double check because it's amazing how many mistakes, you know, one makes. There's a couple of things that that make you I think that make you a better engineer if you have some your your your fair, fair share of failures, and we're able to learn from them. That's that's the important part. I mean, just because things failed, doesn't mean your experience.

It just means, like, that you things failed and you were actually able to learn from them. That's that's the the the crucial part. Just so you know, what's running through my head is you have that low wing plane that you're working on. Oh, yeah. Let's make sure that we review all of that. So you don't get a second chance when you're up on a low wing prop. And and you you you're right. I mean, like, every time I fly, whatever. There's little things.

I forgot to turn the timer on when the FAA lands. You need us to figure out on when you can shut down the engine. And it's in the checklist. I didn't read the checklist. Or I I went over that line and check this. Like, oh, shit. I mean, it should really, really, really do this next time. Yeah? And then one day, it's perfect. And you go, okay. This was a good day. We we were flying a low wing with my instructor. We flew it's about 6 hours drive by, by car.

But we flew from upstate New York to Vermont, landed on top of a mountain, did, took my kids, were there with my wife. So with with their cousins, we ended up giving, we did landing and takeoff just to give the kids a whole experience. Right. And then we had to fly back and we're flying back and it looks clear. We have to go over the Adirondacks Mountains, which are about 4,000 feet. Mhmm. And we enter into it and the ceiling drops from 6,000 feet to 4,000.

So now we're going through the mountains, but it becomes dark and our entire dashboard goes blank. Yeah. It went dark. The lights blew. We couldn't see our altitude. We couldn't see our speed, and we didn't have a flashlight. How did you get out of that? We I was I I he had to do is he had the, the maps. And what we did is we looked for lakes that reflected the light. And then he navigated through whatever he could see by the moonlight that would come through, and I'd aim to the lake.

If I could see a lake, it meant there was no mountain in the way. I mean, that was a that was our that was the lesson. We and we also went from a tailwind of about 65 mile. It was about 65 to now a headwind. It took us forever. You know, you go into a plane that goes a 120 knots, a 100 and 40 knots. And now we got a headwind. We it took us 3 hours to get out of it. I was exhausted. And as soon as we got out, we triple clicked on the yoke. You know, got a we got the, an airport lit up.

I went, oh. Yeah. Now I know where we are and we flew home. So those little things, sometimes you have to make sure. So bring me a flashlight, always a lesson in deploying. Yep. That's true. So here's the next one you had was we're way past the, you know, the 3rd launch where we're into 90 some odd launches. A big big targets for SpaceX factor. Why did why succeeded and fail? How did it grow from that? And I don't know. Where do you wanna go on this one?

SpaceX, why it succeeded and failed that whole measure. Is that so is that the the second bullet is where where you are? That's the second. Yes. Because I think I think part of that was already, already talked about that to some extent. I mean, there's a certain discipline and and grit within the company that that makes the team able, that the team works together work together very well, I thought, is is definitely one one huge factor of that. Let's see what else.

The the the one of the really big parts is also that SpaceX had a mission that didn't end with, like, a a launch, a successful launch. It was a mission. The mission is to to make, humanity interplanetary. And, and and so it's it's a very long term vision. And, and that helps that that that is incredibly inspiring and, and keeps the team really Is that is that yours? Is that yours? Well, that's obviously Elon's. The What's yours? Well, mine was very smaller. Mine was like what I said earlier.

Like, let's see if you can can get get this launched with, like, 200 people, build it, and and launch it. And and and so well, I, you know, I think I think the Mars Mars version, I adopted that by now. And, and so I I think that changed over time. But like I said, it was it was definitely a change for me to go from the more practical, you know, let's see if you can make this work to a vision that is just, that I won't probably see before the end of my lifetime.

So what yet the company has grown a lot to when you retired. I mean And to now, there's over 13,000 employees. So how did you make it in my head, the way you've told the shared the story is it had grown, but you still were kind of this ragtag group of individuals trying to take on the world and make things happen. So so that made a huge jump. There's you're no longer the company. By the time you left was no longer that small ragtag crew. Let me get let me get to that in a second.

I just wanna correct what I said earlier. There's a likelihood that I don't see this in my lifetime. That's it's also a likelihood that I see this in my lifetime. Definitely. Yeah. But but, there's definitely a chance that I I I won't see this. But either way, you're in a company from basically 4 to, let's say, 14,000 just times better. Maybe it's 13 or maybe it's 12,000. Whatever the number really is. Doesn't matter. It's Yeah. Exactly.

It's really interesting, because suddenly, when when you have 4 people or when you're 10 or when you like, a 100 people, people know you. Yeah? And and they don't judge you by the car you come in, and they don't judge you by, by your first impression. They know, you know, this is Tom. This is Hans and whatever, Tim. And and and they know you're good at that, you're bad at that. You have whatever certain certain characteristics. Let's say this way.

Yeah. And and so so it's like it's like a family, basically. Yeah. And and you don't have to have this. But when you get more people, suddenly, it's important to well, you can either introduce yourself and and and and work with everybody new, or you you you get titles and whatever to for people to, show who you are. Yeah. And it's like a silly thing early on. But later on, it's actually something, oh, this is the VP of of Build A Liability. Give him some credit for whatever he says.

So listen to the end, basically, so he doesn't have to explain this to you every time. It's like the the title serve for serve for bigger companies, for that aspect that you know somebody really well on a smaller company. Does that make sense? Mhmm. Yeah. So that's one of them. Also, the other thing is that I learned is, like, I gotta be really careful what I'm saying because people will take what I'm saying and and present it to me later in a in a way and form that I didn't anticipate.

And now suddenly I'm in a bind. Yeah? Uh-huh. People people listen to me more than I expected that. And sometimes I say things where I say, okay. This was a joke or or I really didn't mean it that much. I had to learn that basically, oh, you gotta be careful with what you say. You better be you better be yourself all the time. Yeah. You better be So sorry. The the way you phrased it kinda got me twisted.

You said first, you know, you when you start to speak, they listen to you because you've got this, and they'll let you finish because of reliability. And then you've got this careful. I'm saying this, and it puts me in a bind. Right. That sounds like, wow, you could end up with people not throwing out new ideas, someone who's not going to risk their career saying, I'm not gonna this Hans guy, he's gonna really not accept anything I do out there.

So I'm gonna gonna let him talk for 25 minutes even though he shouldn't be talking. He should shut up and listen to me for a moment because I got this new idea I wanna propose. Right. That can happen, obviously. I mean, that that obviously is is a is a risk that in bigger companies and higher, executive positions, people move more cautiously. How did you stop it? Well, so it's interesting. I I guess I guess at the end of the day, I decided to just be more myself anyways.

Yeah. So in other words, I will not I I don't think I changed that much. So I I did not I'm I didn't really mince my words. I still in fact, I did speak up more often later than early on. Yeah. I did I did say I did I did, verbalize my opinion, more clear later on. And there's a different reason for that, which is basically, you got to see that are coming from, like, a German culture of, like, you know, you need you have one job and you're providing your family, and so on and so forth.

You don't so you don't take a lot of risk in your job. And then as time went on, you know, we basically pay off your house or something like that, you realize, oh, I can actually speak up here. I mean, this is way more important than my job security. And that's when you become really valuable for the company. And you actually forget, you're not afraid to get to be fired.

Yeah. And and I always say that people are really effective if they're not afraid of of of getting fired Because then they basically tell you what they think. They don't play games. They don't, they're not careful. It's basically a lot of those people, just simply because we started early and and and we're commercially successful, I would say. But, for me, that was an interesting phenomenon on the personal side where where I realized, oh, like, I I can take on new jobs.

Like, for example, one of the jobs I took on was, doing these press conferences. Yeah. That's usually a really good way to get fired. Yes. And but I I thought that I'm I was pretty senior at the time, and and, I didn't want people getting fired that that just started or so. Yeah. And and, also, I knew somewhat well what SpaceX wanted to say. And so I said, well, let me try this here. And it turns out, actually, it wasn't bad. I was actually pretty good at the press conferences.

And so for many years, I I had that job that, I did the NASA press conferences together with, like, a counterpart on the NASA side. It's an awkward it's an awkward, press conference typically, and and, it's a little bit stressful. But at the end of the day, I I learned to deal with that, and, I'm glad I did this because this is totally different from what I what my personality is otherwise.

Yeah. The fact that I I speak publicly and say my opinion, and so is not what I would have done 10 years ago. I I changed over time. Goldsmith. I think you knew that. That's Rosa Herman. My father was Benno Gunther Goldsmith. He went by Gunther Gunther. Yeah. So, yeah, I have that I have that whole German side of me. 6 generations or 7 generations we will retract back. But the the yes.

The European style of German today, I believe, and I'm really making a broad statement here, is you do something wrong that stays with you the rest of your career. Yeah. And you're right. Correct. I'm not saying this incorrectly. No. You are. I mean mistake go ahead. Yeah. They they also used to have jobs for life. Right? I mean I mean, they would do basically one job, and and they would stick with that job for their lifetime. That was quite common.

Yeah. I don't think that that's the case today. Yeah. And you came over to, the states, and now you're getting a whole different perspective Correct. Of possibilities. Correct. It's everything's different, and I'm trying to align myself with that. Or or basically trying to make make sense of what I what my instincts are, which are not necessarily good, and what my my head says is good. Again, your instincts are not good. You've made more good decisions than bad decisions. No mistakes.

You've just kind of Yeah. That all you gotta do is 51%, and you keep on moving forward. Right. Well, that one percent makes a big difference. So anything else with, moving forward a little bit? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At your perspective. I don't want this is not an Elon perspective or SpaceX perspective. You went from a small team to a large team. You went to multiple roles within the organization. You were responsible for all different types of categorical, important parts of the development.

How how did, you know, the VP of flight reliability, the Falcon 9 and Dragon. You chi the launch chief engineer. You had a lot of responsibilities to hear. You are moving around. How did that how was that for you? Well, I I largely did this, because I was always interested in the anomalies or stuff that goes wrong. Right? And so so if something goes wrong, I'm naturally somewhat attracted and trying to figure out why did it go wrong. And not I'm not just looking at the technical reason.

I'm also trying to figure out how how did that that human made the the decision. Like, what caused them to do this decision versus that decision? And, and then and then trying to fix it on a company level basically. And and that kind of gave me that, a lot of credibility with the team too, because I was really involved technically. And I really tried to understand what happened without trying to put blame on somebody. So I did that a lot.

I did, Falcon 9 had 22 major anomalies on on 2 different flights. 1 of them actually exploded on the launch pad. That was a really it was a really rough one. And then, Dragon had a, an anomaly and a static fire actually on the ground just before we were flying flying humans. And, and you think, wow. I mean, it's, we better fix we better fix all of that and then that we actually catch everything. Yeah. Is that all? I mean, Falcon 9, is pretty reliable now and so is so is, so is Dragon.

So, it it looks like we did pretty good job in in driving the the the the figures out, but you never know. So anyways, that that was my main my one of the the things that I really thought was interesting. And then also to convey this to, like, the whole company. Here's what I want you guys to do. I want you to be, whatever, super careful on in this area or super clean in in the other area and and these things.

Trying to trying to steal steal this without or control guide this without any any real control. Yeah. But those people don't work for me. They work for other people, and I'm still trying to to, make them better, trying to influence the company culture there. Those are those are pretty good good challenges, basically, that happened. And then and then, of course, you know, the other thing that that, started as we were going into human spaceflight, and so we were starting to work with NASA.

And now we had another player, and, and that was pretty much well, one aspect was to explain to NASA why this works the way we think it works. So lots of lots of, parallel, you know, places to work on. The I I have this picture of you were, like the way you said it, convey to the whole company, careful and clean, steer and control, you know, the the influence that you had. You sound like a a grandfather walking through the facilities. I felt like one. Yeah. Oh, okay. That's some truth to it.

Yeah. Because you you sounded like one as you were saying. Yeah. I don't know. It was basically at the end of the day. My my function was to convey convey the lessons of Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 to a lot of people that have not had the lesson. A little kinda a big version of Yoda. I wish. There certain things you all can do. I can't. So let's hit on the monopolist. Yeah. This is more like a thing. What is the definition for you? So it's funny.

I mean, SpaceX SpaceX SpaceX at the beginning, you know, was laughed at and predictable and critical. And, and there's actually nice there's great videos about, like, oh, this usability thing will never work. And, you know, like, a lot of a lot of comments that, didn't age well. And and then here we are and and and the market basically completely flipped around. Basically, everybody flies flies with SpaceX, including, Europe. You know, the the last 2 Galileo satellites flew with with SpaceX.

And and, and then suddenly the people flip around and say, oh, SpaceX is a monopolist. And they built they built a monopoly, and, and I was thinking, wait a second. This is not because of SpaceX. SpaceX didn't aim to be a monopolist. Yeah? It's just because you guys did not do your stuff. You just didn't you weren't able to build your your next rockets, and you failed in in a way that's way worse than just failing a rocket. Yeah? Because you didn't you didn't see the trends.

You just completely ignored it. And SpaceX was always open about this. SpaceX always said we do this because we think this is the way to to, to commercial space and and and being sustainable in the long run. Yeah. We we think reusability is the way to go. And everybody else was just ignoring that. And then the moment it is successful, people say, oh, yeah. You you're a monopolist.

So I would I I, I despise those comments, because they reflect more about the people that say those comments than than anything else. But it is a comment that's out there. And in my opinion, SpaceX is not a monopolist. A monopolist is somebody who does this, you know, with with, a certain amount of, you know, evil intent, and and that was absolutely not the case.

The fact that it might be a not monopoly, but everybody is free to to buy the more expensive rockets that don't use the technology that was basically proposed by SpaceX for many, many years. That's my comment on monopolist. I'm a little bit bitter about that. No. No. And also, you you obviously thought a lot about it. How would you do it? How would you have done or how would you and I'm talking from Project Moon Hut.

Yeah. I'm talking and you don't you've seen some of I think I sent you the 2 videos. There's a little bit you've learned about us. You haven't seen behind the curtain. You haven't seen the work we've done. And what people have seen have said, there's nothing like this out there. I mean, we have people I shared with you the names who have said, I've seen every project on the planet. There's nothing like this. We're very quiet, partially, because of this not monopolistic.

By the the first response. Yeah. Right. The first response, the, we had one person who said immediately after seeing what we're doing, well, you don't shouldn't show it to me because I already understand all these things. And I might I wanted to say, but I didn't wanna be a jerk. Yeah. Oh, so you've done it already? What do you mean? That's because they haven't. And no one's done what we're asking in Project Moon Hut and the different areas we're looking at. No one has.

So how if you were to say from what you've learned and what we've got going, and you haven't seen a lot, what type of lessons would you I would I would actually not change anything. I would just say, hey, in the end, if you're actually successful, the the the best compliment you can get is that people call you a monopolist and just ignore it. Yeah. So so that's basically basically the right response to that is to shrug your shoulders and say, well, that's kind of your fault too, at most.

Yeah. And and just let let it go otherwise because otherwise, it's not really positive and not really helping you in any way. People will eventually eventually catch up. I mean, there's no question that sooner or later, there's gonna be a company that that builds the fully usable rocket 2 and, or finds ways to to make it even even more effective or something like that. Yeah? But, and then, I don't know. Maybe maybe the SpaceX's will say, hey, you're a monopolist. Right.

They then they will split it. One of the things that, we do is when we have a conversation with an individual is they will say, well, I've never heard of you. I don't know what you're working on. Why don't I know? And this is from around the world. And what I do is I say, I, you gotta see, let me show you something on my screen. And I open up the podcast series and I say, do you know anybody here? And they, and I'll give them the link also saying, scroll it.

And they say, oh God, I know 20, 30 percent of the people on here. And all I say is, interesting. All of these people know about us. I wonder why you don't. That's all I say. It's there's a lot of people out there, and it's, it's always difficult to, to, you know, competing with all all other projects there. So so definitely as more there's always always something to learn. And then our own memories are just not, you just read through this once and then you forget about this sometimes. Right?

Mhmm. This I do. And so our memory is leaky too. But yeah. No. I can I can I can certainly see that? That was basically that was all that I wanted to to say on the monopolist thing. It's really not worth that that much. Yeah. No. But it is. It was something that interesting. You take it this way, Hans. You got to write bullet points. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You get you only came with 5. People come with 7, they come with 9, they come with the most was, I think, it was 18 or 20.

That that was kind of interesting because they had whatever that number 18 or 20. By the time we got to number 10, they had already answered a lot of the others. And they'd said, no. No. We've already covered that one. No. No. No. We've already covered that one because it was actually embedded in their previous call. You only had 5, and you put this as a bullet point. So there's something inside of you that's even my take. I'm just making it up here.

I think there's something inside of you that is kind of disappointed with society or disappointed with maybe these things where people aren't willing to take risks or I I think there's something else. But, you know, if you wanna try and think about it, you you only you only gave 5. Well, I think I'm I'm I'm a little bit I do believe in brevity. So, I I do think that many things can be done shorter and and boil it down to the essence. And that, that that's true for books too. Right?

There's there's a lot of books you could probably boil down to, hey, if you wanna make it short, you can do this on 10 pages and not on not on 200. And I'm I'm more like the 10 page person, in in that in that sense. Okay. I don't think it depends on more. I just not I just looked at it. Okay. So the next one, SpaceX ecosystem, the space. Where are we going with this? So this is interesting. So as time went on, SpaceX has, I guess, has some turnover.

People leave, and, and, peep people go through this school of SpaceX, so so to speak, and and then they build companies. Right? And, there's plenty of examples out there whether it's, you know, the latest one comes to my mind might not be completely accurate there. It's Commonwealth. So there's lots of lots of SpaceX that are at Commonwealth. But there's also companies that are founded by by SpaceX as like, like Impulse from from Tom Mueller.

And, to some extent, there's lots of people with relativity. Lots ABL is also from the next SpaceX. So, and so there's plenty of companies that did this. Yeah? And and I didn't realize this in the beginning, but then outside of SpaceX, I realized, wow, there's a whole system here. No ecosystem. It's like like a 100 companies, and and they still if you if you're from SpaceX, basically, they always listen to you, and they're always, like, interested in, hey.

Do you know any people, that can work here or something like that? Yeah? And and that system is really, really interesting. SpaceX built something beyond space and beyond SpaceX, by doing that, by by sending people through this, you know, school to some extent and then turning them into entrepreneurs and, and and building other compact come come, other complicated, you know, high-tech companies that are successful. Right? In some cases, it's still outstanding whether they're successful or not.

But at least they they they know what to do and they have a plan and so and so. I find that really interesting and really, exciting too, actually. So I thought I thought it's worth mentioning. So it's, and it's also, like, in terms of, like, location, not that different because the the the companies also are founded around SpaceX. That's literally SpaceX founded companies around SpaceX.

And Yeah. And, and that's that's just an interesting development, that I I feel like it gives me hope too that, you know, even if people are, like, working at SpaceX, there's other jobs next by. It it creates an economy, basically, that is way way more than just space. What are the what are the few that you see hopeful promise for some of the things that you want to happen beyond Earth? Well, so the the ones the ones that are beyond space in that sense are energy. Right?

I mean, there's radiant and there's there's coming with fusion, fission and fusion, basically. And and if those companies are successful, they have a huge impact here on this planet, and and for, you know, to some extent also to space. And that's what I meant by that. It's like space SpaceX is somewhat narrowly, in in terms of, like, rockets and, and and human space flight, you know, capsules and so on and so forth.

But then beside that, the the spin offs basically or the the the companies that come from its, people leaving, also doing energy, also looking at, as one that that had a pizza automation, totally different topics. Right? I totally create I saw the pizza automation one. Yeah. I think I've seen that one. Right. And so and there's all kinds of things where people try to apply whatever they learn at SpaceX and say, oh, this is a better company because I I learned that at SpaceX at SpaceX. Right?

So I think that's great. I think that's that's not it's just more like a more like a a thing that goes beyond, beyond just the the the influence of of SpaceX that I anticipated. Do you still keep in touch with a lot of the individuals? Yeah. Definitely. I mean, my whole my whole, friend, you know, all the circles were somewhat connected to to SpaceX, One way or the other. And in many What's the most go ahead. Oh, go ahead.

As I say, out of the whole ecosystem, what do you see as the most promising for some of the things that you would like to see? I mean, you brought up, energy, fission, and fusion. Is there anything that you're seeing out there that you just say, you know, that's the type of thing that needs is gonna make it will be a game changer? Well, Fusion definitely would be. So That's the output of it. But is there a company out there that you feel is that far along that they can make that change?

The trajectory of a SpaceX, you feel that they're going to make it? I I don't think I'm smart enough to actually assess that. And that's okay. I was just asking a simple question. You you you listen. You listen to a company and then you go, oh, this sounds really good. Yeah. I mean, they they pick the points and, like, in in particular on on fusion and fission, I'm I'm I got my high school education, but that's pretty much it. Yeah. I can't tell if that's now is that a path that is successful?

Because I'm missing a little bit like the knowledge I had on Rockets where I knew, oh, this is not gonna work. This is gonna work and so on and so forth. Yeah. Like like that that technical background, they don't have that in other areas, obviously. When you were younger, just the way you said that phrase, when you were younger, did you have a rocketry propensity or space No. Desire? Was that no? No. So I'm actually I'm actually I'm I'm I'm a I'm a failed pilot. I I I wanted to be a pilot.

My eyesight wasn't good enough, before LASIK. And, and so I became an engineer. So I was more like, interested in in flying airplanes, satellites. Rockets came later. And if you think about this, I'm I'm I'm my my technical background is a little bit guidance and control. Right? And the guidance and control person is actually the pilot. That that kind of occurred to me very later that that maybe I I'm not the pilot of the rocket, but I'm kind of that.

So Yeah. It's it's, my good friend who I grew up with who actually was my best man in, at my wedding. He big guy. I mean, built like a tank. And he wanted to go into the military. And because he was color blind, he cannot go in the air force, the navy, or the army for what he wanted. So he went into the marines. And that was the choice he the only one he can make because you can't see wires. Right. You can't see coloring of wires. There's very specific needs you have.

He ended up becoming a presidential guard for the president of the United States. So he was he was that good at what he did, but he in that scope. But, yes, a simple thing like eyesight or, you know, flat footed or, you know, have a challenge with your back means you can't do certain things. But in some some sense, it might be for the better. You know, who knows? But I think I would have loved to fly on a daily basis too. You mean, like a as a commercial pilot as compared to Yeah.

Has your has your plane taken off? The one that you Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's definitely, I've I've I can't I can't fly daily if the weather's good enough. And I'm assuming there's a flashlight in there or will be by I do actually. No. I have, like, a I had, headlight. It's the like, you know, something we can attach to my head, so I don't have to need to hold it. And that's infrared. We yeah. Ours was ours was a rental, so we didn't have the the, components in there.

But, yeah, headlights are good one. I, this is when I did I started flying this 20 some odd years ago, and I don't even think never even thought of a head strap on light, but that's a a good idea. So the the last one that you had on the list was space commercialization and the drains that go along with that. What do you where'd you wanna go with this?

So, so the the interesting effect is actually, so when we built Falcon 9, I always thought, like, the launch the launch customer always quoted as, as the holding back the industry. Right? Because the launch cost are so expensive, blah blah blah. And so whiskey, insurance, and so on and so forth. That's where the cost are. And then we built Falcon 9, and and, obviously, we were we were cheaper than other guys, but it didn't trigger now a lot of, big satellites, being built.

But it did what triggered it was the, forgot the name. How they call it this program where they have a ride share. Maybe it's called ride share. That that triggered a lot of small companies and and small satellites at the end of the day because those people are agile. But I was disappointed with the fact that, you know, not not too many people said, oh, we can now launch a bigger satellite or take advantage of Falcon 9. My conclusion was the industry is really, really slow.

And and something like Falcon 9 even if Falcon 9 would be half the cost, it would not have changed the, the the, you know, what what the industry was basically trying to build and sending trying to send up there. In fact, I mean, like NASA took many, many years to just take advantage of Falcon 9 despite despite our experience and reliability at that time. Everything is very, very slow. So the dream is more like, like, I wish this would have been faster.

I wish the industry would have been, you know, more responsive. And, to some extent, basically, it forced also SpaceX to become their own customer. That's what what Starlink basically became. Right? Starlink became a a new satellite, like, adopted for Falcon 9, and nobody else would build it but SpaceX.

So if you if you think forward that one day, you know, this might be, the launches might be, whatever, 20, 30,000,000 and for a 100 tons and not for, like, 20 tons, metric tons in this case, then then what does that mean? What is the dream here? Right? The dream is obviously we build we build, satellites that are heavy and just quick and they are cheap.

And, and we build vehicles that can launch maybe maybe 50 people, right, and, and give them a ride for, like, like, a bay or something like that and microgravity and and stuff like that. So there's lots of stuff that can happen with that if the rest of the industries industry sees the opportunities and actually jumps on that, And, and it's not as slow as they used to be. That's that's my my main point on that. It's it's funny because and you just did it.

I don't, there's there's one side that's funny. The other one is just more pragmatic. You said they didn't build more satellites. They didn't I don't think the understanding of the benefits or the possibilities with satellites are as widely known as individuals might think. So to say, we're gonna build more satellites Yeah. There's still a cost. It's not cheap.

But even within the industry, I I felt like, maybe maybe that's that's an industry that's kind of like, not moving along or not not really being successful because of other effects. Because of, you know, people looking more at, less at broadcasting and and more and more at streaming, which is a little bit more difficult with satellites to do.

But, the the it just it just in contrast, if you look at the small satellites, on on really tiny satellites that take care of, that take advantage of SpaceX ride shares, that industry grew really quickly, and and that's, there's a lot happening there. But on the on the old players, on the on the big, communication companies, those were pretty much unimpressed by Falcon 9, it seems.

I mean, there's a couple that worked with us, but it took a long time to take advantage, and the satellites are still the same. They're getting bigger and bigger, maybe, but, there's not a lot of, like, technology upgrades that is related to Falcon 9 on that. So either way, I just I just think that, the the industry did not really take advantage of that. Maybe rightfully, because they wanted to see if this actually plays out okay.

But, like, going forward on on Starship, I'm curious what happens then. If Starship is just sitting there and then nobody really wants to wants to fly it because nobody has a 100 ton satellites or if people start thinking about this a little bit earlier and start, you know, preparing payloads for that. I know I know of of some efforts that basically are tailored towards Starship, and so I think that's a that's a great thing. I just wish it would be But it's it's like without the dream Right.

Using Elon's words of going to Mars and and having a 100 people per Starship, which those numbers are, you probably have heard of, questioned by a lot of individuals who don't know where it will be. Right. But that whole premise that without that, I mean, if you really look around, and I I don't study the space ecosystem, the dreams are not big enough Yes. That's true. To fulfill a and that's that's where I was going with this. You went immediately to space tourism.

And it's almost like the industry believes that's the holy grail. Well, it's gotta be space tourism that brings everything together. And it's almost as if you're a tool guy, I'm a tool guy. I got all Milwaukee tools. I've got s wing hammers. I've got all the some really crazy, you know, $300 hammers. I got all these tools because I wanna do something with them. There you can build something. I have roofing hammers, and I have drywall hammers.

But it's almost as if we're building hammers and saying we're hoping that people find Right. What to do with that. And the first thing they say is space tourism. Like, come on. Come on. We're we're building a potential. And I'm not just talking about SpaceX. I'm talking about people in general. We're trying to build these this new ecosystem of possibilities. And the dreams are the size of I can't even think of an analogy, of a car. They're they're not the dream. Right. So we need bigger dreams.

We need people that that dream bigger and and take advantage of that. And and some of them do. I mean, to be fair, there's people that are definitely looking at at Starship and it's, it's, their dreams are are based on that. And, we we just I don't I just don't don't see that very much. I I wish it would be more. Right? What if you if it was I mean, you've got to have thought about it. How would you build a different ecosystem?

Do you what would because you kept on bringing up satellites and Right. Satellites are satellites. It's it's not gonna be the the the breakfast of champions. You're not gonna submit your look. You know, in the morning, hey, did you know we put up that satellite? By the way, it was all top secret because it was a military satellite. What's the what's the next what's the It's gonna be more more, tailored towards Moon and Mars. Right? And it may not be a satellite.

Maybe just a container with, like, signs signs stuff, or maybe it's a it's a it's a place to actually stay stay overnight on the on the moon or it's a lander. There's lots of lots of, hardware that we can launch then cheaply. It also should make the, the hardware cheaper itself, because mass is not that that super relevant anymore. It's still relevant, but not that much.

And and so maybe maybe that lowers the cost and it goes it boils boils down to basically the the problem is cost and not and not physics. To some extent, can be can be can be whatever the whatever was started out on the launcher side to make the launcher cheaper, can we do this on other, components that you need for space exploration too? And, you know, starting with space tourism, I mean, at the end of the day, it's people going back and forth.

It's people going to Mars, people going to moon, and and the there's there's space tourism around the the planet might just be the the beginning part of, of, like, of of that. You you sound a little bit like a store have some historical side of you. If you look throughout history, it wasn't tourism that drove Right. Society to expand. It was expansionism. Correct. It was the desire to do something in a different place place Correct. In a different land to create an ecosystem.

We as you've heard, it's called Mearth, Moon and Earth. In our ecosystem, it's you have to bring something to the moon and something back to the from the moon to the Earth. Right. And you that's what happened throughout history. Someone went to go find something, did something, brought it back. And, again, this is immediately mining. Correct. In many cases, it's mining. Yeah. Bigger. Yeah. Yeah. Can you not think any bigger than that?

No. No. It's, Well, I mean, it's it is a little bit, like, whatever the 1600 or forgotten. They were basically just where where the sailboats became, I guess, more more reliable that you could actually book book a trip and actually, most likely, you get there at the end. Right? So so it's a little bit it's it's that time where you, where you have the means to actually do the trip. And then what you actually gonna do with that is not totally clear. It just gets you to moon, just gets you to Mars.

And then the the the opportunity is there. Yes. Mining is 1, but there might be so many others that, that that might happen. It's not it's not even clear right now what that might be. The challenge is if you're talking about building something that takes years to develop, and and you talked about it, cost, investment Right. Risk. If you don't have it in the in the sites, You cannot take on those risks. Right. Because you're basically building for a hope that an ecosystem will evolve behind you.

And that's a very difficult way to create, and you can have a dream of it. Oh, if we do this, then everybody will come. But that doesn't happen that way for most software applications, for most products that are built. They they build it and people don't buy it. They don't use it. They don't find application for it. And you're already saying that with potentially with the Starship, you're sharing that to some degree with the Falcon is you're saying we built it.

We thought an ecosystem would fill in the back. And if you you're you're on Starlink right now. By the way, it did cut out a few times, but we're good. Oh, good. That's okay. I just thought you'd like to know. We did have a, we've had a few of them in there, but we'll get over The you said that one reason that that was built or it it opened up the doors to this is you had excess capacity. Right. Alright. So it's not fulfilling that dream. Does that bother you at all?

And I'm not trying to put you down the road, Max. I don't think it's a serious question. I I I I yeah. I think it is a serious question. But I think, basically, I don't think it's the I don't think there's anything wrong with the approach. It's just the industry is slower than you think. And you are working with, like, conventional industry or or, you know, legacy industry, basically. It's not always start ups.

And so by definition, those they they wait wait and see if this actually does work out, and and that just takes longer than than than I would have expected, basically. That's that that is more my conclusion than, oh, this product is not the right product. I still think it's the right product, And I still think that Starship is definitely the the right the right, product for for space travel. But it just may take a little bit longer for industry to catch on and actually see the opportunities.

And then and then finally, you know, utilize it in ways that nobody ever imagined before. So that that is more my conclusion than than saying, oh, maybe it doesn't catch on like a like a software app that nobody wants. And again, I'm sorry if it's Yeah. That way. I was just thinking about ecosystems have to evolve fast enough to be able to maintain its existence. And there are mothballed rockets, not rockets, there's mothballed planes or mothballed boats. Right.

That they they don't get the full duration because they didn't find that expanse. And for me, not a space person, I look and I say, we're the International Space Station. We're still not as far as the dreams that everybody talks about. And we were supposed to have many of these dreams happen in the year 2000 or the year 1990 or in the eighties, and they didn't transpire. Do you when you think of the future and again, doesn't have to we're not talking paid right here in terms of your ideas.

I'm asking you, in your opinion, do you see this slow moving group pushing away the Russians because of everything? I'm not gonna get into political side. Soyuz was shipping to the International Space Station for a decade to fulfill to fill the gaps. So The story with Elon and not getting the rocket pricing that he was looking at, is is well known. Do you think that politics is more getting in the way? Do you think it's the technology getting in the way?

Do you think it's the human nature getting in the way? Where where are you seeing it? It's probably a combination of these. It's it's probably human nature in the way that people wanna look at, is this really working kind of thing? Yeah. But but actually, I do see I do see also, things changing overall. I mean, there's talk about, like, more space stations. Right? I I'm actually working on the on the private space station project, vast space, too.

I mean, so there there's definitely efforts, that that go in the direction of let's use that, commercialize it, and and make it better than the one that, you know, we had so so for so long. Yeah. And and, honestly, the ISS is pretty amazing. I mean, it did an amazing job over the last, 20 almost 30 years. Right? 25 years, I think. So, so, so, anyways, I mean, it it the the lessons out of that, to take those lessons and make it better, is basically what I what I do see.

But, like, is this really I I wish it would be fast enough. It would be faster. Right? I'm just impatient is I think the main thing, if I look at that. But that's not a bad thing. I I think that you and I are a similar age in that I think our generation does not we don't look to slow down. I I don't sit around and say, well, you know, good for retirement by the way. I don't think about it at all. I'm planning our plans, which you saw on the website is a 40 year plan. So that's 40 years from now.

It's a long time for many people. But to us, it's just, well, that's the plan that we're working. So, yeah, it's a combination of all of those that are challenging to make us move forward. So other you went through a journey with us to for this podcast. Is there anything you learned about yourself or anything you learned about that, you wanna know or anything that was interesting that Well, like I said I would highlight. I, you know, don't don't you use the word impossible very carefully.

Oh. Oh. Then what do we have? It's, infinite possibilities and infinite resources. So our we're bringing the age of infinite. Often people talk about the 4th industrial revolution. And what is that? Faster computers and more data? That's that's not a an era. That's not a development. Project Moon Hut is a string in the age of infinite infinite possibilities and infinite resources.

And we have that at our fingertips if we just, as human species, shifted a few of our constructs to be able to make that happen. So, yes, impossibility is impossible is not a good word. So great. Look, I appreciate you being on a call with us and taking the time. So I want to thank you. And I'd like to thank everybody out there who was listening in today. I hope that in some way, shape, or form, you learned something that will make a difference in your life and especially in the lives of others.

The Project Moon Hot Foundation is where we're looking to establish a box of the roof and a door on the moon. We were named by NASA Project Muna, but we're an Earth focused organization through the accelerated development of an Earth and space based ecosystem. Then we're going to turn those innovations and the paradigm shifting thinking from the endeavor back on Earth to improve how we live on Earth for all species. If you wanna go to the website, you scroll down about 2 thirds of the way down.

There's 2 videos on the left hand side. There's 3 across if you wanna hear where Project Moon had started. But the first two was what we have individuals watch to know more about us, and then we tend to have conversations with individuals. And we have people all over the world working with us. In so many different categories of development, it's actually incredible.

From intellectual property to, immersive technologies going all the way through to platforms as well as building the box of the roof and the door on the moon. So, Hans, the question for you is, what's the single best way to get a hold of you? Good question. I think I think I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on, LinkedIn for, like, somebody's on LinkedIn, and, I guess, Instagram a little bit too. But, yeah. That's those are the best ways, I think. Perfect.

For those of you who would like to connect with us, you can reach out to me at [email protected]. You can connect with us, on Twitter at at projectmoonhut or David Golds, at at Goldsmith. We've got LinkedIn. We've got, Instagram. You can reach and find us there in all these places. So for everybody out there, I'm David Goldsmith, and thank you for listening.