# Liftoff  ## Metadata - Author: [[Eric Berger]] - Full Title: Liftoff - Category: #books ## Highlights - With the Starship project, SpaceX has returned to its earliest, scrappy days when it strove to build the Falcon 1 rocket against all odds. Then, as now, Musk pushed his employees relentlessly to move fast, to innovate, to test, and to fly. The DNA of the earliest days, of the Falcon 1 rocket, lives on in South Texas today at the Starship factory. ([Location 55](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=55)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The first step toward solving the multiplanetary problem, then, was bringing down the cost of the launch. If NASA and private companies spent less money getting satellites and people into space, they could do more things in space. And more commerce would open still more opportunities. This awakening galvanized Musk into action. ([Location 178](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=178)) - Tags: [[blue]] - As he looked around the table during the meeting at the Renaissance Hotel, therefore, Musk searched among the doubters to find the few believers. Musk wanted people who embraced a challenge rather than shrank from it, optimists rather than pessimists. ([Location 190](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=190)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Because they were spending his money, Musk gave employees an incentive to be frugal with it. Although Musk retained a majority of shares, early hires received large chunks of stock. When an employee saved the company $100,000 by building a part in-house instead of ordering one from a traditional supplier, everyone benefited. ([Location 228](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=228)) - Tags: [[blue]] - They spent their long and often intense days together in close confines. Musk kept a mostly laissez faire attitude toward his workplace. He offered just a few hard and fast rules: no strong smells, no flickering lights, and no loud noises in the cubicle farm they all shared. Often, they worked until well after midnight. Bjelde, slumped under his desk, recalls being kicked awake on more than one occasion to help finish writing a proposal. ([Location 245](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=245)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Their close and nearly continual proximity led to easy collaboration. The team was so small that everybody knew everybody, and each employee pitched in as needed with other departments. ([Location 248](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=248)) - Tags: [[blue]] - These kinds of trips, of which there were many, helped Musk bond with his senior leaders. He could be difficult to work for, certainly. But his early hires could immediately see the benefits of working for someone who wanted to get things done and often made decisions on the spot. When Musk decided that Spincraft could make good tanks for a fair price, that was it. No committees. No reports. Just, done. ([Location 288](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=288)) - Tags: [[blue]] - But most of all, he channeled a preternatural force to move things forward. Elon Musk just wants to get shit done. ([Location 296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=296)) - Tags: [[blue]] - One of Musk’s most valuable skills was his ability to determine whether someone would fit this mold. His people had to be brilliant. They had to be hardworking. And there could be no nonsense. ([Location 299](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=299)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “There are a ton of phonies out there, and not many who are the real deal,” Musk said of his approach to interviewing engineers. “I can usually tell within fifteen minutes, and I can for sure tell within a few days of working with them.” Musk made hiring a priority. He personally met with every single person the company hired through the first three thousand employees. It required late nights and weekends, but he felt it important to get the right people for his company. ([Location 301](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=301)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Musk differed from his competitors in another, important way—failure was an option. At most other aerospace companies, no employee wanted to make a mistake, lest it reflect badly on an annual performance review. Musk, by contrast, urged his team to move fast, build things, and break things. At some government labs and large aerospace firms, an engineer may devote a career to creating stacks of paperwork without ever touching hardware. The engineers designing the Falcon 1 rocket spent much of their time on the factory floor, testing ideas, rather than debating them. Talk less, do more. ([Location 360](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=360)) - Tags: [[blue]] - There are basically two approaches to building complex systems like rockets: linear and iterative design. The linear method begins with an initial goal, and moves through developing requirements to meet that goal, followed by numerous qualification tests of subsystems before assembling them into the major pieces of the rocket, such as its structures, propulsion, and avionics. With linear design, years are spent engineering a project before development begins. This is because it is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to modify a design and requirements after beginning to build hardware. The iterative approach begins with a goal and almost immediately leaps into concept designs, bench tests, and prototypes. The mantra with this approach is build and test early, find failures, and adapt. This is what SpaceX engineers and technicians did on the factory floor in El Segundo, and it allowed them to capture basic flaws with early prototypes, fix their designs, and build successively more “finished” iterations. ([Location 364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=364)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Failure was an option at SpaceX, partly because the boss often asked the impossible of his team. In meetings, Musk might ask his engineers to do something that, on the face of it, seemed absurd. When they protested that it was impossible, Musk would respond with a question designed to open their minds to the problem, and potential solutions. He would ask, “What would it take?” ([Location 377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=377)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The last thing Musk ever wanted to hear from an employee was “But that’s how it’s always been done.” ([Location 395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=395)) - Tags: [[blue]] - During one early meeting at El Segundo, some former Boeing and Lockheed workers began bantering back and forth about their old companies, and the merits of how things had been done. Musk raised his voice to end the discussion. “You work at SpaceX now,” he sternly reminded them. “You bring that up one more time, and we’re going to have serious problems.” The message was clear. Wherever they had come from, whatever they had learned at those places, they were now part of the SpaceX team. Musk had hired them all, personally, to change the world. They had a job to do. A very hard one. ([Location 399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=399)) - Tags: [[blue]] ## New highlights added January 17, 2026 at 7:12 PM - Elon Musk, had already taken the first step toward Mars. He understood he would go nowhere without the right people. So interview by interview, Musk sought out the brilliant and creative engineers who would commit themselves wholly to his goal—and make the impossible possible. ([Location 82](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=82)) - Tags: [[blue]] - One of Musk’s common tactics during an interview involves throwing a person off-kilter, to see how a potential employee reacts. ([Location 108](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=108)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Musk asked good questions and listened intently. He had been reading everything he could get his hands on about rockets, from old Soviet technical manuals to John Drury Clark’s iconic book on propellants, Ignition! ([Location 170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=170)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “He walks in and basically announces that he wants to start his own rocket company. And I do remember a lot of chuckling, some laughter, people saying things like, ‘Save your money kid, and go sit on the beach.’” The kid was not amused. If anything, the doubts expressed at this meeting, and by some of his confidants, energized him more. ([Location 185](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=185)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Musk continued hunting for the right person, but, he said, “Nobody who seemed to be good would join, and there was no point in hiring somebody who wasn’t good.” Elon Musk assumed the role of chief engineer himself. ([Location 197](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=197)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “No job was beneath us,” Bjelde said. ([Location 261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=261)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Musk would convene his different teams in a small conference room, be it his engineers working on propulsion, or structures, or avionics, and run down the major issues. If an engineer faced an intractable problem, Musk wanted a chance to solve it. He would suggest ideas and give his teams a day or two to troubleshoot, then report back to him. In the interim, if they needed guidance, they were told to email Musk directly, day or night. He typically responded within minutes. ([Location 291](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=291)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: As a leader, important to dive deep into the core of the issue directly. Don’t rely on layers of management to relay things to you - As part of his interview process, Musk wanted not to test a person’s knowledge but rather his or her ability to think. Musk’s first question to Kassouf was therefore an engineering riddle. ([Location 310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=310)) - Tags: [[blue]] - When Musk identified someone he wanted to hire, he could be relentless. ([Location 323](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=323)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Davis had anticipated his friend’s issue. Having convinced Musk they needed to bring the brilliant young engineer from Turkey on board, it became a matter of solving the problem. His wife had a job in San Francisco? She would need one in Los Angeles? “These were solvable problems, and Elon’s better at solving problems than almost anyone else,” Davis said. Musk therefore came into his job interview with Altan prepared. About halfway through, Musk told Altan, “So I heard you don’t want to move to L.A., and one of the reasons is that your wife works for Google. Well, I just talked to Larry, and they’re going to transfer your wife down to L.A. So what are you going to do now?” To solve this problem, Musk had called his friend Larry Page, the cofounder of Google. Altan sat in stunned silence for a moment. But then he replied, given all of that, he supposed he would come work for SpaceX. ([Location 331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=331)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Musk made a compelling pitch for his vision of spaceflight. But more than that, he empowered his engineers. At SpaceX, new hires could rapidly grow their skills and take on new responsibilities. There was almost no management then, and everyone worked on the rocket. ([Location 341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=341)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “We were always fighting for the recursive, nonlinear approach, which is best early in a program,” Metzger said of his NASA experience. “To adopt this method, you have to let people see you fail, and you have to push back when the critics use your early failures as an excuse to shut you down. This is why it is hard for… ([Location 374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=374)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Failure was an option at SpaceX, partly because the boss often asked the impossible of his team. In meetings, Musk might ask his engineers to do something that, on the face of it, seemed absurd. When they protested that it was impossible, Musk would respond with a question designed to open their minds… ([Location 377](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=377)) - Tags: [[blue]] - After Musk hired a few experienced hands to lead his propulsion, structures, and avionics departments—Thompson, Mueller, and Koenigsmann—he mostly brought on recent college graduates. Most had no significant others pulling on their time, asking when they’d be home for dinner. They lived in apartments, not houses with lawns to mow. They had no children to look after. So they worked long, hard hours as Musk squeezed everything out of them that they had to give. And most were more than willing to give SpaceX the best years of their lives. Musk was a siren, calling brilliant young minds to SpaceX with an irresistible song. He offered an intoxicating brew of vision, charisma, audacious goals, resources, and free lattes and Cokes. When they needed something, he wrote the check. In meetings, he helped solve their… ([Location 382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=382)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: The koryos - ‘ancient, mythological Bronze Age warrior bands of young, unmarried males in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) cultures, meaning "people under arms," who lived like wolves or bears in the wilds for years, raiding and hunting as a rite of passage to manhood before returning to their tribes as warriors, a tradition leaving echoes in various Indo-European myths and practices like Germanic berserkers and Celtic warbands’ Elon targeted young, hungry, talented engineers who had no ties to society. They were willing to live on the outskirts and learn the tools of “war” before returning to society as warriors. Inspired by “Mr. And Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf” Substack, which made this comparison in a review of this book. - This mad, frantic rush toward orbit began with Musk instilling his workplace culture at the building in El Segundo. He did so by getting his own hands dirty, holding long, technical meetings where ideas flowed freely, and in late-night gaming sessions. Some did not make… ([Location 393](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=393)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Need to lead from the front for people to respect you. Eg, Napoleon - The last thing Musk ever wanted to hear from an employee was “But that’s how it… ([Location 395](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=395)) - Tags: [[blue]] - During one early meeting at El Segundo, some former Boeing and Lockheed workers began bantering back and forth about their old companies, and the merits of how things had been done. Musk raised his voice to end the discussion. “You work at SpaceX now,” he sternly reminded them. “You bring that up one more time, and we’re going to have serious problems.” The message was clear. Wherever they had come from, whatever they had learned at those places, they were now… ([Location 399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=399)) - Tags: [[blue]] - A few weeks earlier, he’d spied a distinctive glass bottle of Rémy Martin cognac on the desk of Mary Beth Brown. It was left over, she said, from a recent space conference. The bottle retailed for $1,200. Impressed, Mueller asked if he could bring the bottle to Texas for the propulsion team to celebrate the first time they ran the engine. He could. “So I grab this bottle and take it,” Mueller said. “This was like a month before the testing, so I put it in the cabinet at McGregor and told the crew, ‘Nobody touch this until we run the engine.’ So I had it sitting in the cabinet, and we left it alone.” ([Location 412](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=412)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The teacher said he thought Mueller could do more: “Do you want to be the guy that fixes the plane, or the guy that designs the plane?” Mueller liked the sound of this. Hines helped ensure that the rest of Mueller’s high school class load prepared him for college. So while his friends had work study or easy classes during their senior years, Mueller took calculus and advanced biology. ([Location 447](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=447)) - Tags: [[blue]] - It took five years for Mueller to get through college, in part because one summer they weren’t hiring loggers back home, so he had to take a semester off to raise enough money to finish school. ([Location 466](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=466)) - Tags: [[blue]] - After graduation, a local forklift company extended a job offer, as did Hewlett Packard in Boise. But Mueller did not really want to work for either of those companies. He had launched model rockets since the third or fourth grade. He’d built crude rocket engines. And what Tom Mueller wanted to do more than anything was get out of Idaho and work on real rockets. So he informed his parents that he intended to move to California. ([Location 471](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=471)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “I think that’s why Elon liked me, because I was very optimistic,” Mueller said. “And my dad was really a pessimist, so I don’t know where I got the optimism, but I’m just like, ‘No, I’m going to go get a job and build rockets. I’m going, I’m doing it. Nothing’s stopping me.’” ([Location 477](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=477)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Around the time he started working on the TR-106 engine, Mueller also began attending meetings of the Reaction Research Society. Founded in 1943, the society had its own test site north of Los Angeles, near Mojave, California. On weekends, club members would drive a couple of hours north of the metro area and fire off their creations. At these meetings Mueller made friends with like-minded enthusiasts, including John Garvey. ([Location 503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=503)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Important to attend clubs like these to make valuable connections in the industry with unbounded upside - Musk laughed when told about Jeff Bezos’s timeline for engine development. “Bezos is not great at engineering, to be frank,” he said. “So the thing is, my ability to tell if someone is a good engineer or not is very good. And then I am very good at optimizing the engineering efficiency of a team. I’m generally supergood at engineering, personally. Most of the design decisions are mine, good or bad.” Boastful? Maybe. But SpaceX built and tested its first rocket engine in less than three years with Musk leading the way. ([Location 540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=540)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: Being deep in the technical details as a leader is not optional. It accelerates everything - Given these commonalities, Mueller thought SpaceX might be able to use the turbopumps NASA built for the Fastrac engine. He and Musk visited NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama shortly after Fastrac’s demise in 2002, and asked if they could have them. Yes, they were told, but SpaceX would have to go through NASA’s procurement program, which could take a year or two. This was too slow for SpaceX, so Musk and Mueller moved on to Barber-Nichols, the contractor that had built the turbopumps. ([Location 566](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=566)) - Tags: [[blue]] - SpaceX also paid quickly. Within a day of receiving a purchase order from SpaceX, Reagan would have a check. Initially, Reagan tried to explain to Mary Beth Brown how things typically worked. With other companies, Reagan told Musk’s assistant, he would finish a part, submit an invoice, and receive a check thirty days later. She was unfazed. SpaceX wanted its parts fast. Reagan got the message and began to prioritize Mueller’s orders. ([Location 615](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=615)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Note: It’s worth paying more if it gets a mission-critical item done more quickly - By bringing Reagan in house, Musk essentially cut much of his manufacturing costs in half. Now he could buy a chunk of aluminum and have people in his building work it as if it were clay, producing a part on demand without the markup and delay of sending it to an outside machining shop. And the lines of communication between SpaceX’s engineers and the manufacturing crew were wide open. “Before, if I had a problem with one of my customers, I’d have to call the buyer,” Reagan said. “Then the buyer would call the engineer, and a week later I might get a call back with an answer.” At SpaceX Reagan sat in the cube farm. If the engineers did something he thought was dumb, or would not work, he would tell them. There was mutual respect. ([Location 635](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=635)) - Tags: [[blue]] - His relationship with Musk was simple. “He can’t stand a liar, and he hates a thief,” Reagan said. “And if you say you can do something, you’d better fucking do it.” ([Location 640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=640)) - Tags: [[blue]] - SpaceX likes to operate on its own terms and its own timeline. It wants to experiment, iterate, and, on occasion, make huge clouds of black smoke that may errantly stray over flight control towers. Anything that slowed down these explosive efforts represented a hindrance to plow through. ([Location 661](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=661)) - Tags: [[blue]] ## New highlights added January 21, 2026 at 9:44 PM - The Air Force and SpaceX had an uneasy relationship from the beginning. The military service has a rigid culture, strict hierarchy, and lots of requirements. SpaceX had a loose culture, almost no hierarchy, and viewed requirements mostly as a waste of time. ([Location 918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=918)) - During the flight, Lawrence talked mostly to the pilots on board the aircraft, but he also watched the Musks carefully. While Kimbal played video games, his older brother spent much of the flight poring over books written about early rocket scientists and their efforts, such as the U.S. program under Wernher von Braun and the Soviet program under Sergei Korolev. Musk seemed intent to understand the mistakes they had made and learn from them. ([Location 1345](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=1345)) - Seated in the cubicle farm at 1310 East Grand, Shotwell wrote a plan of action for sales. Musk took one look at it and told her that he did not care about plans. Just get on with the job. “I was like, oh, OK, this is refreshing. I don’t have to write up a damn plan,” Shotwell recalled. Here was her first real taste of Musk’s management style. Don’t talk about doing things, just do things. ([Location 1422](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=1422)) - “I make the spending decisions and the engineering decisions in one head,” he said. “Normally those are at least two people. There’s some engineering guy who’s trying to convince a finance guy that this money should be spent. But the finance guy doesn’t understand engineering, so he can’t tell if this is a good way to spend money or not. Whereas I’m making the engineering decisions and spending decisions. So I know, already, that my brain trusts itself.” ([Location 1524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=1524)) - “I was told by many people that we should not protest,” Musk said. “You’ve got a 90 percent chance that you’re going to lose. You’re going to make a potential customer angry. I’m like, it seems like ‘right’ is on our side here. It seems like this should go out for competition. And if we don’t fight this then I think we’re doomed, or our chances of success are dramatically lowered. NASA being one of the biggest customers of space launch would be cut off from us. I had to protest.” ([Location 1602](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=1602)) - Lockheed and other big launch companies had been reared on fat government contracts. For a given mission, they would receive its actual cost, plus a fee. The more something cost, generally, the larger fee the company received. The longer it took, the bigger the fee. One way SpaceX differentiated itself, Shotwell said, is by pushing for fixed-price contracts, which incentivize a firm to get its work done. It also encourages the customer to keep the baseline request the same, and not make costly change orders to the design of a rocket or spacecraft. ([Location 1650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=1650)) - And at SpaceX, the more direct solution was to simply fly the rocket, an acid test with more conclusive results than months of analysis, assumptions, and simulations. ([Location 1865](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=1865)) ## New highlights added January 22, 2026 at 9:44 PM - “That’s the thing about Elon, he was willing to spend money to try things,” Kassouf said. “And that’s so different. Go to Boeing, and you spend money to try and figure out what your liabilities are going to be before you try anything. But Elon is like, sure, try it. If it doesn’t work we can either sell it back, or it goes into our lessons-learned pile.” ([Location 1940](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=1940)) - Musk had been wrong. But the filthy and exhausted engineers and technicians working with him all night did not begrudge Musk for keeping them at a task that proved fruitless. Rather, his willingness to jump into the fray, and get his hands dirty by their sides, won him admiration as a leader. ([Location 2160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=2160)) - Among Musk’s talents as the leader of SpaceX was finding different ways to motivate his employees. Steve Davis said Musk would often visit his desk to ask detailed questions about his computer simulations for controlling the rocket in flight. And then they would make bets on some aspect of the rocket and its avionics system. Almost invariably, Musk would win. But ahead of one systems test in 2007, Davis said Musk raised the stakes. Davis bet twenty dollars he could complete some aspect of the test by a certain date. In return, Musk bet a frozen yogurt machine that Davis could not make the deadline. “The second we had a bet like that, where there was a chance of getting a yogurt machine, there was a zero percent chance I was not getting that done,” Davis said. “And if you go to SpaceX today in Hawthorne, you will see that he honored the bet, and we have a frozen yogurt machine sitting in the middle of the cafeteria, which still gives away free yogurt. So yeah, he’s very good at motivating his people.” ([Location 2527](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=2527)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Not wanting to let Mueller and the team down, Hollman sought out people at SpaceX he felt could carry on his work. One of his picks was Dunn. Hollman had worked with the eager graduate student during his Texas internship in the summer of 2006 and been impressed. When Dunn hired on at SpaceX a year later, Hollman tutored him in the finer points of rocket testing and assembly. He also groomed Dunn to take his place in the launch control room, to monitor the first stage’s propulsion system both before and during the flight as data streamed back from the rocket. When Hollman left, Dunn had been an employee for all of four months. All the same, Tom Mueller gave the kid in his midtwenties responsibility for the rocket’s entire first-stage propulsion system. ([Location 2540](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=2540)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “There was a certain amount of competitive, macho culture that was part of it, too,” Dunn said. “Like I can fucking work as hard as anybody else. And I’m not going to be the one that has to go home first.” ([Location 2557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=2557)) - Tags: [[blue]] ## New highlights added January 23, 2026 at 9:44 PM - They had made mistakes. But they were dedicated, and had put their souls into SpaceX. So in this dark hour, Musk chose not to play the blame game. Certainly, he could dish out brutally honest feedback, crushing feelings without regard. Instead he rallied the team with an inspiring speech. As bad as Flight Three had gone, he wanted to give his people one final swing. Outside that room, in the factory, they had the parts for a final Falcon 1 rocket. Build it, he said. And then fly it. ([Location 2674](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=2674)) - In his article for the aerospace publication, Zurbuchen wrote about how SpaceX had succeeded in the battle for talent with an inspiring goal. “I was a little bit nervous about betting on the immediate success of Falcon 9,” he wrote. “But in the long run, talent wins over experience and an entrepreneurial culture over heritage.” Too often in the modern aerospace world, he added, bureaucracy, rules, and a morbid fear of failure “poisoned” the workplace. ([Location 3296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=3296)) - It says something about Musk’s commitment to reuse that he traded invaluable mass on the Falcon 1 by installing a parachute in the forlorn hope of recovering a first stage. His argument for reuse is simple: If an airline discarded a 747 jet after every transcontinental flight, passengers would have to pay $1 million for a ticket. Similarly, if every rocket flown into space drops into the ocean, space will remain cost prohibitive for all but a few wealthy nations and a few exclusive astronauts. To make humanity a multiplanetary species, Musk sought to lower the cost of getting into space and flying onward to other worlds. ([Location 3361](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B088FQK2K2&location=3361))