# Reentry  ## Metadata - Author: [[Eric Berger]] - Full Title: Reentry - Category: #books ## Highlights - Imagine, Musk would often say, the first flight of a $100 million passenger aircraft. Suppose that at its destination all of the people onboard had to parachute out of the plane, with the jet subsequently crashing into the ocean. In such a world, air travel would be rare, dangerous, and prohibitively expensive. But that’s largely how space travel worked. ([Location 155](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=155)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Musk was far from the first visionary to understand that humanity’s future among the stars could only be unlocked by launching rockets, landing them, and then rapidly reflying the same hardware for pennies on the dollar. Musk’s genius is that he not only saw this future but believed in it enough to keep pushing, to keep fighting, and to will it into existence. ([Location 157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=157)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Musk, the ringmaster, guided the company along this razor-thin line, and his methods were at times ruthless. Always, he urged his managers to spend less, and he pressured them to work harder and faster. But it was never fast enough. ([Location 199](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=199)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “We were out there beating history, but Elon was still pissed at us,” Mueller said. “Like everything else we’ve ever done, it was way slower than Elon wanted, and way faster than anyone had ever done it before. It was pretty much the story of our lives.” ([Location 204](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=204)) - Tags: [[blue]] - During his visit to Blue Origin in Washington, Miller faced eight hours of challenging technical questions in an academic-like setting. Although the engineering questions were difficult, the overall vibe was casual. SpaceX, then located in buildings scattered across El Segundo, California, proved far more chaotic. Tim Buzza, the company’s launch director, was too busy for a sitdown interview with Miller. So they walked and talked while Buzza oversaw work on a Falcon 1 stage being readied for shipment. Miller saw the rocket on the factory floor, with hardware scattered all about, as SpaceX worked toward the first Falcon 1 launch. Welders and machinists banged away in a machine shop. Seeing this beehive of activity drove home the difference between SpaceX and Blue Origin. ([Location 224](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=224)) - Tags: [[blue]] - As he usually does when faced with a difficult choice, Musk went for the bolder option: nine engines instead of five. ([Location 255](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=255)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “I think what set him apart from the others that we were speaking to at that time was the fact that he actually had an executable plan,” Helms said. “He didn’t have a marketing pitch. He had an executable plan of how he was going to build a rocket and get to operations.” ([Location 623](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=623)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The directors, seated around a speaker phone, listened as Mosdell discussed his master plan and explained how he planned to “lay out a budget.” After this, Mosdell paused, and there was silence. Then he heard laughter on the other end of the phone. He wondered if he had said something stupid. When the laughter subsided, he asked what he had said to provoke it. The other directors explained that at SpaceX, they did not create budgets. They just went and executed. That is not to say SpaceX was careless with costs. Quite the contrary, as Musk challenged his directors to be as cutthroat about expenses as possible. “Scrappy was a big word,” Mosdell said. “Back then you had to be scrappy. So when you laid out your plans they had to be scrappy. If everyone in the approval cycle felt they were scrappy enough, you could go for it. If not, they threw you out of the room.” ([Location 675](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=675)) - Tags: [[blue]] - The Eastern Processing Facility ended up costing an estimated $2 billion. As SpaceX set about to revamp its newly acquired launch site at Cape Canaveral, including the launch pad, ground systems, and a processing hangar, Mosdell was not given a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather, Musk told the launch site team to build everything for just $20 million. ([Location 690](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=690)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Unlike most of his interviews with applicants, Musk did not press Rose with technical questions or mathematical riddles to tease out how the programmer thought. Rather, he looked at Rose’s résumé, nodded, and asked if he had any questions. Rose did not ask about space elevators. But he had never spoken with someone as wealthy or accomplished as Musk before, so he didn’t want to throw away the opportunity. So Rose asked about electric cars. Why was Tesla making fully electric vehicles, when hybrids made more sense by allowing a gradual transition over time from gasoline? Musk did not answer right away. Instead, he slowly leaned back into his chair and put his hands on the desk. “I was thinking, My God, what have I done?” Rose said. “He then launched into this completely passionate speech about how hybridelectric is bullshit, and we need to skip it and go directly to fully electric cars. I don’t even remember most of what he said. But I do remember distinctly thinking, Holy crap, I want to work for this guy. I don’t understand all of the words coming out of his mouth, but he has charisma and an energy about him. If this were a war, and he said, ‘Private Rose, step on that landmine,’ I probably would.” ([Location 827](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=827)) - Tags: [[blue]] - It had been a long, exhausting journey from Texas, traveling glacially at an average speed of just 10 mph. But the trip taught SpaceX some hard-won lessons. The company’s engineers developed a customized transporter that placed the rocket much nearer to the road, in a special cradle with a narrower base. This allowed Falcon stages to be transported on freeways, at a steep discount to traditional rockets. ([Location 994](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=994)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Koenigsmann turned his full attention toward the Falcon 9 rocket’s flight termination system at the end of 2009. All of the hardware that would fly as part of this system had to be “qualified,” which meant undergoing an elaborate series of tests. The Air Force literally had a big book of requirements for such tests and defined the process line by line. “It was just really scripted, and very stiff, in how you qualify your hardware,” Koenigsmann said. Facing these strict requirements and concerned about the timeline for getting a flight termination system approved, Musk opened up SpaceX’s checkbook. Koenigsmann bought two space-certified receivers for $250,000 to receive the signal from the ground and transmit it to the ordnance onboard the rocket. ([Location 1013](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=1013)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “I tried to be as frank as I could with Elon,” Koenigsmann said. “But it could be painful. He does not speed things up by yelling at people, in my eyes. This creates anxiety and unnecessary stress. People were stressed out anyways. It would have helped them more if he just, you know, got them some ice cream or something that was nice, rather than being yelled at.” Then splitting his time at Tesla, Musk felt his work at the electric car company made him an expert on batteries, although the flight termination system battery chemistry was completely different than that used in automobiles. He was upset with Koenigsmann, with the Air Force range officials, and with the Federal Aviation Administration, which would be providing the launch license. ([Location 1030](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=1030)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Whereas the space shuttle had more than 10,000 requirements, Dragon ended up with about 400. ([Location 1617](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=1617)) - Tags: [[blue]] - He would go on to work for the other space billionaires, serving as head of launch for Richard Branson at Virgin Orbit and leading lunar programs for Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin. What most impressed Couluris about Musk was his willingness to take chances in order to make great leaps. ([Location 1879](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=1879)) - Tags: [[blue]] - These were pivotal months for the company as it moved pell-mell toward recovering the first stage of a rocket by landing it back on the planet under its own power. Nothing like that had ever been done before in the history of rocketry. Musk was convinced it could be done and wanted badly to find this rocket as proof. Some of his engineers were not as certain, but they went all in on recovery because of Musk’s ironclad commitment. ([Location 2268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=2268)) - Tags: [[blue]] - Musk attended weekly meetings of the reentry team in his executive conference room to receive updates on progress. At the end of one in 2013, Musk got up to leave. But as he walked toward the door he stopped, turned around, and looked intently back at his engineers. “It may seem like these are small steps,” he said. “But we are not going to Mars in my lifetime, or yours, if we don’t get our act together and take this first step.” “It was intense,” Richeson said. “It was the most sincere I had ever seen the man. That was the first time I understood this dude was not kidding around, that this was literally the entire mission for the company.” ([Location 2426](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=2426)) - Tags: [[blue]] - “We realized that this made a huge fucking material difference in the world,” Kellie said. “We’re not just chucking shit into the ocean and waving goodbye anymore. We’re reusing hardware. We’re dropping the cost of access to space. This was important for humanity. So we all put a shitload of effort into it because we believed what we were doing.” ([Location 2562](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0CS8WZRNJ&location=2562)) - Tags: [[blue]]