Trip Harriss - It's Full of Wigs

Show Notes

An interview with SpaceX director of spaceport integration Trip Harriss about quitting trumpet for Star Trek, the internship SpaceX forgot to post, aiming a rocket at a military base, making Elon laugh, and wedding rings forged from a landed Falcon 9. Time is the most valuable resource — it is not renewable.

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A podcast exploring the life arcs of smart, creative, driven people who helped Elon Musk and SpaceX revolutionize the space industry. How did they get there? What was it like? What world are they creating now?

Jeff: 00:07

In the recent episodes of It's Not Rocket Science, I've had the opportunity to sit down with people that I didn't really know and learn about their lives and the lessons that they've learned throughout their careers. This episode is a perfect example of that.

Jeff: 00:26

So just give your name and your and your title, and we'll move out from there.

Trip: 00:30

Yeah. My name is Trip Harriss, and my title when I retired from SpaceX was director of spaceport integration. Very government focused, working with primarily Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, sort of all the way up and down the the chain of command there on both sides of what I call the Eastern Range Spaceport. Right. And as well, for a time working Vandenberg too.

Jeff: 00:55

What was your, like, on ramp to this career? I saw that you got an outstanding aerospace engineer award this year from Purdue. And in that, you said that you had a difficult path to becoming an engineer. What did that what's hidden underneath those words?

Trip: 01:09

Yeah. That is that is very true. So my parents raised me as a musician growing up, and, you know, they they themselves were were musicians. So it was it was natural. Was in the bloodline.

Trip: 01:22

Right? And they pushed me really hard to become a professional musician. And for a time, I was on that path. When I started, college, I was a music major. Trumper performance was my focus, and, I didn't suck.

Trip: 01:38

And, I I, was in my second year as a trumpet performance major, and my instructor, was sitting with me in our weekly, you know, tag up, where we were practicing, and he's giving me guidance. And and he kinda stops and says, look, man. You have a lot of talent, but I can tell your heart is not in this. And you need to go figure out what it is you want to do, because it's not this. And the amount of work that you're gonna have to do, no matter how much talent you have, is is not gonna you're not gonna be happy doing this.

Trip: 02:14

And he was absolutely right. I enjoyed playing music. I did not enjoy the work and discipline that came with, what was needed to make one a professional musician and to be successful, and that level of work was going to make me miserable. And so that that Christmas vacation, I went home, and I was watching Star Trek of all things. And I was watching I went I went and watched through the original movies.

Trip: 02:42

Right? I'd always loved the next generation, but I was watching the original movies, and I saw Scottie, and I'm like, man, that would be fun to be an engineer on a spaceship. How cool is that? Right? And and I went, that's it.

Trip: 02:55

I wanna work on spaceflight, and I would love to help make humanity like it is in the movie, right, where everybody's gets gets along and we're all happy and, like, space is the way to get there. Right? That's such a such an inspirational message. And so I called up the university and I said, hey. I'm gonna switch to engineering.

Trip: 03:15

And, they said

Jeff: 03:16

Was that was that Purdue at that time?

Trip: 03:18

No. No. So it's I was in I grew up in Tennessee. Right? So behind me, you can see there's my diploma from the University of Tennessee.

Trip: 03:24

Okay. And so that's where I'm born and raised. And so I called up, I guess, admissions or whoever, and I said, hey. I wanna switch to engineering. And they said, cool.

Trip: 03:34

What discipline? And I was like, what do you mean what discipline? I don't what are the options? Can you list them for me? And they went down the line.

Trip: 03:41

Aerospace, biomedical, mechanical, nuclear, blah blah blah. And I said, aerospace sounds good. That sounds like what I wanna do. So let's do that. Right?

Trip: 03:49

So it was it was that was literally the phone call that I had with the admissions office at University of Tennessee as I I went to go make that change. And let me tell you, I was a horrible engineering student when I started because I had no sense of what it took to be I I wasn't gonna do the work in music so I certainly had no idea how to do it in engineering.

Jeff: 04:11

That's what I was gonna ask you is like, did you have any predisposition to engineering prior to that? Like building your own car or anything like that?

Trip: 04:21

Maybe a a smidgen. Okay? So the the one thing that that helped me so there's there's two things. Mean, one, as a musician, you understand, you know, waves and frequencies and dynamics and how, you know, heart heart natural harmonics and all that stuff. Right?

Trip: 04:36

That's part of music theory. So you get you get a unique perspective there with rhythm and all that stuff. Right? So there's there's that part that you get. The other thing that I I I got into growing up was working on computers.

Trip: 04:47

I love taking them apart. I actually broke my dad's computer a number of times as a kid, and I would have to put it back together. He had a old 46, and I would have to fix it before he came home because it's what he did his work on. And so, I learned how to to to monkey with those, and actually, a friend of mine I actually worked in a computer store as a kid, and so I was building PCs. And, a friend of mine, during college, we actually, for a time, had our own little shop, which was a lot of fun.

Trip: 05:13

But that but so there was some hands on stuff that I got working on on PCs, really.

Jeff: 05:19

So it was more than it was more than zero. Yeah. It was more than you step into an engineering program.

Trip: 05:26

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff: 05:27

And how did that then morph from from that kind of decision to switch from arts to engineering into, you know, end ending up at SpaceX? Seems like a long road.

Trip: 05:39

Yeah. So I went from being a lousy engineering student to so here's the thing. Right? Like, I was very passionate about the work. And so because I was passionate about that work and not music, right, I I loved music playing it for fun, but I wasn't passionate about the work.

Trip: 05:56

I was passionate about the work for aerospace engineering. And so that motivated me to put in the work to learn how to be a good engineering student, to learn the principles, and to go finish the assignments, and all of those things. Right? And so I went from within two semesters from being a lousy student to being an incredible student by by my own metric. Right?

Trip: 06:22

I went from bad to good. Right? Right. Everyone has their own opinion, but but I felt like I've figured out how to be a successful student. And from there, some of my professors started to take note.

Trip: 06:34

They said, alright. This guy has figured it out. And as you said, well, okay. I finished at Purdue. Right?

Trip: 06:41

So I didn't I didn't just finish with my bachelor's at Tennessee. If you look above, there's my diploma from my master's degree at Purdue University for engineering. And because I turned into a successful engineering student, a lot of hard work and starting from a bad place, professors took note. They wrote some really good letters of recommendation. And lo and behold, to my surprise, I got accepted and admitted to Purdue University to work my master's.

Trip: 07:06

And I carried that discipline with me there. And so that's how we so so I'll I'll lead you to SpaceX now. So my first at the end of my first two semesters at Purdue, I had been interviewing for internships Mhmm. And just bombing the interviews. So I applied to all the big aerospace companies, and at the time, no one no one knew what SpaceX was.

Trip: 07:28

Very few people did.

Jeff: 07:29

Yep.

Trip: 07:29

We hadn't been successful yet. And I got to end the semester, I had no no internship lined up. So I started to apply to work at the the student gym. I was gonna sweep the floors. I applied to Ace Hardware.

Trip: 07:42

I was like just looking for something to do. And I went to Professor Hester and I said, Doctor. Hester, hey, I'm falling flat. I just I just didn't know how to interview. I did I did bad job interviewing.

Trip: 07:52

I was like, I'm not getting any luck with internships. If someone reaches out, let me know. Well, SpaceX had just launched the second Falcon one. Right. And when everybody came back from Kwajalein, they realized we forgot to hire interns for the summer.

Trip: 08:07

So a former Purdue student reached out to doctor Hester at at SpaceX. Kenton Lucas reached out to doctor Hester and said, hey. If you have anybody that's interested in an internship, let me know. And he linked us up. The rest is history, right, as they say.

Trip: 08:23

So I I got lucky that I was a bad interviewer, that I didn't get a job somewhere else Yeah. And that SpaceX had been so busy with Falcon one that they forgot to go get interns. And Tim Buzzer calls me, and he says, hey. Hey, Trip. Nice to meet you.

Trip: 08:39

When can you be here? And I'm like, well, I'm in Indiana. So if I get in the car now, I can be there by, you know, Monday at this time. And he's like, great. You got the job.

Trip: 08:48

Cool. And Monday morning, I rolled up and walked in the office and Jerry Fielder says, I just mailed your application forms to you. I'm like, no. No. I'm here now.

Trip: 08:56

Let's let's go. So and I didn't I didn't look that.

Jeff: 08:59

That's awesome trajectory because it like you had the passion that you picked up and you drove that passion through the discipline and then the chance, you know, the chance luck kicked in and you got the opportunity.

Trip: 09:16

Yeah. I'm very lucky. I recognize that.

Jeff: 09:18

That was roughly the time that I showed up that that it looked like you started in 2008, I had started in 2007 and it was a great time to so you started the same year that I started. Yeah.

Trip: 09:28

Yeah. I think like within months we

Jeff: 09:30

were we were,

Trip: 09:32

you know, I I wrote because I remember you.

Jeff: 09:35

What did they have you doing? What I remember is you were like ground side software at that point so our teams interacted a lot.

Trip: 09:41

A lot. Yes. Yes. A lot. So ground ground software, ground control software, launch software, whatever you wanna call it.

Trip: 09:48

So all the command and control on the LaunchPad, all the telemetry on the ground side, automation of loading a propellant, things things of that sort. Data at the time, it was also data logging, which a numb a number of these things since have kinda spread out throughout the company. Mhmm. You know, it was really a lot on one or two people at the time, as you know. Yep.

Trip: 10:12

Between myself and Chris Sloan and Paul McInerney. And as it grew, you know, there were other a lot more people, a lot more capable people who came in and were able to take parts of it and then go make those specific parts awesome. Right? Versus, well, I got ten minutes so I can go make a data logger and you get the ten minute data logger versus someone who's like, well, I I got six months to go focus on making a a data logger that works for the long term of the company and they come in and they make it amazing.

Jeff: 10:42

Yeah. And the imperative at that time when you started was like, we need things that are gonna work now so that we can progress now.

Trip: 10:50

Yeah. Now might not be pretty, but it's it's now or never. Right? So you gotta Yeah. You gotta make the the best decision you can with the time you have.

Jeff: 11:00

And that somehow morphed into being responsible for a lot of the ground side infrastructure as well? It looks to me like, you're one of the people that I've talked to who who stayed at SpaceX the longest actually now that I think about it because you didn't leave until just a couple years ago. Right?

Trip: 11:16

A couple six months ago.

Jeff: 11:18

So in that sense, you know, your your career there really got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Trip: 11:24

Yeah. So I I did software for a a good portion of the early years, and I saw all these other areas of the company that were fascinating to me. When when I when I went to go study engineering, what I wanted to do was work on as I started to learn more about what is aerospace aerospace engineering because I had no idea at the beginning. When I learned what aerospace engineering was, what I wanted to do was work on rocket engines. Right.

Trip: 11:46

And so I focused on propulsion. So part of my master's degree from Purdue is is is actually very propulsion focused. Right? Fluids and, aerodynamics and all all that stuff. That was what fascinated me as I got into it.

Trip: 11:59

Then I went to SpaceX and said, hey. We want you to do software. I said, cool. Great. That sounds like fun, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

Trip: 12:04

But there were these other areas of the company that I as I would learn more about how does a rocket company work, I wanted to get more involved with other areas. And what happened over the near twenty years progression of my career there is I got all these different experiences, and I I turned into kind of a Swiss army knife of get being able to get things done, which is how I kinda ended up in my my last position Mhmm. Which was a lot of fun. So my my second job after the software was commanding control for the LaunchPad, not the not the bits and the bytes, but the electrons. So instrumentation and power and cable management and all of that stuff.

Trip: 12:44

And so analog side. Yeah. Exactly. But on the pad. Right?

Trip: 12:48

So I wasn't doing on a rocket. I wasn't doing avionics on the rocket. I was doing avionics on the ground.

Jeff: 12:53

Right.

Trip: 12:53

Right? So data acquisition systems, primarily natural instruments, and making all of that happen, tying together. And and where I came into to play there was the first 1.1 rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. So I made the transition out of software at, like, the second half end of twenty twelve. Right?

Trip: 13:15

We had we had done three Falcon nine launches, which wow. That that was tough. Right? That's a that's a that sentence carries a lot of weight. We did three Falcon nine launches.

Trip: 13:25

One of them went to the space station with Dragon, and then I said, alright. I need to I need to change it up. I need I clearly need to do something else, because it's it's time for me to move on. And so I I got an opportunity from Brian Mosdell and Mike Taylor to go work at the Launchpad, and I was like, that sounds like so much fun. So let me go get my hands dirty.

Trip: 13:46

Let me go work on the Launchpad. Let me see what that side's about because I've been in the control room. Right? I've been on the electron side or on the the bits and the bytes side. I'm gonna go go out in the field and and touch some touch some hardware.

Trip: 13:59

And I got I got an opportunity to do that. So we did the upgrade to vue 1.1, and we made a lot of great improvements on what had previously been done for 1.0 at The Cape. And it was a it was a great learning experience for me, how to budget a a project, how to how to go work with the technicians, and make the sure that the instructions are clear and and all of that stuff, which is super important. And then report up the chain and what what the whole team is doing. Because it's a little different in software than it is when you're actually building something.

Jeff: 14:30

And that, from what I remember, took you into the landing stuff as well. Right? So you were a participant in the first of the of the landings at The Cape.

Trip: 14:39

Yeah. So this this takes takes us into what what I kinda consider my the the second big highlight for me in my time at Space. The first big highlight would be getting Falcon one and Falcon nine to orbit. Right? Those were those were huge emotional milestones for everyone at the company.

Trip: 14:58

And then the the next milestone for me, I I went and talked to, so after Brian Masdell left, Ricky Lim came in as a site director at the Cape. And Ricky and I were chatting, like, hey. You know, I did this command and control stuff for for 1.1 upgrades. You know, I did that for a couple years. What what's what's kinda next on there?

Trip: 15:18

What's what's available? What what things we need to go after? And he had two options. He was like, you know, we we need someone to own the pad abort test for Dragon, and we need someone to own land landing for Falcon. And to me, the choice was obvious.

Trip: 15:35

I was like, those are both awesome, but, man, I really, really wanna work on Falcon Landing. Like, how cool is Yeah. That? And, man, so I did not know how big of a challenge was gonna be in front of me to go do that. Right?

Trip: 15:51

One, we had to go figure out where we're gonna do it. When I came into doing land landing, originally, it was gonna be slick 36. And right when I came into it, this was, like, 2014, this the air force came back. They now it's Space Force, but the Right. Air force came back and said, hey.

Trip: 16:09

Hey, Trip. Welcome. I know everyone told you it gonna be slick 36, and you already started SpaceX already started working on that. There's another user we're gonna reserve slick 36 for. We can't tell you.

Trip: 16:20

And I think now we know who it is. Right? But at the time, it was hush-hush, and they're like, we we'll need to go find a new spot. Cool. So I part of part of my job was to drive around and, like, figure, okay.

Trip: 16:32

Where are we gonna go do this? Right? Like, how what a cool job. Yeah. Right?

Trip: 16:35

Let's go figure out point to the spot on the ground where the first falcon's gonna go land. Right? Like, who can say they did that? Right? That's amazing.

Trip: 16:43

Right? This is exactly what I'm here to do. Cool stuff like that. So we ended up, settling on SLIC 13, which was an empty pad, hadn't been used since the late seventies. It it it supported, a whole bunch of really cool missions in sixties, like the the lunar surveyor probes that map the moon for the moon landings, and then it really transitioned to national security, for the last decade of its existence.

Trip: 17:09

But then it just sat idle, and it was just falling apart, and they had already demoed out the tower and the blockhouse. There's really nothing there. And it was perfect. There's nothing there, and it's far away from everything. So there's not really anyone who's gonna complain, you think, about aiming a rocket at that spot on an air force installation.

Trip: 17:27

Surprise. Surprise. We we so so, yeah, we we we got approved. We we started building. We build out the landing pad.

Trip: 17:33

It was amazing. We're we're ready to go, and we get, like, I don't know, a couple of months from from landing. And and keep in mind, this is right after the CRS seven failure. Right? So this is we're we're we're getting into return to flight.

Trip: 17:46

It rapidly, disassembled itself in an unscheduled manner, due to a a faulty strut, which I think you talked to Hans about, when you talked to him in in your previous, podcast. So I think it was c r seven. I think I got the right mission then. But at any rate so this was a return to flight after that failure. Thank god it wasn't an on pad failure.

Trip: 18:08

Right? So that would have been really rough. I don't know what we would have done, but fortunately, it was in flight. If it's gonna happen, that's the best place. Right?

Trip: 18:15

Not on the pad. And, so this is a a big end of return to flight. It was a first full thrust. Right? So you've got densified propellants, huge upgrade, and the first landing of Falcon because we had not successfully landed Falcon to that point.

Trip: 18:29

Every drone ship landing was getting incrementally better earlier in the year. You you my favorite failed landing is actually CRS five from January 2015 where it kinda came in sideways and crash landed into the drone ship. You might remember that. As we ran out of hydraulic fluid on the on the fence. They fixed that problem, but then there was they didn't quite get it right to land on the drone ship.

Trip: 18:52

And so this return to flight was huge. And and we get real close, and we find out that there's a concern from the air force, a very serious concern. I get this report that outlines how destructive a Falcon nine reentry will be for all of the critical infrastructure at The Cape for, national security is saying, hey. There's gonna be widespread damage. This is a risk to assured access to space, and this went up pretty high.

Trip: 19:21

And, actually, what's interesting is at my retirement party, Wayne Monteith, who was the the commander of SLD forty five, which is which was the forty fifth Space Wing at the time, was there. We we talked about this. He's like, my bosses were telling me not to approve you. You know? Like, we were this close to not being able to do it.

Trip: 19:40

Right? And I don't think a lot of people know that. Right. It's it's not, you know, it's this isn't like a juicy tidbit. It's just the reality of doing the

Jeff: 19:49

No. It's the his the real history.

Trip: 19:51

Yeah. Yeah. And so the problem we had is there was no data to refute it. Mhmm. Right?

Trip: 19:59

We hadn't done this before. We had anecdotal stories from folks on the drone ship who were like, yeah. It's you're gonna be fine. Like, they were they were not on the drone ship, but they were the support crew. Right.

Trip: 20:08

You know, a a mile or so off, in a safe distance. They're like, yeah. We it's not gonna hurt anything. You you'll be okay. Right?

Trip: 20:15

Like, they were worried about the sonic boom just absolutely crushing everything, and and and, of course, now we know better, but we didn't know back then. Right. Right? So how do you counter that? How do you counter someone or something or or that has a a lot of what appears to be very clear, solid analysis Right.

Trip: 20:36

That says you have a problem when you don't have data that says you don't? And that was really tough to get through. We we almost didn't make it.

Jeff: 20:43

What did you guys do? What what did you tell them?

Trip: 20:45

Well, there there was there was a couple different approaches. You know, I asked them to provide their analysis. We took a look at it. We identified some issues with it. They were able to go rerun the numbers.

Trip: 20:56

It brought it down a little bit, right, which helped. Right? It says, hey. Instead of instead of a big boom, it's a slightly smaller big boom. Yeah.

Trip: 21:03

And then from the underside, we said, hey. Look. We've run our we've we've rerun our analysis because the initial problem is the very first analysis that was done was wrong. Right. It had mistakes.

Trip: 21:13

So the initial analysis wrong, which was rectified later. But we came in with an independent second analysis, which was more closer to reality, which, you know, again, nobody knew. And and, fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. We were able and and this was a big actually, next to building the landing pad, this was the biggest thing I did at the time was negotiate this. And what I said is, look.

Trip: 21:37

You guys have this number. We have this number. Nobody knows what is reality. And so let's compromise and say it's probably somewhere in the middle. Let's do one landing.

Trip: 21:48

Let's put out some microphones and get some data and then see what that tells us. Right? And cooler heads prevailed. We said, yeah. Let's do it.

Trip: 21:57

Let's make it happen, and and we were approved. But it was a lot of work to get there. Right? Because there was a lot of emotions. People were nervous.

Trip: 22:05

I'm effectively asking the military to let me aim a rocket at its precious military base. Right? Like like, they this was a this was a big deal. Right? So but they but they ultimately, again, the, general Monteith came back and said, this seems sound.

Trip: 22:23

The safety folks look at it. The the leadership said, okay. We agree with this approach. We we see that the the error bars on the unknown. We think this is acceptable risk to take one time, and let's get the data and see what it tells us.

Jeff: 22:37

So cooler heads prevail. And how did that landing go?

Trip: 22:39

How'd the landing go? It was a smashing success, and, there was no widespread damage to be spoken of. There was no damage to be spoken of at all. Was incredible. We have this little flimsy office trailer over at the landing site with these just paper thin windows.

Trip: 22:54

Right? They were worried about window breakage. Right? And so the very first thing I did when I get on-site after the rocket landed, I went and I looked at that trailer and I took a photo. And I sent back to the air force and said, look.

Trip: 23:05

No no broken glass. You're okay. It's not it's not doom and glim.

Jeff: 23:11

Sweet. It seems like with that portfolio of launch sites and landing and ground command and analog side that you, like, must have had a lot of interactions with the the top levels at SpaceX. You know, that there must have been a lot of pressure on you and presumably direct pressure from Elon as well in some cases.

Trip: 23:32

Yeah. I mean, yes. Right? That that's gonna be true of anyone in in this kind of position. And I I tried to take a little bit more of a a balanced approach, like, hey.

Trip: 23:40

I've got this cool gig. If that requires me to go send an email to Elon and keep him posted and Gwen, I'll do it, and I'll do my best. And I'll get some things right, I'll get some things wrong. And then when I'm when I'm done doing that I won't keep trying to pester the upper folks. I'll move on to whatever the next thing is.

Jeff: 23:59

I like that. I think each person did have their own unique way of managing it and I think that's a good way. It's like if I have to I will and if I don't I won't. So you you spent time, like, not necessarily trying to interact with Elon. But do you have an Elon story?

Trip: 24:17

I I do. I do. So I am it's probably around about 2014. We're starting to think about what is the future of Cape Canaveral look like for SpaceX. Because at the time, we only had Pad 40, and 39 a was was was just, you know, in its infancy.

Trip: 24:35

Right? We were starting that. We didn't really have anything else. You know? We had a and an office building, and and that was it.

Trip: 24:42

And this little building was our launch control center. It was not a sexy building. Right? Elon did not like our launch control center. It was this little building right outside the gate.

Trip: 24:52

It was functional. It did the job, but it wasn't gorgeous. Right? And so we wanted to start thinking about what is building a twenty first century launch control center look like. And so it was sort of this fun, neat, little exploratory thing, like, hey.

Trip: 25:07

Go think about some options. And this was like a a not a a top priority. Right? It was gonna require some financial investment that, you know, who knows if we were ready to make. And, but we wanted to start thinking about it because we knew we weren't gonna stay in that little building.

Trip: 25:26

And so I did some homework, and I I pulled together some slides just to kinda think through different options. And we go in to to meet with Elon to to just kinda talk through it. It's a fun this is not a this is a low stakes discussion. Right? Super low stakes.

Trip: 25:42

Right? And Ricky turns to me before we walk in, he says, okay. Whatever you do, don't try to make him laugh. Because what happens is people will go in there and they'll try to make jokes with Elon, and then it's just silence. It falls flat.

Trip: 25:59

And I was like, okay. Cool. Sure. Ricky, I'll I'll I'll do that. We walk in, and I don't remember exactly what I said, but we we pulled up, we had a whole bunch of options, and one of them was, like, this water tower kind of looking thing.

Trip: 26:20

And, I had included, because I'm from Tennessee, there's this place in Knoxville where they had the World's Fair, like, 1980, and there's this tower with, like, a a golden sphere. They call the sun sphere on top of it. I don't know if you remember this, Jeff, at all. So I pulled it up, and I, like, made this reference, this joke reference to an episode of The Simpsons where Bart and Milhouse take a road trip to Knoxville to see the Sunsphere at the World's Fair, which they didn't realize it happened, like, fifteen years prior. And they get there, and it's all dilapidated.

Trip: 27:04

And inside, it's just full of wigs. And I don't remember exactly what I said, but I referenced it and the fact that it's full of wigs. And, like and and Ricky sees me going into this joke in real time, and he, like, reaches his arm across, like, don't do it. Don't do it. And, like, Elon full belly laughs because this is his type of weird humor.

Trip: 27:29

He he's been I think he's been on the Simpsons. Right? He did a whole episode of the Simpsons. So this was right in his alley. And and, like like, Ricky turned white.

Trip: 27:38

He thought it was over, but Elon just full belly laughed at this comment about, like, oh, yeah. Sunspirits full of wigs. I don't again, I don't remember exactly what I said. And and it was so off to the side that if he had not caught on to being this, like, dry humor joke reference to the Simpsons, we could have moved on from it. Right?

Trip: 28:00

It was safe. It was safe, but Ricky was nervous and rightfully so. And and so, like, that encapsulates encapsulates how how I I I perceive my interactions with Elon would go is that, like, he would come in, and it would be a disarming discussion because, generally speaking, most of the time, I wasn't coming to him with, like, this earth shattering, this schedule's behind, or this budget is broken, or this other thing that's that's that's after. Right? Like like, it was those kind of discussions, and I think he got accustomed to being like, well, when I meet with Trip, we're talking about fun stuff, and we're having a good time.

Trip: 28:38

And I don't mind that that was that was how I think he would look at it. So it's not a bad place to be. The the little victory that I had is I never had a bad interaction with Elon, not once in my twenty years there. Now I didn't have as many interactions with him as as folks did. So that's to be fair.

Trip: 29:01

Like I said, I'm cheating a little bit. But, every interaction I had with him was was was great.

Jeff: 29:07

But it doesn't seem like cheating to me. To me, it seems like good management. You manage your situation, right?

Trip: 29:12

Well, I I made it a long time, right? That's the other thing, right? I I I wanted to stick around and and Right. You know, people that that generally moved up fast also moved down fast, Right? And so I just kinda hovered.

Jeff: 29:24

And

Trip: 29:24

so I just what the best advice I ever got while I was there from a career perspective was from John Miratore. He sat me down. We were I remember this. We were in Texas for, I don't know, one of the ATPs for maybe it was maybe it was actually flight seven. We were we were at the restaurant there just as you coming into Waco from McGregor, and he he was like, you know what I do?

Trip: 29:45

I change jobs, like, every five years. That's a that's, like, the best thing I ever did because, know, he was NASA first, and then he was at SpaceX, and he did a few different things. And he he ended up down at Boca Chica for a while, and he he gave me that advice, and and I I I tried I took that to heart, and I followed it. And I found that that provided me a lot of job satisfaction because it kept it exciting. I had to learn something new.

Trip: 30:10

And and what his advice was this, he said, look. You know, you you you're learning the the new job on your in your first year. Right? The goal is to get mastery of it. You pick up something, you learn it, and you make it a little bit better.

Trip: 30:24

And then maybe in your last couple years, you work to hand it off so that someone else can come in, learn it, master it, make it better. Right? Because, you don't know you don't know what you don't know. Right?

Jeff: 30:34

Right.

Trip: 30:34

And, you can't effectively, can't solve a problem with the mind that created it, and you don't know about the you've made something better, but as part of it, you've probably introduced some new problems that you can't see because of ego. Right? So I that was some of the best advice I he he that I ever heard.

Jeff: 30:51

That is good I that is really good advice, especially for people who are, like, trying to figure out where to go with their career and how to keep it how to keep it fresh but also not necessarily change companies all the time, you need to change your jobs within the same company. Yeah. Yeah. And I know you've listened to a lot of the previous podcast if not all of them. So you have a sense that people did do They would burn out, there goes some policy else and they burn out at the next place.

Jeff: 31:15

Yep. And you seem to have like figured out a strategy for you that that kind of avoided that. Did you have family that you're trying to balance with that at the time or now or?

Trip: 31:25

So, again, people are gonna say I cheated. Right? Like, I I didn't for a long time. So I met my my wife in 2015, and we dated for a few years, got married. She came with a son, so I had a I had a stepson.

Trip: 31:43

And so I managed that, but it was halftime child. Right? He was halftime at his dad's house, halftime with us. So that made it a lot easier for me to compartmentalize when I'm supporting time with my my stepson and and when I'm, you know, focusing on work. And Yeah.

Trip: 31:58

She also, at the time, was was working. So both of us were were quite busy, and so that wasn't an issue at all. And so that worked out for us. Now, you know, fast forward to to today, I have a I have a I have a little two year old, and he's awesome. And she had left her job a few years back, so she was really able to run the house while I was at work at SpaceX.

Trip: 32:25

And fortunately, as I mentioned, my job is primarily was primarily with the government, which has mostly pretty fixed hours which helps. Right? Like the government is not gonna call me at 9PM because they're not gonna get in till in the morning. Right? And they're definitely not gonna bug me on the weekends.

Trip: 32:43

Right?

Jeff: 32:43

Right.

Trip: 32:43

So that helped keep the and, like, it's not it's not to say I didn't do weekend work, and it's not to say I didn't work at night, but it helped keep those things be a little more reasonable so that I could balance work and home a little bit better. So my my final job at SpaceX actually permitted me to have a bit more of a balance. It's not to say I didn't do one thing or the other, but it it allowed me to to strike that balance, which I'm very grateful for.

Jeff: 33:09

For sure. And that and it, you know, I don't consider it cheating. Again, I think it's I think you think of it as cheating, I think it's good management.

Trip: 33:15

Management.

Jeff: 33:15

Right? Right? You You you you got got yourself into some positions that that worked for your life and and also you moved around to find positions that that worked for your life and also kept you excited by what you were doing. Did you, work on Starship at SpaceX? I haven't talked to too many people who were there long enough to have a contribution to Starship.

Trip: 33:35

So over the last four years of my time at SpaceX, more and more time went from Falcon and Dragon to Starship. And it it really started, I wanna say, kind of 2020, 2021. I had started making trips down to Starbase, and I would go down there. Like, we would we would all go down to do search support to help help Starbase build out. And, there's a number of things that we would all go down to to help with.

Trip: 34:05

And then, we would we would seek sort of waves of, oh, we think we're gonna launch Starship soon. No. Starship's not ready to come to The Cape. So you'd up a little bit, and then you you'd back off. And so you would if you look over the last five or six years, really since 2019, you'd see the the Starship pad at 39 a in various stages of build, deconstruction, rebuild, whatever.

Trip: 34:33

And so, really, now, of course, they've they've pretty much finished the build out. And so a big part of my job in the last couple of years is is we we basically tried to to offload as much Falcon and Dragon as we could to kinda get it sort of on autopilot so Falcon can just run. We, me and my team focused very heavily on working through approvals for builds for the pad, for Gigabay, working approvals for, Slip 37, which folks now know about, which which was a lot of lot of fun, and and really getting, getting everything laid out, helping the teams through design reviews, and getting those submitted to either NASA or the Space Force and and working through those reviews through whatever the regular regulatory mechanisms they needed to flow

Jeff: 35:20

through for for approval. And out of that whole, like, arc at SpaceX going from what was pretty early times, 2007 to almost modern SpaceX. Six months ago, did you have a quintessential SpaceX story or anecdote? So recovery is a very

Trip: 35:38

big deal for me. Right? It's in my heart. Right? I I love that team and one of the best team I built I'm fortunate to build a lot of great teams at SpaceX, and the twenty fifteen Falcon recovery team is is one of those that is is first and foremost in my mind is one of the greatest teams I've ever seen.

Trip: 35:55

We've pulled all the best people from throughout the company to go be a part of something really special. And when that rocket landed, the company took parts off of the engine and awarded them to employees. So there's, like, tubing from from the engines from that first landing that were given away. And my fiance reached out to a good friend, Sam Patel, who was one of myself, we were all recipients of this and said, hey. I wanna surprise my husband at our wed future husband at our wedding that we make our wedding rings out of the Inconel tubing from the engines from the first stage that landed for the very first landing.

Jeff: 36:47

Wow.

Trip: 36:48

And Sam didn't bat an eye. He gave his award to my wife for her to go find a jeweler to make wedding rings out of the tubing from the engine.

Jeff: 37:01

And that ring you have on your finger is that ring.

Trip: 37:02

That's right. So I carry Sam's gift.

Jeff: 37:06

Yeah.

Trip: 37:06

Yeah. Everywhere I go, that tubing from that engine from that mission. So that that just tells you how special, right, the things that we went through and the things we participated and the people we worked with were because you don't have something like that happen just anywhere.

Jeff: 37:24

That's a great a great story of the team and its cohesiveness and also a great momentum obviously. I love that.

Trip: 37:34

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Jeff: 37:39

And how did you end up so you retired, you said six months ago, you know, do you figure you had enough and

Trip: 37:46

So no. Not exactly. So this this one's kind of a downer. So I I had hoped to make it to the first Starship launch from The Cape. That was all that work I've been doing.

Trip: 37:56

Was trying to get that approved so that we could see Starship fly from Florida. And but I knew, I'm like, okay. I'm I'm probably getting close to the end here. I I feel like it's it's we're we're getting there, but, man, I wanna make it to the first Starship launch. And, unfortunately, my wife's father's health started failing rapidly at the end of last year, and he he passed the day after Christmas.

Trip: 38:19

And so it became immediately apparent that I needed to put a 100% of my focus on the family for a while. And I let, you know, I let the leadership know, and they were super gracious. They said, look. If you want, you don't have to retire. If you want, you can take leave for as long as you need.

Trip: 38:39

Right? They were so gracious. And I and I I and I looked at my situation, and I said, man, I I I just it didn't make sense for me to do that, come back, and then retire. Right? I thought the right thing to do certainly, I could have stayed, and and and and maybe there was an opportunity there, but I I just I looked at the situation and I said, nope.

Trip: 39:02

Now now you know when you know. Right? And and I knew at that point, I was like, that was that was the toughest email I've ever written was that one. That was, like, tears coming to my eyes. I was like, oh, I can't believe it.

Trip: 39:14

I'm finally doing it. But but it was the right call. It was a tough call, and I'm glad I did it. And everything that's happened between now and then has just has just said, yeah. That was that was the right move.

Trip: 39:26

That I needed to do that. And that allowed me to now take care of the kids and run the house and do all the things while she dealt with, you know, selling her parents' house and getting her mother in assisted living and dealing with all the things that came out of that. And so I was very grateful that we made that I made that decision. We we were able to work it out. She was able to do what she needed to do.

Trip: 39:47

And I think it was ultimately the right call for the company not to kinda string them along because that's what I I I mean, it would have been it would have been six months before I was even ready to think about coming back, and and I I just don't think I I could I could do it. So there's just no way. And so, fortunately, we made the right call. They were very gracious. I had an amazing going away party retirement party.

Trip: 40:10

I've like, again, it was it was incredible. Absolutely incredible. They surprised me with both my wife and my brother. They brought them in to base, didn't tell me, for a a retirement surprise, and I was just I was just blown away. I was blown away at how many people showed up and the the love, from the team and and everything else.

Trip: 40:32

So And since then, maybe three months ago, Sam Patel, of all people, reached out to me, who's now a an engineering adviser at NASA for the administrator, and said, hey. I know you're not I know you're tired. I know you're not working full time, but there might be a part time job here at NASA to come help us. We're trying to get boots on the moon again. And I said, sure.

Trip: 40:57

So I'm doing part time work with NASA, trying to help the culture and everything else to to really help NASA get get back to being amazing. And there's a lot of great stuff happening there. And, fortunately, I can I can do part time right now? That that I can do, and it's not a forever job. It's a temporary position, but I'm enjoying it and getting to work with a lot of old familiar faces.

Jeff: 41:18

That's awesome. And I think that you tend to look back and say, well, this was luck and that was cheating. But I think that the story of your career is a series of decision making points that you took in a thoughtful way starting from trumpet and moving forward. So that's what I that's what I would see and I know we all see ourselves in different ways and and you you use the quintessential SpaceX line at the very beginning. You said, I didn't suck at trumpet.

Jeff: 41:46

It's like that's about all we can ever give ourselves credit for because we've been surrounded Yeah. By such good people but it's it's more than you didn't suck.

Trip: 41:55

You're surrounded by the best people.

Jeff: 41:57

So I'm gonna sweep into my one liners. Yep. It's like, what's your favorite science fiction?

Trip: 42:02

I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna say Star Trek. It was it was formative. It it's what got me into what I'm doing. And, you know, specifically, the movie Star Trek First Contact, that's my favorite. That's, like, the best.

Trip: 42:14

You can't beat that movie.

Jeff: 42:15

Perfect. And what was your biggest takeaway lesson from SpaceX?

Trip: 42:20

I would say time is the most valuable commodity. Right? Every day counts. There's a thing we call sense of urgency. Right?

Trip: 42:29

It's tough to maintain a sense of urgency over a really long period of time without letting it stress you out, burn you out. It's also very easy for people to think that means you're rushing when you're not. What it really means is you're capitalizing on every opportunity. You don't leave anything on the table. Right?

Trip: 42:47

And if you have a good sense of urgency, you are not missing opportunities to make progress. Right? I think that time is the most valuable resource. It's not renewable is the biggest takeaway.

Jeff: 43:01

I love that because that's a new one, that's something that people haven't mentioned. Right? So I I think and I think it it's translatable to a lot of different circumstances. And what would you recommend to somebody who wants to like end up with the kind of fascinating career that you've had if they're just getting started and getting ready to go to college or getting ready to come out of college?

Trip: 43:20

Yeah. I think two pieces. It's a two part real quick. One goes back to that advice from John Muratore I got. You know, be prepared to change jobs.

Trip: 43:27

So don't get wrapped around the axle too much on what your first job is. Right? Know that, hey. I'm gonna go pick something, go work on it, make it better, and then find somewhere else you can be helpful. Right?

Trip: 43:39

Don't focus on job title. Right? Don't focus on on on the the secondary elements of that. What can where can I go be helpful? Where can I apply my talents?

Trip: 43:48

And the rest will fall in place if if you go if you go work at it. The second part of it, and this I got I got asked this question when I went to Purdue for the engineering award by one of the classes. They said, hey. How do you deal with impostor syndrome? And I I like, what they mean is how do you get past it because they feel it.

Trip: 44:07

Right? They feel it. And and and I my answer to them was you just learn how to live with it. Right? Everyone that surrounded me at SpaceX, they were all amazing.

Trip: 44:19

They were so good at everything, so much better than I'll ever be at anything. Right? They're incredible people. So you have to pinch yourself every day. And and so so the the the way to instead look at it is that the learning never stops.

Trip: 44:33

Right? So don't think of yourself as an impostor. Think of yourself as a student. In life, everywhere you go, you're surrounded by if you surround yourself with smart people, then there's nothing but opportunities to learn, And that that's a tough one. I delivered that feeling for a long time.

Trip: 44:49

Some of these people were amazing at SpaceX and I felt like I would never live up to their their expectation.

Jeff: 44:55

Well, and I I feel like I I've sympathized with that and empathized with it and also I feel like you're one of those people. Right? And it's like we all have to learn to to deal with it. I always found you a really fun person to work with and now talking with you for an hour, it's like you have like a very systematic mind in the way that you work and the way that you exist in the world and I'm really pleased to have gotten to explore that with you. Do you think also so my final question though is do you think we can work make the world a better place?

Trip: 45:25

Yes. Of course. Of course, we can. Right? Like, we can make it a better place.

Trip: 45:30

We as humans choose to make villains of our neighbors more than perhaps we ought to, more than we realize. And it's always some, oh, it's this other group of people or this time period that has passed. We don't we're not like that anymore. Human nature is still the same, and and so I think we gotta put ourselves in check. I I don't know how you do that, and I see some attempts to do it.

Trip: 45:55

It's a it's a destructive flaw of human nature if it's let to exist at scale. Right. Right? We've seen this time and time again. When it's at scale, it's bad.

Trip: 46:04

It's really bad. So we just we just gotta put ourselves in check. That that to me is is the biggest thing. And then I think a lot of other things that are areas to make the world a better place sort of just fall out of that. Right?

Trip: 46:17

If we just stop, you know, applying the villain lens to our neighbors in the way that we we do, we are it's a trap that

Jeff: 46:25

we fall into.

Trip: 46:26

There's a lot of things that will just be better.

Jeff: 46:29

Right. So to stop othering people and stop blaming other people for things is a way that we Yeah. Can

Trip: 46:35

It's that's a tough one.

Jeff: 46:36

It's tough, but again, it's like many of the disciplines that you seem to have had in your life. It's one if you keep it in mind, then sometimes you can implement it effectively and that has big effects over a long period of time.

Trip: 46:47

I may I got one liner for you to ask me. Ask me what my son's ask me what my son's name is.

Jeff: 46:52

So you said you had one young son. What's your son's name?

Trip: 46:57

Declan Falcon Harriss. Falcon Harriss. I am not kidding. Do do you know how hard it was to win that argument with my wife to get that middle name?

Jeff: 47:07

Even though even though you have the ring that was built out of Falcon?

Trip: 47:11

Yep. Yep. Yep. So So his middle name's Falcon.

Jeff: 47:16

Thank you so much. I appreciate also the thought that you put into getting into the interview and and getting the stories out, and that will make it a good record for you to have going going forward. Groovy. Enjoy your retirement. It's a truism that we never know where we're gonna end up in life.

Jeff: 47:36

And my discussion with Trip really illustrated some of the skills and the habits that can help you navigate the ins and outs as they hit you. Many thanks to Devin Schwartz for producing this episode of It's Not Rocket Science with his typical magic editing. You can find us at it'snotrocketscience.space.