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An interview with SpaceX employee number two Chris Thompson about garage rockets, an explosion in Garvey's backyard, beating Jeff Bezos in court, melting Elon's shoes in acetone, and Phantom's unfinished business. A theme of failing fast and leaving it at work throughout.
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?
Stage engine sequence initiative.
Speaker 2:Three, two, one. Sometimes when people ask me what I did at SpaceX, I say everything other than fire and metal. The fire was the responsibility of SpaceX employee number one, Tom Mueller, and the metal was the responsibility of today's guests on It's Not Rocket Science. Today, I'm talking to Chris Thompson. And, Chris, what you were employee what at SpaceX?
Speaker 1:I was employee number two.
Speaker 2:That's pretty awesome. And who was employee number one? Was that Elon or do we have someone else?
Speaker 1:It's actually Mueller, and Elon's actually employee number three. At least when we started the company, that's the way it came across. Now we know how narratives change and positions and all that. So but yeah. So technically, Tom was employee number one.
Speaker 1:I was employee number two, and Elon was number three. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll be angling to get Tom to agree to talk to me now that I've got two, three, and I think four, you know, with no. Not three. I don't have three. Right? So I will not get Elon.
Speaker 2:He will not he will not be saying yes to me, I don't think.
Speaker 1:Oh, you gotta get Gwen. Get Gwen on
Speaker 2:that. Exactly. I would enjoy that. And so what roles did you have at SpaceX?
Speaker 1:So while I was at SpaceX, let's see. At the beginning, I was like the director of operations, and then it kind of folded into the the VP of structures, and that's kind of where I stayed, was vice president of structures. I guess you could say, you know, kind of advanced manufacturing development as well, you know, with the friction stir welders and, you know, we introduced composites and things like that. So but primarily on the structure side. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And how did you end up becoming employee number two? Because there must be a story there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we let's see. The short of it is we started the company through John Garvey and, of course, Jim Cantrell. And, you know, Tom and I were do and along with Garvey, we were doing the large liquid rockets out in the desert, you know, basically, you know, building stuff in our garage, take them out, fly them, having a good time, blowing stuff up. And through Garvey and Cantrell, that's how we got introduced to Elon.
Speaker 1:And, you know, we brought him out to what was the Reaction Research Society, which is out there kind of North Of Mojave out by Cone Dry Lake. You know, he came out there in a pair of his Neiman Marcus shoes, a pair of slacks and a leather jacket and it was, you know, like minus 20 weather. So, you know, he dressed for the occasion
Speaker 2:for
Speaker 1:sure.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that was the kind of the quick introduction to him and then, you know, it kind of evolved into, well, guess going back even further, it would have been on the planetary society's solar sail project with doctor Friedman. And again, Garvey was involved with that. I got involved with it. Cantrell was involved with it. And then that kind of morphed over into kind of this other planetary mission that Elon wanted to do which was originally called Life to Mars or Mars Oasis.
Speaker 1:And that whole idea was to send a biological payload to Mars, which as we all know doesn't really go well when you consider looking at the rules when it comes to planetary quarantines and all that kind of good stuff. But so the whole premise behind that was to basically send this kind of growth chamber to be able to grow a plant on Mars using some mar Mars regolith, potentially bring a little bit of earth soil to kinda kick start things and a webcam and all that. Yeah, it never panned out.
Speaker 2:So the funny thing is that I remember that because that's the first time I ever talked to Elon. Oh. Is when I was working on satellites at Surrey, and he called us up. And I didn't know him from Adam at that point because he wasn't a big name. And, like, the first thing he said to me is, do you know what a meme is?
Speaker 2:And it's like, yeah. I guess I do. He said, yeah. And I wanna put a greenhouse on Mars. And we were like, sure.
Speaker 2:We'll do anything that lets us build satellites and put them in space. And so you guys were the other half of the equation. Right? The rocket half.
Speaker 1:The well, we were the we were the rocket and the payload half. And at one point where I guess you could say the the the science half of it, not necessarily the the satellite bus or anything like that. But yeah. And then, you know, things kind of quieted down for a bit, and then it turned into, hey. We're gonna do some trade studies.
Speaker 1:So we were, you know, meeting up at the oh god. What was it? The Renaissance Hotel up there by LAX. Had several meetings there and then eventually we started looking at buildings and conversation started. Meanwhile, I could I was still working at, you know, McDonnell Douglas which later became Boeing.
Speaker 1:So moonlighting if you will. Yeah. Then it kinda morphed into this, hey, do you wanna join the company? We're gonna form a and I it was, you know, one of those kind of moments that you kinda step back and you look and kinda go, well, if I don't do this, am I gonna kick myself in the butt for the next thirty years? Or if I go and do this, am I going to die trying?
Speaker 1:Right. So I think so. Yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 2:It's funny. I also know people who've came out on both sides of that equation. The people who decided not to and are kicking themselves and, you know. Yeah. And I've talked to a lot of people obviously who decided to and were happy with it and decided to and suffered for it.
Speaker 2:All the things.
Speaker 1:That's I don't know. We all we all choose different paths and we all have reasons to go wonder one direction or another. And me, it was, you know, it was, you know, something exciting and it tied into the I guess you could say kind of it it kind of brought the hobby that we were doing together and now kind of, hey, let's go do this for real.
Speaker 2:Was that the same stuff that you were doing at McDonnell Douglas as well or were you doing something different in your day job?
Speaker 1:So McDonnell Douglas was an interesting mix for me. I actually started out on the commercial aircraft side of things And then I got moved over to Delta two when that product line kicked back into kind of full swing. And then so once you're over on the space side of things, you're you know, you end up doing a whole bunch of different things. You know, we had Delta two going on. We had Titan four payload fairings.
Speaker 1:A lot of stuff in, you know, kind of our hydraulics lab and then we had a big big, you know, kind of world class engineering lab there that did anything from, you know, space simulation, structures and dynamics type stuff, you know, vibe, shock, underwater test facility. So it was kind of a kind of a really well rounded experience for me in that I got exposed to a lot. You didn't really get pigeonholed there unless you wanted to be. And I was one of those ones who didn't wanna be pigeonholed and luckily, had a couple of really good mentors there that were kind of always pushing me on to, hey, go try this and, you know, go work for this guy. This will be a good experience for you.
Speaker 1:And so you get a lot of different flavors of management styles, people skills, all that. So yeah.
Speaker 2:And how did you start working with Garvey and Cantrell on Rocket stuff?
Speaker 1:So Garvey was on DCX along with another good buddy of mine and I was kind of in a support role on DCX at the Huntington Beach campus there. I wasn't out in the field or anything. And we started a a little rocket club, if you will. We all had young kids and our kids were, you know, we were doing the Estes rocket stuff.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And one of my buddies had a really really good connection with kind of an avionics group there that did control panels and all that, and they built us this really really bitching launch control kind of suitcase thing. So we'd go out, you know, on the weekends and take the kids out and go launch rockets, you know, they're at oh god. What was it? Miles Square Park and in other locations. And so that's when Garvey came along and said, hey.
Speaker 1:I've got this liquid rocket I'm building. And literally went over to his house. My wife and I are walking in, and we hear this loud explosion in the backyard. And I'm like, oh my god. Somebody just died.
Speaker 1:And it was a pyrotechnic test to basically blow the nose cone off the front of this thing. And right there, I was like, oh, yeah. More of this, please.
Speaker 2:Gotta do this.
Speaker 1:Took this out to the took it out to the desert, launched it. I think it went to, I don't know, maybe 50,000 feet. It was a locks ethanol 500 pound thrust thing. You know, it lawn darted in, but, you know, a lot of fun. And then it just continued to grow from there.
Speaker 1:I mean, we went from like a six inch diameter rocket all the way up to I think in the end we were at about 12 inches in diameter. And thrust was, know, typically in that 500 to 800 pounds of thrust range.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So. Good fun.
Speaker 1:Oh, A lot of lot of fun.
Speaker 2:And the DCX is interesting thing to to cycle two too because in some ways that was a precursor to reusability stuff that Absolutely. That SpaceX actually got to. So DCX was like, describe it.
Speaker 1:So DCX was basically a was the whole intent of DCX was single stage to orbit. So the, you know, kind of DCX a was that precursor of can you take off, you know, can you and land. So the whole goal was basically take off, move over, land on a spot, do it, you know, do it while you're controlled. And then there was other flights that basically, you know, kind of took off, did this mid air flip to kind of test the death roll coming back in and then be able to flip back and then precision land. Everything was going good there until that one last kind of event where a lot pneumatic line got left off of one of the landing gear and yeah.
Speaker 1:Failure in the quality system.
Speaker 2:Still it proved out. It proved out the concept. A lot of concepts that then came back Yep. With Grasshopper and with even presumably with Starship with Ship. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, we had we had we had the entire DCX library there at SpaceX. I believe maybe yeah. I think Jeff Sponable gave that to us. And there's some incredible documentation there from, you know, lots of PowerPoints and but it's it's an incredible kind of batch of history when it came to it comes to that program and yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I knew another guy, Mike Mahoney, worked on that program and every time he saw advancement on, you know, at SpaceX, he would say we were doing that, we were almost there.
Speaker 1:Almost. Exactly. And then you know, lot of that carried over to Grasshopper and Grasshopper was, know, kind of an amazing program. A bit sketchy in the beginning when we decided to use a piece of hardware that had been laying out there in Texas for for so long and yeah. So but anyway, you know, it's history and
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Look where they're at today. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Did you I mean, did you have a kind of a defining anecdote from your years at SpaceX? Because you were at SpaceX from the day one, which most people never saw until, you know
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think the I I think the the big takeaway there so, you know, I worked fifteen years in big aerospace at McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. And very very, you know, for the most part, very very risk adverse pro you know, companies. You know, you you know, you'll spend months, sometimes years, you know, analyzing something just to ensure that it it's not going to fail and you're not moving the ball forward. Whereas at SpaceX, the thing that I learned and still even kind of apply today is that it is okay to fail.
Speaker 1:It's okay to fail fast and learn. As long as you're moving forward, it's okay. You know, obviously, you don't wanna burn through a, you know, amount of cash, you know, chasing your tail on something. But as long as you're continuing to move that ball forward in a positive way to get towards the end goal of a particular project, that was kind of the big takeaway for me was the it it's it's okay to fail and get out of that kind of that baked in mindset from big air aerospace. And yeah.
Speaker 1:So that I guess that would be the short of it is that it's you know, fail fast, fail hard, learn, move on.
Speaker 2:I think sometimes people mistake that for failing intentionally.
Speaker 1:There's there's times when there was intentional failures. It's like, you know, hey, let's go try this. And like, it's not gonna work. I don't care. Go do it anyway.
Speaker 1:So and I've had, you know, we had several conversations like that. I think all of us probably had conversations like that at the you know? So
Speaker 2:I think I would classify Falcon one recovery under that category.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, the the idea of recovery was there. I I, you know, we I think we did all the right things in that well, not all of the right things. We did some right things In that, we selected the right parachute manufacturer. We we selected the right kind of approach with the, you know, the the high speed ballistic drogue and then, you know, the staged reefing of the parachute. But, you know, what we failed well, I don't know if we even failed.
Speaker 1:I don't think we ever really looked at it was so call it a failure. As, you know, the environment that that rocket sees coming back in and, you know, just the dynamic kind of forces on the, you know, the body itself. Yeah. Doom for failure.
Speaker 2:I remember we covered the stage with cork.
Speaker 1:Yes. Well, we we on Falcon one, no. We didn't put cork on Falcon one. We did on Falcon nine. So the back end on Falcon one had Nextel blankets on those panels, but we didn't cork the we didn't cork the fuel tank.
Speaker 1:We put foam on the LOX tank because we were having problems maintaining temperature out there at Kwaj and incorrectly sized vent and relief valves, you name it. There was a kinda litany of problems with that. But yeah. No. Falcon one was, I guess you could say, not really well prepared for reentry, recovery other than it had a parachute.
Speaker 1:And, you know, eventually we got rid of it. You know, by flight four, it was yeah. Get rid of that and yeah. So
Speaker 2:That was a quick transition after flight four. The thing finally worked, and then we were fully committed to Falcon nine.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That was a that was an interesting time of because we had we had everything kind of lined up for what was gonna become Falcon one e and, you know, a bunch of, you know, kind of the air force was super interested in it and other folks. And next thing you know, we kill off Falcon one for the right reasons. I still maintain that we did the right we made the right decision killing off Falcon one. But I, you know, I do remember having, you know, there was a conversation at one point in time between Gwen and I of like, hey.
Speaker 1:Could we spin this off into a separate division and basically just Merlin just feeds us engines or, you know, Mueller and team feed us engines. And then we were, yeah, summarily dismissed from Elon's office and, you know, told never to bring that up again.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I suppose if you look at it, there's a bit of an ecosystem has opened up in the light lighter launch vehicle department.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's where I sit today is is on the kind of the, you know, I it's funny. I we kinda classify this as unfinished business for me at Phantom. Right. In that, you know, we're basically a Falcon one size vehicle.
Speaker 1:You know, we're doing, you know, 640 kilograms out of Vandenberg and at about, call it, 780 kilograms out of out of out of the Cape. So I should say, we'll be able to do that. Not doing it yet, but yeah. So it it it falls into that category. It and it I think it's it's it's a good sized vehicle.
Speaker 1:It serves a lot of the market that's looking for launch right now. And with Falcon nine, you know, potentially getting sunsetted here at some point in time and and, you know, even with Falcon nine not doing rideshare after what, '27, it's, you know, who's who's gonna service that market, you know, and you've got you've got relativity coming up. You've got, obviously, Rocket Lab with Electron and then they have their new what is it? The Neutron rocket that's coming along. So it'll be interesting.
Speaker 1:And then and then, of course, my buddy, Andy, and his company up in up there at Stoke. So we'll we'll see what happens. It's gonna be kind of some interesting times coming up.
Speaker 2:It also seems to be a pretty elastic market, you know, the Yeah. And transporter prove that. Every time transporter launches, there's a 100 plus payloads on it.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. So I think there's I think there's, you know, I I guess the short of it is, I think there's room for probably three or four players that are gonna service that kind of that lower end to kind of what Falcon nine is servicing today. But the question always becomes, you know, can you build a product that's going to actually do the job? You know, hats off to, you know, Peter and Rocket Lab and, you know, they've done a great shit.
Speaker 1:I think they've done a fantastic job of learning all they can with electron, moving the ball forward, know, looking even at some of their acquisitions and now with what they're gonna go do with with Neutron.
Speaker 2:Would it be fair to say that the reason that like it seems that after you left SpaceX you persisted in the small launch vehicle market. Is that because it's like your personal unfinished business? It's like this is what you like to do?
Speaker 1:No. It was a well, let's see. I did go to Blue Origin for two and a half days and I got lied to in the interview. That's and I didn't like that at all. They were just the Blue Origin was in this mode of just kind of, know, capturing as many SpaceX people as they could and it just just didn't sit well with me.
Speaker 1:So, you know, I went to I went to Virgin and actually Steve Osakowitz and I had had a couple conversations prior to that. And I like Steve. I I I think the world of Steve. So after I left Blue and was driving back, you know, like word travels fast, I guess, when people leave. And Karen Gifford was on the phone with me, you know, rattling my cage going, come on.
Speaker 1:Come on. You gotta join. You gotta join. And so I did. But then they sued me because I violated the terms of my contract and their, you know, their non compete clause.
Speaker 1:Paragraph 3.8, by the way. Okay. And so we ended up suing them back and won, which was great. That makes you feel good when you beat Jeff Bezos in court. So so I was able to go back to work.
Speaker 1:And then we, you know, basically, I think it was like employee number four on the LauncherOne program Right. Working with Steve and Brian Morris and Kevin Sages and couple other folks. It was LauncherOne was interesting because it started out as kind of that small much much smaller that it it would it ended up becoming. And then we came to the realization very very quickly that it was way too small. So there was one path where we were actually going to do vertical launch.
Speaker 1:There was a conversation with Richard Branson and at the time CEO George Whitesides and basically it came down from on high that no, we are an air launch company and therefore, thou shalt built a rocket that will fit under the wing of an airplane. So that's what we did.
Speaker 2:Good to have your vision.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Modified a seven forty seven and resized the launch vehicle and, you know, doctor Tom Markuszak heading up propulsion and that's a whole another story. And but, you know, Tom Tom's another space cowboy and loved working with him and almost joined his company, almost joined Firefly, but there was some legal things that they had to sort out first before that could happen. And but anyway, the Virgin thing was cool. Never really believed in it.
Speaker 1:Liquid rocket under the wing of a seven forty seven. Effectively, it's a man rated system. You know, you've got four of your best friends flying on that seven forty seven and, you know, a bomb that is literally six inches off the deck when that when that plane lands and and takes off. And it's like, nah. This is but what was super interesting to me at the time was the composites development and the advanced composites developing liner less liquid, you know, liquid oxygen tanks and figuring out how to, you know, mitigate cracking and all that kind of good stuff.
Speaker 1:And we had an amazing team working that and, you know, proved that we could go do it. So god. Where were I was on vacation in China and I was like, okay. I'm gonna retire. I'm this is it.
Speaker 1:I'm done. Got a phone call from Chris Kemp and Adam London up at at the time was, you know, Stealth Space Company Right. Which later became Astra. And interesting thesis with that company. Can you build a small rocket?
Speaker 1:Yes. Cost effectively. Absolutely. You absolutely can do it. Sure.
Speaker 1:Can you build it at scale? A 100% you can do that, and we proved that. But can you build a rocket that is only 80% reliable and have repeat customers? No. But that was the thesis that they came to me with, which I was like, guys, we gotta get out of this.
Speaker 1:We need to be in that, you know, some number of nines of reliability too. But, you know, Adam and Chris were just, oh, no. We'll make it up in volume, that type of thing. I'm like, no. You won't.
Speaker 1:It's not gonna the the industry doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2:The classic the classic moment in that project was the video of that rocket trying to trying in vain to keep itself under control.
Speaker 1:I will say this. The hero of the day was doctor Dan Wilson, our GNC guy, and what a controls guy. I I couldn't say enough nice things to him post launch. And the sad part about that was is as we were following that flight, all the numbers coming back basically said that we would make space. No problem.
Speaker 1:We wouldn't make orbit, but we'd make it to space. Get the separation and all that. And unfortunately, it wasn't the RSO, but it was one of his underlings set the wrong values on the limit lines and basically use the limit lines from a previous flight and violated a limit line and which shouldn't have been there to begin with and the flight got terminated and yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm I'll definitely have a link to that video because it's just an exercise in guidance and control.
Speaker 1:Oh, there is a there's a classic video of me in the control room, and I think they got rid of the sound, but I mean, if you can read lips, it was literally one of those, you know, moments.
Speaker 2:It was amazing that you could make something do that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Speaker 2:The one thing that we didn't touch on prior to what you've been working on now is like two questions about SpaceX. One of them is like do you have a quintessential Elon story aside from him wearing his, like, Gucci shoes in the desert?
Speaker 1:I I guess the short of it is, you know, I actually loved working for Elon. I really did. I I I just and to this day, I have I I have nothing bad to say about the guy. I mean, there's there's always good times and bad times in any kind of employee boss relationship. And I would have to say that, I I don't know, 98% of my time there or I'd call it 95% of the time there.
Speaker 1:I love working with the guy. Love working for him. I appreciated his sense of humor. I appreciated the thoughtfulness. I appreciated the the willingness to listen, I'd say most of the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, sure. It was kind of bittersweet, you know, getting fired and and then ultimately ended up quitting because we couldn't maintain as human beings for even thirty days. And I was like, okay. I've had enough of this shit and I left.
Speaker 1:So oops. Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. But
Speaker 2:That's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean
Speaker 2:How was it that you ended up moving on? Was it like a specific thing or was it
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. No. It was I mean, the the funny part with you, guess one of the funniest moments was and you I think you were still around. We were there in at thirteen ten and we had just we were doing this composite wrap around one of the phenolic chambers. And so we decided, hey, let's wrap it in carbon fiber.
Speaker 1:And it it was an absolute disaster. So we bake this thing out and a lot of the fibers lifted. So it was very, very sharp and we were knocking some of the fibers down and, you know, everybody's got got their hands cut. And so Jeff Rikki and I were over there washing the adhesive off our hands with acetone and not even flinching. We're just like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:No problem. This is good. Elon sees us do this, and he goes over and does the same thing, and he's got the same cuts on his hands. And if you've ever poured acetone on your hands, you know. Immediately, he starts screaming and yelling, like, oh my god.
Speaker 1:This hurts so bad. But the funniest part was all the acetone on the floor started melting his Gucci, you know, his Neiman Marcus shoes. And it was like one of those cartoon moments where you see the sticky shoes on the hot pavement, you know, type thing, and he's like, you know, doing this and I was like, oh my god. Yeah. There were there were numerous ones.
Speaker 1:Him sticking his finger in a toaster and burning it even before we formed the company and screaming and yelling at, like, 06:00 in the morning, scaring the crap out of some poor little little little old lady at the Holiday Inn Express there in Green Bay, Wisconsin is where we were. So
Speaker 2:Just how did you end up moving on? You know, we all end up moving on in in at some time or other because that's the premise of the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I I what happened was is I I I guess it was one of those classic things of, like, you know, not meeting expectations. You know, physics are physics, the way I look at it, and mechanics of materials are mechanics of materials. And no matter how many experts you bring to the table, you know, internally, externally, there's always those moments where it's like, I don't believe a word you're saying, and these people don't know what they're talking about. And I'm right and the rest of the world's wrong.
Speaker 1:Not me, somebody else.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And you get into that moment where things just don't click anymore. Yep. And so eventually you have that conversation of like, hey, it's not working. Like, okay. What do you want me to do?
Speaker 1:Well, I want you to move into doing this individually. Like, I don't have to manage people anymore. Cool. Go just work on fun stuff to advance the company, but let's behave. And that lasted twenty eight days.
Speaker 1:I got dragged into a meeting with JinkoSa and a few other folks. And next thing I know, it's like, I'm taking all the brunt of the entire conversation. And I'm like, dude, this is not my job anymore. I am a minion. And I literally I got up.
Speaker 1:I walked out of there. I took a deep breath. I walked over to Jerry Fielder's office, threw my badge on his desk, and I said, I'm effing out of here. And, of course, Jerry comes running after me telling me to sit my butt down at my desk until he gets things sorted out. And I'm glad I did that because it paid off in the end.
Speaker 1:Not on the severance side, but certainly on the option side and being able to do things with, you know, not being an employee anymore and Yep. As you probably know. And, you know, it was bittersweet bittersweet leaving, but I also think that it was time. You know, that commute that I was doing from Orange County up there was just just brutal. Wasn't really fun anymore.
Speaker 1:Right. And fun I think fun has to be part of the job. If you're not having fun and enjoying what you're doing, why do it?
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:Technology side of things is always super exciting, but going in and get your butt kicked. It it I don't know. For me, it like I guess, like, the last kind of six months there, it was like the truest definition of insanity. You know? Drive to work, walk into a brick wall.
Speaker 1:It's like, it'll be different tomorrow. And it'll be different tomorrow. It'll be different tomorrow. And it never changed. So yeah.
Speaker 2:I I would observe that you seem to, like, have maintained your personal equilibrium and health during that process, what do you attribute that to? Because some people were like unable to do that.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of it had to do with probably my upbringing. So my dad was a cop. My dad was also a former Marine Corps drill instructor. So you can imagine what home life was like.
Speaker 2:So you knew the territory?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. So it was like, alright, this is this was not new. It's like I've been yelled at before. But I think it was also one of those things of, you know, I don't wanna say thick skin, but just looking at it like, you know, you kinda step back at the end of the day. It's like, alright.
Speaker 1:What did I screw up? Or did I even screw up? And you just take that moment to reflect. Take that deep breath if you will. It's like, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay. This was my fault. How do I fix this going forward? Or like, wait a minute. This dude's wrong or that thing was wrong or whatever.
Speaker 1:Then you'd still have to go try and figure out how to fix it. And I think and the other thing I did too is I I tried my damnedest to not bring it home. And I think I probably attribute that to kind of my commute because I had time to just reflect on the day, take a little bit of a deep breath before I walk through the door and yeah. So
Speaker 2:And what are you passionate about now? What's making you happy? Yeah. So what makes me happy right now
Speaker 1:is what I'm doing. Love my job at Phantom. I'm currently the, you know, present and CTO there. You know, we're doing satellites, working very very heavily on kind of data backhaul, the back end of what we're, you know, all that data that you collect on orbit. How do you get it back efficiently?
Speaker 1:What AI what AI tools can you leverage on orbit and what kind of processing tools can you leverage on Orbit to, you know, kind of process that process that data, be it our own constellation or a constellation for a particular customer. And then owning launch is the other kind of key component to it. A launch is a scarce resource just like launch sites are a scarce resource. And and I think a lot of people miss that point right now in that if you look at Falcon nine and what it's contributing, which is massive. Once Falcon nine goes away, who's gonna who's gonna fill that void?
Speaker 1:Sure. Starship? Maybe. You know, I'm as a shareholder in the company. I am, you know, yay yay yay, Starship.
Speaker 1:Keep going. But I don't see everybody wanting to pile on to Starship. I still see a strong need for kind of that kind of small to medium kind of class launch vehicle to service the rest of the market, you know, some, you know, probably DOD market as well. So yeah. But, yeah, I I you know, the the whole kind of, I guess, we look at ourselves more as a space systems company versus a launch company, you know.
Speaker 1:So we're doing a lot of really cool stuff with kind of the satellite side of things. You know, the hot the hot buzzword today is data centers in space. I look at it more as like, it's not a data center. It's more of just, you know, it's distributed compute and processing. And sure, you could do do some sort of large language model on orbit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's gonna be a very, very discreet kind of model to do specific things, be it image processing or whatever. So yeah.
Speaker 2:When do you guys expect to get to space?
Speaker 1:Right now, I guess if I were looking at my green light schedule, the end of twenty seven, but green light plus margin which is typically where I live, it's probably I'd say mid twenty eight.
Speaker 2:So somewhere in 2728. I look forward to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm gonna jump into my one liners, you know, my Okay. My popcorn round questions. What was your biggest quick lesson from SpaceX?
Speaker 1:Oh, my biggest quick lesson to SpaceX was literally kinda going back to the beginning, which is it's okay to fail. Do it fast. Do it efficiently. Find ways to do it, like digging through the trash at Norton sales of digging valves out of, you know, out of a garbage bin at Norton sales up there in North Hollywood and bringing it back. And it's like, okay, we can reverse engineer this and boom.
Speaker 1:You're off to the races. So finding kind of those alternate ways to get things done. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you so this is like off the beaten track, but we've got this star this Starship launch coming up soon. Mhmm. Do you think we can afford to fail one more?
Speaker 1:A tough one. I it's a it's a good one to yeah. I I I'm gonna say yes.
Speaker 2:I think so too because the company's too big for one thing Right. To really be a disaster. But it's I'm looking with nerves to this next launch.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at it from the public market perspective. Right. In that, if this next Starship launch coincides with the announcement of the, you know, the IPO
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:What does that do? If Starship doesn't do well, what does that do? But I guess if I look at it historically, sure. SpaceX has been tremendously successful with Falcon nine. Starship, depending upon how you look at it.
Speaker 1:I don't look at Starship as having failed anything. I look at it as like, okay, we missed that milestone.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But we didn't fail. We learned a lot.
Speaker 2:How long does it take to get it funk to get it operational?
Speaker 1:Exactly. Exactly. So yeah.
Speaker 2:So what would you recommend to people who wanna get into this crazy industry? You know, if you got it if you had a kid leaving high school, it's like what would you say?
Speaker 1:Oh, boy. It's a great question. I don't know. I look at it like, number one, I think you have to understand what you're passionate about. And I think you have to really understand yourself first.
Speaker 1:I mean, can follow the traditional path of like, okay. I'm gonna finish high school. I'm gonna go to college. I'm gonna do undergrad. I'm gonna do grad or, you know, or I may, you know, go off and get a PhD or whatever.
Speaker 1:But is all that really necessary? I don't think so. I don't think it's a 100% necessary in today's world. I think it's more about understanding yourself, understanding what you want to do. You may wanna be a welder.
Speaker 1:Your parents may have a vision for you of being a doctor or lawyer or whatever the case may be, but you may be passionate about welding. And there's tons of cool cool jobs out there for welding or whatever, you know, as a you know, even as a machinist. I still look at my most favorite machinist guy around and Bob Reagan and massive amount of respect for Bob Yeah. And what he accomplished at SpaceX. And so that's what I you know, even even like a lot of my you know, our interns.
Speaker 1:Same question comes up. Hey. What should I do? It's like, well, what are you passionate about? What do you wanna do?
Speaker 1:What have you thought about? And, you know, we live in this kind of this weird time right now, at least I call it weird, you know, with, you know, everything is, you know, data centers, AI, you know, AI this, AI that. And is it really that? Is it really all of that? And I think you have to have a good tool set.
Speaker 1:I know I certainly don't. You know, I know enough to be dangerous and probably am, but it it's something that I think you're gonna have to have and be super savvy with going So there's that component. But yeah, it's I think it's I don't think there's really a boxed or canned answer. I think you just have to look at the individual and and really look at that big picture. But I think they also have to do the same thing.
Speaker 1:They've gotta be able to take a step back and reflect on what they wanna do and what's important to them and, you know, sitting home playing Xbox all day is not the thing that's gonna get you to anywhere. But
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a new answer and I like it. And my own son did not finish UCLA. He was like, I wanna be a programmer. I already can program and I'm going to program.
Speaker 2:And he's worked in three different space startups, and he's perfectly happy. So there is not a a Yep. Specific route that you have to take.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, you know, I I look at it, you know, even internally. There there was expectations of you shall go to college and graduate. One of my children decided that that's not what they wanted to do. And for the most part, they are very, very productive, very, very successful in doing the thing that they do, and very, very happy.
Speaker 1:And that's again yeah.
Speaker 2:So big pivot. Do you think we can make the world a better place?
Speaker 1:Yes. I do.
Speaker 2:How how do you think?
Speaker 1:I think we as a well, as the human race, we have to take a step back. We have to look at the big picture and ask ourselves. It's like, what are we fighting for? What are we fighting over? Why?
Speaker 1:And wealth is not the answer. And just, you know, taxing the rich to, you know, to placate the poor is just not a it's not a strategy. You you have to be able to find a way to lift people up individually, collectively, nationwide, what you know, however you wanna look at it. But it's like, we have got to stop all this fighting and bickering. Otherwise, we're just gonna continue to in this downward spiral.
Speaker 1:I I just did a, you know, I just did a trip last year over to Egypt and Jordan and Morocco Morocco and and absolutely loved it. But when we were when we were in Jordan, I mean, literally forty five minutes away from intense fighting. It's like, why? Why? Why do we have to treat each other that way?
Speaker 1:Just respect each other and so I I, you know, I don't know if there's an you know, I don't know what the right answer is other than there's gotta be there has to be a moment that, you know, brings us all together, I guess, is one way to look at it. Yeah. And I'm probably looking at it, you know, very, very naively, but
Speaker 2:That's really good. I hope so too. And and it's been excellent to to see you and to catch up with you as well. Thank thank you for giving me the time to have this discussion.
Speaker 1:That was great. I I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:So maybe the key to survival in a stressful environment like SpaceX is to have a dad who was a marine corps drill instructor. Barring that, Chris's recommendation to not take your stress home with you is probably one we can all work on. Thanks for listening to It's Not Rocket Science. You can find us at it'snotrocketscience.space and this episode was produced in part by Devin Schwartz.