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An interview with Epsilon3 co-founder and CEO Laura Crabtree about her 11 years in SpaceX mission operations, training the Demo-2 astronauts, replacing paper procedures in industries where hardware must work, and the Laura test. And the spacesuit that was supposed to make you look cooler.
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 Ward: The design, manufacturing, and operation of complex systems depends on proper information flow.
Jeff Ward: For 80 years, there's been a quote rumbling around the industry that goes something like this: When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the rocket we'll launch.
Jeff Ward: And for 40 years, we've been trying to figure out a safe and effective way to replace that paper with computers. My guest today has the solution.
Laura Crabtree: My name is Laura Crabtree and I am in El Segundo today, uh, looking at the airplanes landing at LAX.
Jeff Ward: And what's your title and role at the moment?
Laura Crabtree: I am the CEO and co-founder at Epsilon3. Uh, we build software for complex hardware companies like space,
Laura Crabtree: uh, aviation, and energy sector for, uh, integration and test and operations.
Jeff Ward: What's it been like being a founder?
Laura Crabtree: Crazy. Um, not what I would have expected. And harder in some ways,
Laura Crabtree: but I think I was prepared for a lot of the challenges, despite what I actually thought.
Laura Crabtree: It's hard when you leave SpaceX and try to think about what your life might look like on the other side.
Laura Crabtree: Tell everybody that left, you know, congratulations on making it to the other side.
Jeff Ward: Exactly.
Laura Crabtree: You know, most people, when they're there, can't envision what their life might look like if they ever left.
Jeff Ward: Right.
Laura Crabtree: But yeah, it's been very rewarding also. You know, I think, you know, being able to be the maker of your own destiny and,
Laura Crabtree: you know, nobody is in charge of you. You're in charge of you and you're in charge of the success or failure of whatever venture you are running at the time.
Laura Crabtree: And I think that's a place that a lot of SpaceXers actually love being in.
Jeff Ward: It looks like you've been very successful.
Laura Crabtree: We have been. Yeah, it's been great.
Jeff Ward: So so you said that Epsilon3, and from what I've read, is, you know,
Jeff Ward: building software systems to help build complex systems. Would that be a fair characterization?
Laura Crabtree: Yep, that's a good characterization. It's firmly in the must-work scenario. So if you're building hardware that has to work when you operate it,
Laura Crabtree: that's where we live in Epsilon3. So, you know, our software must work. It can't ever go down.
Laura Crabtree: And your hardware must work. It can't ever fail. I mean, clearly there are failures in every system at some point or another,
Laura Crabtree: but we really want to help minimize those, especially when it comes to human error or, you know, things that can be prevented and sometimes prevented a lot more easily than we might think.
Jeff Ward: And your main customers, space industry or a lot of other industries?
Laura Crabtree: Well, we originally started getting customers in the space industry because that's obviously what I know and where I came from. But surprisingly,
Laura Crabtree: many of our customers are not in the space industry. We started working with energy companies, aviation companies, robotics companies,
Laura Crabtree: and a couple other industries. But I think those are probably the most applicable here. Knowing a lot of those industries are in the must-work scenario,
Laura Crabtree: it stands to reason that they all need the kind of software that you might need with a space operation as well.
Jeff Ward: I'm one of those nerds who actually is interested in processes and configuration control. But for the people who aren't,
Jeff Ward: can you describe what your software does, what the problem was that you set out to solve?
Laura Crabtree: Sure, so, many of the complex engineering companies, they'll buy software for things like managing,
Laura Crabtree: um, hardware, so managing inventory, and, you know, where does your inventory go, what, uh, who manages your inventory,
Laura Crabtree: how do you accept, um, purchase orders, and how do you inspect, um, hardware when it comes in, but what people kind of forget about is the end goal.
Laura Crabtree: Which is operating the hardware, which is, you know, how does the hardware work? Does the hardware work when it gets to the end user?
Laura Crabtree: And our software helps with the latter half of that. I mean, we do help a lot with the inventory side of things,
Laura Crabtree: but that's not the first use case that we were built for. We were built for the process by which you test and operate the hardware. So,
Laura Crabtree: a lot of times what we found is people were testing hardware and not recording what they were doing when testing, or they were running a process themselves that wasn't repeatable,
Laura Crabtree: and then the next shift would come on and they would try to repeat the process. So, a lot of times when you're testing, you want to do the same test multiple times and see if you get the same result.
Laura Crabtree: Um, and if you're not running the same exact way, you're probably going to get different results. And so when we sought out to do this,
Laura Crabtree: it was how do you proceduralize something and not just write down the procedure so that everybody can follow it the same way,
Laura Crabtree: but you're actually gathering information on how long it takes. Who does the, you know, sign off on the procedure?
Laura Crabtree: Who can do the sign off? Where are you gathering information? If you're, you're you know, torquing something, what is the torque you're talking to?
Laura Crabtree: If you're testing a temperature, where do you record that temperature? Well, we are gathering all of that information into Epsilon3 so that you can test the same way so that if you have,
Laura Crabtree: you know, 20 different tests and you're gathering the temperature every single time, you can easily find what the temperature was on every single one of those tests without going to,
Laura Crabtree: you know, Joe's desk and Terry's desk and, you know, everybody else's desktops. It's all in, you know, one place. And that was,
Laura Crabtree: kind of the first problem that we set out to solve. Sorry, that's a really long explanation.
Jeff Ward: No, that's a great explanation. How was the problem being solved before you guys got got started?
Laura Crabtree: Oh, it depends on what, what type of people you talked to.
Laura Crabtree: A lot of people really love Excel. A lot of people. And I get that. But one Excel spreadsheet can easily break.
Laura Crabtree: A lot of people are also using, you know, Microsoft tools like OneNote or Confluence pages or they were storing it on a distributed file server or some people were storing things
Laura Crabtree: on their desktop. So it's a grab bag of things. And you might not be surprised to know that some people were actually printing out papers and using red,
Laura Crabtree: blue and other colored pens and highlighters. And then scanning documents in. And this is like,
Laura Crabtree: you know, 2021. this isn't like 2010, 2004. So, you know,
Laura Crabtree: we're, we're trying to take all of that process and write it down, memorialize it so that every time you have new people,
Laura Crabtree: because the other thing that we've seen in this industry is that people, I don't know, when I started at Northrop Grumman,
Laura Crabtree: people had been there for 30 years, but nobody stays at a company for 30 years anymore.
Jeff Ward: Right.
Laura Crabtree: So Right. So if you leave, or you have employees that are leaving every couple of years, they take that knowledge with them,
Laura Crabtree: you want that knowledge that they have tested and the tried and true processes, you want them written down, memorialized somewhere,
Laura Crabtree: so that when they leave, the next person can pick up exactly where they left off. And that's the other thing that I think is, we sort of forget about.
Jeff Ward: How easy was it to convince companies to take up this software? Was it a need that they already saw? Or was it an uphill push?
Laura Crabtree: You know, there was no three letter acronym that defines the category of what we do. And so that was hard to explain.
Laura Crabtree: But once people understood the value of what we were building, it wasn't that difficult to convince people.
Laura Crabtree: And I think as we've grown, we've sort of muddied the waters, for lack of a better word,
Laura Crabtree: because we have overlapped with a lot of different three letter acronym software
Jeff Ward: Mm
Laura Crabtree: packages.
Jeff Ward: hmm.
Laura Crabtree: Than just the procedural aspect and, you know, I don't electronic procedure software, you know, there's, there's a market for that,
Laura Crabtree: but it's not just electronic procedure software, it's the data collection, it's the, you know, personnel management, it's the,
Laura Crabtree: you know, who can, who can do what in the controlled aspect and the revision control and revision history of what we do.
Laura Crabtree: So let's say you test something and you learn that the way you're want, you want to test it is not correct,
Laura Crabtree: you want a red line and traditionally you would actually like go with a red marker or on your, you know, iPad, you would take the, you know, red markup on the PDF and you would say,
Laura Crabtree: add this here, here, and here. Well, on Epsilon3, you can just add it in line, change it, and then next revision, incorporate those changes.
Laura Crabtree: That's something that you can't really do, nobody's, nobody had done that within a software package, you know, outside of some other people that we've,
Laura Crabtree: we've worked with, but outside of that, it's, it's not something that you would just automatically think you need to do.
Jeff Ward: And it seems to me to nerd out for a second that you guys probably push back toward the manufacturing side of things too,
Jeff Ward: inevitably, because during test, you touch hardware, and you want to know what touches that hardware has had.
Laura Crabtree: That's exactly what happened. So, you know, we had customers who said to me, man, I really, really like testing using Epsilon3.
Laura Crabtree: But what I have to do is at the end of the test, I PDF, or I download a CSV of everything that I've done,
Laura Crabtree: or I create a report and then I upload it into my hardware tracking system. And I don't love the hardware tracking system that I'm using.
Laura Crabtree: So can you guys just track the hardware for me? And we originally said no, for a couple of months. And then we heard that story enough times that we thought,
Laura Crabtree: man, we really have to do this because our customers are trying to trying to pull this out of us. And we didn't listen for a few months, but we've been doing that now for a better part of,
Laura Crabtree: you know, three and a half, four years. It
Jeff Ward: makes sense because these are connected processes working way back into the company. How did you go about building a team when you decided to found Epsilon3,
Jeff Ward: building a team that knew what you were talking about and that had a passion for the product?
Laura Crabtree: Ooh, I, I love that. So I am a very team centric team oriented person. I am very methodical about how we build the team here,
Laura Crabtree: which is why we've built the team pretty slowly. When I sought out to start this, I actually went into Google and I typed business plan.
Laura Crabtree: And I thought, you know, how do you, how do you go start a business? I was introduced to my co-founder,
Laura Crabtree: Max, and he said, you know, I, I, I've started a couple of businesses. I can help you with that. And then we thought about what's the ethos of the company.
Laura Crabtree: Who do we want to be? And really, you know, the types of people that we wanted to bring in are people that care about supporting industry as people with,
Laura Crabtree: you know, low egos, people that, that really care about our customer self. And we didn't want to necessarily only build with space people.
Laura Crabtree: So we looked for, you know, software engineers that have really good software engineering fundamentals, but also have a passion for,
Laura Crabtree: you know, building either in space or any complex industry. And then it originally, it was my job to teach people what we were building.
Laura Crabtree: Now we have other people at the company who do a lot of that, but for the first probably 20 people,
Laura Crabtree: I would sit with every single person and sort of, you know, explain what our customer set looks like, how they work,
Laura Crabtree: what types of engineers you're working with. Because it's not like any other industry. And the one thing that I always remind everyone of is,
Laura Crabtree: you know, this is a very small universe that you're now working in. And the number one thing is you have to show up the same way with everyone.
Laura Crabtree: You have to be a good person. You have to, you have to say what you mean, mean what you say. And if you say you're going to do something, you have to do it. And that's how we've built the team.
Laura Crabtree: And, you know, every single person after the first 20, you know, there's the, when we, when we interview someone, it's like the Laura test,
Laura Crabtree: which is, are they going to pass the Laura test? And now every person at the company kind of understands what that means.
Jeff Ward: And what does it mean in a nutshell?
Laura Crabtree: Well, just, just that. It means you're, you're a good person. You kind of show up in, in a positive manner and you're passionate about what our customers are doing.
Laura Crabtree: obviously that means you also have the skillset too, that we are looking for, but the ethos of, you know, what our teammates all feel.
Laura Crabtree: And we, we all should feel that way, but we all don't come from the same backgrounds. We all don't have the same experiences or the same thought processes,
Laura Crabtree: but we all have kind of those core values.
Jeff Ward: Sounds like a great place to work, actually.
Laura Crabtree: Yeah, it is. I like it. I'm very happy here.
Jeff Ward: You know, talking about people's background, I mean, I know your background is with SpaceX, and I wondered,
Jeff Ward: was there something that you saw or experienced at SpaceX that led you to think, oh, this is the thing I need to do next?
Laura Crabtree: So, as most people know, at SpaceX we built a lot of in-house
Jeff Ward: tools.
Laura Crabtree: software
Jeff Ward: Yep.
Laura Crabtree: And, I I led the development of a number of different software tools within SpaceX.
Jeff Ward: Mm-hmm,
Laura Crabtree: In mission control, and obviously we used software to command and control the vehicles that we built.
Laura Crabtree: And I became very passionate about the software tools that we were building, and I wanted to add a million different things to them.
Laura Crabtree: But, as with all internal tools, you get to a point where they work, and then everybody says it works,
Laura Crabtree: we're good, and we're done. And I got very, I
Jeff Ward: right.
Laura Crabtree: don't know what the word is. And, I don't know what the word is, but just in my brain formulating a plan of if I had like a blank slate,
Laura Crabtree: if I could do this all over again, how would I do it? And how would I interconnect all of these things. And how would I interconnect all of these things because this was before APIs existed,
Laura Crabtree: before any of this work that we have now.
Jeff Ward: Right.
Laura Crabtree: And nobody ever wanted any of our tools to be connected. And I got frustrated with that as well as, you know, in-house tools,
Laura Crabtree: just stop.
Jeff Ward: Right, there's a difference between being a rocket company and being a software company.
Laura Crabtree: Correct. And that's something that I tell a lot of our customers. Especially when they say, you know, oh, I have a couple of software engineers. I could build something like Epsilon3.
Laura Crabtree: And I think to them, I say to them, you know, you could, but why would you want to if that's not your core business?
Laura Crabtree: Why would you want to invest the time and money into building something that isn't actually your core business? And so, and now I have a much different view on internal software tools than I used to.
Laura Crabtree: And so that was kind of the ethos of why I wanted to do something like this. And when it came to life after SpaceX,
Laura Crabtree: you know, I didn't leave SpaceX and say to myself, oh, I have to go start a company. I left SpaceX with the,
Laura Crabtree: you know, hey, I want to, I want to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. That's the ethos and interviewing at a lot of different companies and,
Laura Crabtree: you know, having a lot of self-reflection moments. Because as you and probably every other ex-SpaceXer knows,
Laura Crabtree: when, when you leave after an 11 year stint, it's sort of like a divorce. Not that I know what that would be like, but I, I, I suspect it would
Jeff Ward: I
Laura Crabtree: feel like, I suspect it would feel like leaving SpaceX. But, uh, I mean, I have been happily married for,
Laura Crabtree: for 13 years. So I, I am not, I'm not planning that, but you know what I mean? It's like, it's
Jeff Ward: do
Laura Crabtree: like ripping out a part of yourself.
Jeff Ward: Yes.
Laura Crabtree: Um, and so you have to sort of reinvent what success means to you and, and you have to think about,
Laura Crabtree: you know, what, what is the world that I want to live And is there something that I can do to create that world?
Laura Crabtree: Because I feel like everybody in the early days of SpaceX is, they're builders there. They want to like, get their hands dirty. They want to be busy.
Laura Crabtree: They never want to be sitting idle. And one of the, one of the, uh, one of my teammates here is, is always saying like, you don't really like sit.
Laura Crabtree: And I'm like, yeah, cause I'm always, I was like, need to do something.
Jeff Ward: Right.
Laura Crabtree: There's, there's just a lot to be done and not a lot of time. And I think that is sort of why I started something is because as I was figuring out what I wanted to
Laura Crabtree: do, most of the people that I was talking to actually talked to me about software. And I thought, yeah, I'm not a software engineer,
Laura Crabtree: but if I could find a really good software engineer to help me build something, I've got a lot of ideas of what we could build.
Laura Crabtree: And it was, it was at that moment that I was introduced to Max and we sort of hit the ground running with,
Laura Crabtree: here's my idea. Cause I'd already had, I'd already written out a business plan and that's kind of how we got started.
Jeff Ward: And you said you were in mission operations at SpaceX. Did you have other roles before that, or did you come in as mission ops?
Laura Crabtree: Um, I actually came in as Mission Ops. So I was Mission Ops the entire time I was there. So I came in as a,
Laura Crabtree: I don't, I don't know what the actual title was. Manager of Mission Operations because there was, I don't know, eight people in Mission Operations.
Laura Crabtree: And, you know, we did recovery. We did all the GUI development for mission control and for kind of the test stand and launch vehicle.
Laura Crabtree: And then we did, um, all the simulator development. We did all the, um, ISS integration. And with NASA and all the joint operations planning and development,
Laura Crabtree: and then all of the training. So that, I don't know what a manager of mission operations did at the time, but it was something about all of those things.
Jeff Ward: That seems to me like a huge amount of experience compressed into 11 years. You say 11 years and it sounds like a long time, but when I think about what went on during that time,
Jeff Ward: it was, uh, exponential increase in complexity of what SpaceX was doing, I feel.
Laura Crabtree: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, when I started, I went to John and I think, you know, John, um, and I,
Laura Crabtree: I said to John, you know, Hey, um, where do you want me to start? What do you, what, what things do you want me to do?
Laura Crabtree: Cause I, I see this huge mountain of work ahead of me. And he said, yeah, okay, go ahead. There's something along those lines.
Laura Crabtree: And I thought, okay, is there, is there anything upcoming, like next week that you need me to do? Like making, making sure that I'm not letting the ball drop.
Laura Crabtree: And so, you know, I think the, the week before I started, I was on, I was at, I was at,
Laura Crabtree: in Hawthorne at the SpaceX facility, helping with some of the astronaut training. So it was our first astronaut training. The, the week before I started,
Laura Crabtree: uh, with Suni and Aki, um, back in 2009. And, um, I was answering questions because I had, I had done a deep dive into,
Laura Crabtree: uh, dragon operations at that point. And so I'm answering questions and they're like, when do you, when did you start? And I said, oh, I start next week.
Laura Crabtree: And they're like, oh, well, we thought you'd been here already a long time. And I said, well, I've, I've already, I've already been studying and I probably know just as much as everybody else here.
Laura Crabtree: I think those first weeks were just like a deep dive into what was actually written down, because I would say that it was pretty sparse as to what we had written down on how we were going to operate dragon.
Laura Crabtree: And then I just hit the ground running with how do we, how do we think we want to do things? And then it was iterate after that.
Laura Crabtree: But, you know, the fun, the fun part was nothing's written down and I can go to anyone's desk and ask them questions.
Laura Crabtree: That was pretty awesome. Yeah. I don't think it's like that anymore, but it was like that back then.
Jeff Ward: And did you have a defining like moment at SpaceX for you or was it a sequence of defining events?
Laura Crabtree: There's different periods and there's a piece that characterizes kind of every period.
Jeff Ward: Mm-hmm.
Laura Crabtree: So, you know, that first period of SpaceX, I feel like is characterized by,
Laura Crabtree: we did this milestone with NASA where we needed to get paid. And I think we were getting paid $5 million from this NASA milestone about cargo.
Laura Crabtree: And we needed to demonstrate to NASA that we could fit cargo into the vehicle in 0G and in 1G.
Laura Crabtree: And so we went and we built a 0G simulator with their cargo bags and the cargo bags go from, you know,
Laura Crabtree: 20 pounds up to 300 pounds. So you had to demonstrate 300 pounds in a specific cargo bag. And so I had to design a steel frame that went inside the bag and then the bag had to be lifted by a crane.
Laura Crabtree: And, you know, we were in every day, Saturday, Sunday, et cetera,
Laura Crabtree: trying to design how we could get those bags into Dragon. 0G is easy. But it was pretty tough to get that 300-pound bag into
Laura Crabtree: Dragon. It was pretty tough to get that 300-pound bag into Dragon. You had to get into certain kind of configuration and then you had to strap it in. And not only did we have to do the bags,
Laura Crabtree: but we also had to build the cargo racks, which were not built. And the structures team was really busy on other things.
Laura Crabtree: And so we were sort of ad hoc members of the structures team for a little while, kind of riveting all of these cargo racks and putting them together.
Laura Crabtree: And, you know, NASA, I don't know if you guys have seen, but they do this white glove test where if you put the white glove and you get,
Laura Crabtree: like, you know, nicks in the glove, then you fail. So we had to sand everything down. And it was just an all-hands-on-deck moment.
Laura Crabtree: And I think my first three years, maybe more, were characterized by just a lot of random experiences like that.
Laura Crabtree: Things that I was not trained to do. And you just find a way to do them.
Jeff Ward: Totally vertically integrated experiences
Laura Crabtree: the
Jeff Ward: for person.
Laura Crabtree: Yeah, and it was great. It was so fun.
Jeff Ward: Is that what you were looking for when you joined SpaceX? I don't know exactly your trajectory into SpaceX, but.
Laura Crabtree: Um, I was looking for a fast paced company that challenged me. So not exactly,
Laura Crabtree: but yes, it was, I did not think I was going to be riveting and, you know, welding steel, but that's the kind of exposure that I wanted.
Laura Crabtree: I wanted a place that was, you know, every day was different And and you never knew what you were going to get.
Laura Crabtree: You never knew who you were going to talk to and you're learning new things every day. And I got exactly that for the first probably five years.
Jeff Ward: And was that what you were looking for when you set out as a student? Did you do a degree in aerospace? What was your trajectory on ramp?
Laura Crabtree: So my degree was in aerospace astronautics. I don't know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to do something hard.
Laura Crabtree: I don't know if that makes sense, but I, I wanted a really hard challenge in school and I will tell you that school was very challenging and in a really good
Laura Crabtree: way because I realized that I could do really hard things. When I was in school, I actually, I ran on the varsity track team as well.
Laura Crabtree: So not only was I in engineering school, but I was also a varsity athlete. And so that was a pretty fun experience because I got to see both sides of it.
Laura Crabtree: Um, and I, I liked that I could do the athletics as well as engineering and somehow find a balance and succeed in all of that.
Laura Crabtree: But I, I always just wanted to be part of human space flight. And my actual goal was fast paced company that has the ultimate goal of human space flight.
Laura Crabtree: And I thought if anyone's going to get humans to space, it's this, you know, quote, startup, um, in Hawthorne,
Laura Crabtree: and I might as well give it a shot.
Jeff Ward: And your shot paid off. You got to put astronauts in space.
Laura Crabtree: I did. I did. So I don't think I took a breath for probably a couple of minutes.
Laura Crabtree: I mean, I was probably still breathing, but I, I think it was just out of necessity, not because I thought about it. Um, we held our breaths for,
Laura Crabtree: for many minutes, but I think I, I almost shut off my brain at the moment because my friends were,
Laura Crabtree: were on the rocket and I had spent, uh, the better part of five years training them.
Laura Crabtree: And I knew all of their families and I knew their children. And, uh, it was a really tough moment for me.
Laura Crabtree: I was elated, but also terrified. And I think in the, in the book Reentry,
Laura Crabtree: I think Eric has actually quoted me by saying something along the lines of, I was crying. I know I was crying, but I don't remember it.
Laura Crabtree: Um, I just remember the, the, the sense of relief when they were actually in orbit. Um, and for me,
Laura Crabtree: that was like the, the culmination of everything that I wanted to do, which was get people in space.
Laura Crabtree: Um, so that was the culmination of, of 17 years of blood, sweat, and tears. Um, and it's not the reason why I was there.
Laura Crabtree: And it wasn't the eventuality that I thought I was going to have when I started at SpaceX, but it was what I had sort of,
Laura Crabtree: you know, when you start there, you have like a, a view of what you want to accomplish. Um, and you know, my, my goal was to get people in space.
Laura Crabtree: Well, obviously at that moment, when I started in 2009, SpaceX didn't have a commercial crew contract. It was just what I put out in the world.
Laura Crabtree: And I thought if anyone's going to have a commercial crew contract at some point in time, because the space shuttle is being retired,
Laura Crabtree: it's going to be this company. That's probably, maybe hopefully going to put cargo on the space station.
Laura Crabtree: And I sort of bet everything on that and it paid off. Um, and that moment was, uh,
Laura Crabtree: really really special. Um, and if you look back, I had purple hair, crazy purple hair. So,
Laura Crabtree: because the original dragon logo, you know, it was purple, but yeah, it was, uh, it was quite a special moment. And I think, you know,
Laura Crabtree: that, that moment was also even better because it was 2020 and here I was helping get people to space and so many people were just sitting at
Laura Crabtree: home and what a cool time to show up for the country and the world. Um, I think that was,
Laura Crabtree: that was the other way in which I think it was really special because I think everybody needed a win that year.
Laura Crabtree: Yeah, and I think when, when it comes out to, you know, Laura was crying, it's, it's, it's everything in one. And I think when you're crying,
Laura Crabtree: but not like, not like sad crying, you're just crying out of the like, sheer release of emotion. It is a pretty special thing.
Laura Crabtree: You know, people, when they cry at their wedding, or they cry at the birth of their children, it's not because they're sad, or they're happy. It's just because they had all of this emotion that they were holding together.
Laura Crabtree: And they were just like, keeping it together for whatever eventuality. And then when that actually comes to fruition, it is just like the best moment ever.
Jeff Ward: Right.
Laura Crabtree: Early on in the, in the spacesuit development days, we were designing the spacesuit and I was the, the model for the spacesuit.
Laura Crabtree: You obviously know what it looks like now. It didn't always look like that. And, um, we were demonstrating it and I walked into his office wearing the spacesuit,
Laura Crabtree: um, with a couple of other SpaceXers at the time. And, you know, we were demonstrating like movements and here I can like sit down in a chair and I can like move my arms.
Laura Crabtree: And he looked at, he looked at me dead in the face. And he said, the, this spacesuit's supposed to make you look cooler,
Laura Crabtree: not stupider. I was like, cool. This is my funny, my funny Elon moment, because I don't really have anything to say about that.
Laura Crabtree: And the, the way it looks now is awesome. But his feedback, but his feedback, it just so blunt.
Laura Crabtree: And I mean, actually I, I love it. but But looking back on that moment, I'm like, yeah, that was, that's pretty much sums it up.
Jeff Ward: Do you want to be an astronaut?
Laura Crabtree: I would, but I don't know if my husband would let me. He at this point said, if you go,
Laura Crabtree: we all go. And I said, okay, I could do that.
Jeff Ward: That's a good answer. I like that. I'm not sure I would get that answer here at home, but
Laura Crabtree: like
Jeff Ward: I like.
Laura Crabtree: because Because he, he thinks, you know, if, if I strap myself to a rocket, then everyone in the family needs to do the same because it's a sink or swim moment.
Laura Crabtree: And we're all going to swim. It's going to be great.
Jeff Ward: I see that.
Laura Crabtree: At the moment we can't though, because we have a six month old and I don't think they make baby space suits yet. So got a couple of years on it.
Jeff Ward: I'm sure they'll be working on that for our population of Mars.
Laura Crabtree: Yeah. I'm, I'm hoping.
Jeff Ward: So before we bump into the sort of popcorn, popcorn round questions,
Laura Crabtree: Yeah.
Jeff Ward: what are, what are you passionate about now with Epsilon3? Like, what do you see on the horizon for the company?
Laura Crabtree: I'm passionate about not the same things, which is, you know, not doing stupid things and not,
Laura Crabtree: not wasting time doing things the same way every single time. And, you know, sort of changing the status quo of like, oh, well, this is how we've always done things.
Laura Crabtree: I don't, I don't like that answer. I like to challenge how we do things and figure out how to make life better for our engineers.
Laura Crabtree: And also, you know, spend their time wisely. People are highly paid in this industry. You highly pay an engineer.
Laura Crabtree: You should give them the best tools to make the best decisions, you know, and, and also I am really passionate about this industry working together.
Laura Crabtree: So earlier this year, uh, we released something we call Epsilon3 Connect and it connects our customers with one another.
Laura Crabtree: So you build an engine and you want all the ontology, all of the, you know, background of,
Laura Crabtree: where that engines come from, where that engines come from, who built it, who tested it, all the test data, you want to give that to someone else. Well, you can now transfer ownership of that in Epsilon3,
Laura Crabtree: rather than, you know, making a PDF and then somebody scanning that PDF in. Um, and that's what I want to enable for kind of the future of how we think about this industry as it grows,
Laura Crabtree: you know, as Americans and, you know, as, you know, good stewards of good operational rigor,
Laura Crabtree: and that's how we would like us to continue to learn from one another and get better. And I think that's one of the things that Epsilon3 stands for.
Jeff Ward: What are you guys doing with AI at Epsilon3?
Laura Crabtree: What a loaded question! So, right now, many of our customers do not want AI,
Laura Crabtree: they are sort of holding us at bay, but we are working on some AI functionality that people can use and can turn on if they so choose.
Laura Crabtree: We released an MCP server this year that people can connect to their data within Epsilon3 so that they can learn about what they're doing and how they're doing it within the platform,
Laura Crabtree: and then next year and/or late this year, we are going to be releasing a lot more functionality that people can turn on so that you can utilize what you've already built in Epsilon
Laura Crabtree: 3 to build sort of the next generation of tests, of schedule, of plans, of work. work instructions,
Laura Crabtree: et cetera, uhm, because we want you to be able to do things faster. And I don't want to release AI functionality that hallucinates,
Laura Crabtree: that gives you the wrong answer, so we're doing a lot of really deep testing to make sure that, you know, we build a platform with,
Laura Crabtree: you know, the use of AI that people can really trust, rather than, you know, just throw something out there and see, see if it sticks. I would really like to make sure that,
Laura Crabtree: you know, I would really like to make sure that, you know, when we release functionality in that arena, people have the utmost trust in what we've built.
Jeff Ward: Sounds like a kind of a trusted add-on AI possibility for your customers.
Laura Crabtree: Yeah, definitely. And not everyone will use it, and that's okay.
Jeff Ward: And I guess that immediately makes me wonder what are you doing in terms of your own software development pipeline in use of these tools?
Laura Crabtree: So, we use AI to enhance how we build. So, we will use AI for,
Laura Crabtree: it's like early mockups, some early testing, but we are very, very controlled about what we do because we want to make sure that,
Laura Crabtree: you know, everything that we build does not fail. Which is why, you know, a lot of testing still happens with humans in the loop.
Laura Crabtree: All of our early testing, I think our head of engineering says, you know, Laura was our earliest tester, and she could break everything. And so,
Laura Crabtree: we do a lot of human testing because a computer isn't going to know what your workflow looks like. They aren't going to know why you chose to,
Laura Crabtree: you know, go from, you know, the schedule over to the inventory and then back to the schedule or, you know,
Laura Crabtree: whatever your workflow might be. So, we like to use humans for a lot of that and then enhance what we can do with AI,
Laura Crabtree: where we can make it faster. We try to, but we are still, you know, learning how to best utilize those tools.
Jeff Ward: It sounds like, as with everything at your company, it's a very thoughtful, mindful approach to AI. So, I appreciate hearing that.
Laura Crabtree: Yeah, that is the plan, yes.
Jeff Ward: I actually have super, really enjoyed talking to you and getting to hear about what you're doing and why you do what you're doing. As I said,
Jeff Ward: it's a topic area that I'm really very interested in, and also reaching back into the hardware and similar concepts when we're talking about managing hardware.
Jeff Ward: Yeah, I really appreciate your taking time out to talk to me.
Laura Crabtree: Yeah, thanks. It's been, it's been fun. I started rehashing kind of the early days also.
Jeff Ward: Yeah, to some extent. So, I'm going to jump into the popcorn round questions, and we've got plenty of time for you to expand on the answers as you want to.
Jeff Ward: But, I'll start with the looking backwards question. What was your biggest takeaway from SpaceX, would you say?
Laura Crabtree: I think for me, it was the, you know, being able to do hard things. You go into SpaceX with a certain level of confidence or a certain understanding of what
Laura Crabtree: you can do. And it's always going to be challenged, no matter what job you do there. And so,
Laura Crabtree: not just taking something at face value and really digging in and challenging yourself. So, that is kind of my biggest takeaway is,
Laura Crabtree: you know, don't just think that you can or can't do something. You really have to dig in, and you're probably capable of a lot more than you actually think you are.
Jeff Ward: And for people who want to take the kind of path that you've done to do hard things, what would you advise them when they're in the sort of cusp of their education?
Laura Crabtree: Ooh. For me it was not just being in one place. Like I mentioned earlier,
Laura Crabtree: you know, doing engineering degree and, you know, competing at a high level of sports, you know, have lots of passions,
Laura Crabtree: have lots of things that you can do. Don't just pigeonhole yourself into one thing, because if you pigeonhole yourself into one thing, you kind of leave open a lot of possibilities.
Laura Crabtree: And so one of the things that I, I like to learn about people when they, when they join the company here is, you know, tell me something outside work that you're really passionate about,
Laura Crabtree: or that you're really good at. Because, you know, I like to, I like to know about the human aspect, the person. And if you don't have any other passions and work is your only thing,
Laura Crabtree: then, you know, you, you might get bored or you might get frustrated. And the, the challenge isn't just work.
Laura Crabtree: The challenge is, is life. And like life is climbing a hill all day, every day. And so,
Laura Crabtree: you know, you got to have things outside of work that, you know, keep you growing both mind and body. And so I think that's something that,
Laura Crabtree: that I took away from the experience.
Jeff Ward: Which leads into the next thing. What keeps you going in mind? Like, what's your favorite science fiction author or movie or book?
Laura Crabtree: Oh, man. So there's, I don't know if this is a normal answer or not, but I really like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Laura Crabtree: It's pretty nerdy answer, I suppose. I love that book.
Jeff Ward: respect that. That's a,
Laura Crabtree: I
Jeff Ward: it's a touchstone for so many things,
Laura Crabtree: Yes.
Jeff Ward: actually.
Laura Crabtree: And I, and I often quote, uh, and, and tell people about 42, but nobody gets it.
Laura Crabtree: So then I tell them they have to read the book. So, um, I am going to give my son that book. I think this year, he's going to be 12 this year.
Laura Crabtree: So I, I think that's probably the right time to introduce it.
Jeff Ward: I think it probably is. I think it's kind of ageless as soon as you can read and, and laugh at a joke. I
Laura Crabtree: it.
Jeff Ward: think you should
Laura Crabtree: Yeah.
Jeff Ward: read
Laura Crabtree: I love it. So I'm excited to give him that book.
Jeff Ward: So then my final question is, do you think that we can make the world a better place? And if so, how?
Laura Crabtree: I think it starts with your outlook on life, which isn't probably the whole point of the podcast, but I think as humans,
Laura Crabtree: and I talk to my sons about this. I, so I have two sons and a daughter. I think you, you probably know about my two sons. I have a, an 11 year old and a 10 year old,
Laura Crabtree: and I have a six month old daughter. And I talked to my sons about this because they're of the age where, you know, they are able to influence people around them.
Laura Crabtree: They can have fun, intelligent conversations. They can also, you know, cut people And I think part of making the world a better place is how you show up to the people in your
Laura Crabtree: life, whether it be a random person on the sidewalk or, you know, a person you work with every day or your spouse or your children.
Laura Crabtree: And so something I told my 10 year old when we were on a walk yesterday is say hello and good morning to every person you see.
Laura Crabtree: And if you see something that you like, say, Hey, I really like your shirt today. This is the simplest thing to make the world a better place.
Laura Crabtree: And then as we are in, you know, business, I think what we can do within our companies is,
Laura Crabtree: you know, how do we affect other companies that we support? How are we being good stewards of the ecosystem that we're in?
Laura Crabtree: And I think something I mentioned earlier is, you know, you, you and I are, or anybody that works in this industry,
Laura Crabtree: we work in a very small universe. You know, I go to a conference, I see a hundred people that I know. And I think for me,
Laura Crabtree: it's showing up, making sure that I have a positive outlook, making sure that I am like being the person that I would like to interact with in life.
Laura Crabtree: And I think that that is the biggest way we can make a difference in the world.
Laura Crabtree: There's not enough positive energy these days.
Jeff Ward: I love that. I love that answer. And in many ways, that is what the podcast is about is what have people chosen to do with their lives and,
Jeff Ward: and why not necessarily on a technical basis. So I've, I've really loved getting to know you a little bit through the things that you've done.
Jeff Ward: Is there anything else that you want to mention?
Laura Crabtree: I can tell you that I'm passing the Sunday night test that I come around Sunday night comes around and I'm thinking about all the people that I get to work with all the people I get to talk to all the things we get to build in the coming week.
Laura Crabtree: And I think probably everybody should have that kind of test.
Jeff Ward: I think they should. And may you always pass the Sunday night test every night of the week. Thanks so much for taking time out and for also kind of encouraging me to get this on the schedule.
Jeff Ward: I really appreciate it.
Laura Crabtree: Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. Good to talk to you, Jeff.
Jeff Ward: This episode was produced with assistance from Devin Schwartz, and you can find us at itsnotrocketscience.space.