Notes on 'Liftoff' by Eric Berger
Elon Musk “long ago decided that for humanity to have a future, it must expand to other worlds”…a premise which is kind of nuts if one thinks about it for more than a few seconds but there seems to be no doubt that Musk believes it. This belief was his prime motivation for founding a company that could build the hardware to make that wild dream a reality. “Liftoff” is the story of the first few years of his effort to build the company we now know as SpaceX.
Thankfully, “Liftoff” focuses mostly on the plucky engineers who built the hardware for the first Falcon rockets and their technical and physical travails along the way. But it also, by necessity, had to cover the company’s founder and how he willed the company into existence and shepherded it from near death to extraordinary success. Where he does deal with Musk, author Eric Berger tends to indulge in the kind of hagiography that was common amongst Musk observers until his purchase of Twitter and subsequent self-humiliation on the platform. Some notes on this aspect of “Liftoff” follow.
Musk’s Leadership Qualities
We’re told that “if an engineer faced an intractable problem, Musk wanted a chance to solve it.” But based on what? Musk has degrees in economics and physics. I have degrees in physics…and I am most decidedly not an aerospace engineer. Musk talks a lot about his innate engineering acumen, but it’s not clear where his engineer’s designs end and his ego begins. Berger never challenges this and helps to feed Musk’s own narrative of being an engineering genius.
“I’m generally super good at engineering, personally, most of the designs are mine, good or bad.” This seems like high-grade narcissism, not the words of a mature professional. He gets credit in the author’s words because “he led the way.” But there’s leading the way and there’s pushing your engineers to the breaking point because you’re footing the bill. Anyone can beat on employees, no management skill required for that. Fortunately, the young SpaceX staff was so inspired by the nature of the work that they were willing to put up with it. The epilogue of the book shows that some staff could not indefinitely tolerate Musk’s treatment and left, while others admit to suffering psychologically as a result of their time with the company and the endless months of intense pressure–though they were proud they could say they were a part of the company’s first days.
“During meetings, Musk will make snap decisions. This is one of the keys that enables SpaceX to move quickly.” Anyone can make snap decisions. The question is are those decisions generally good ones? There aren’t enough examples to draw a conclusion. We know SpaceX’s famous Falcon rocket was ultimately successful, but was it because of–or in spite of–Musk’s penchant for snap decisions?
We’re told Musk did not care about plans, he told his people “just get it done” and that SpaceX “viewed requirements as mostly a waste of time.” The events chronicled in the book suggest they felt plans were time wasters because they had never personally experienced the consequences of failing to create them. They learned the hard way. Following a launch failure in 2006, Berger writes that SpaceX began gradually adopting more traditional aerospace practices like meticulously documenting the rocket assembly process. There are a number of instances like this where it’s shown that SpaceX had to learn what other companies already knew. So, while they were willing to take risks other companies wouldn’t, they also wasted time re-learning things that were already well understood. Because they were ultimately successful, this is forgiven and, in retrospect, treated as a virtue.
During a static test fire, a series of unfortunate circumstances (the kind that routinely bedevil rocketry) caused the test team to run out of liquid oxygen. Musk said “if the launch team ever ran out of LOX again, they’d all be fired.” Berger later says that “it is in [Musk’s] nature, after something goes wrong, to find whoever caused the problem and vent his frustration.” There are lines throughout the book that say basically the same thing, suggesting that Musk likes to berate his engineers if things don’t go to plan. He seems less a motivational leader than a petulant bully. Instances of Musk being unreasonable with his employees are dismissed as “Musk being Musk”, a tautology that allows the observer to avoid saying “he’s a jerk.”
Berger asserts that “Musk has a rollicking wit” but fails to give us an example of the supposed wit. When an example of Musk saying something he thinks is funny is quoted, it’s childish. And we know from his Twitter escapades that he’s decidedly unfunny.
Miscellaneous
Gwynne Shotwell, who became president of SpaceX in 2008, is characterized as “blond and bold.” No other employee’s hair color is mentioned. Berger mentions she was a former cheerleader in high school but neglects to mention the high school activities of the other staff. This is just lazy sexism that I’m surprised an editor didn’t catch.
in 2006, SpaceX was about to fold until it won a $278 million Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) contract. Seems clear that Shotwell was critical to selling SpaceX and cementing relationships because Musk didn’t have the requisite people skills; he was better at offending and alienating potential partners. One wonders if Musk could have ever made the COTS deal with NASA. Seems like Shotwell was the one that made it happen.