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No, you're literally just giving Musk credit for things he didn't do but which Shotwell did. If Shotwell were a man, nobody would put up with Musk stealing the

No, you're literally just giving Musk credit for things he didn't do but which Shotwell did. If Shotwell were a man, nobody would put up with Musk stealing the credit for her work. The reason that they did install 29 Raptor engines overnight was because Musk was a whiny little s$$$ and forced the employees to do it on threat of termination. But the reason they could do it was because Shotwell had the company running smoothly enough (and the labor force happy enough with her leadership) to make it possible. And it's borderline fraud to give Musk engineering credit for the "5 stages of engineering," since Musk had literally nothing to do with any of that except take credit for the work of his engineering staff. Musk came up with "first principles" but first principles count for literally nothing in engineering. The hard part is the execution, not the base idea. See, e.g., Boring Co, HyperLoop, DC vs Marvel, etc.) Musk didn't care about blowing up 29 raptors on a test because it's not his money that he's playing with; it's the taxpayer that's funding his whims of fancy. But Blue Origin is heavily funded by Bezos out of pocket, and since it's his own money he's more cautious about how it's used. That being said: once again this 29 raptor installation owes everything to Shotwell making it possible: having 29 raptors/parts thereof available, having an installation site available, having staff available to sacrifice their night for no good reason, and most importantly, having an inkling ahead of time that her idiot boss would demand something stupid like this and having everything ready to go when King Musk waltzed in with his latest silly demand. Unlike you, I know a number of people at SpaceX and those involved with Starbase. Shotwell is heavily involved, but unlike Musk, she's an actual leader and trusts her employees. She doesn't micromanage so she doesn't need to be onsite constantly breathing down her employees' necks.

cromwellian 5y ago
Would Starbase or Starship even exist as a concept or program of SpaceX, if it hadn't been for Musk? Would Shotwell have created the Starship program at SpaceX? Would Shotwell even have pushed for the reusable booster program at SpaceX or would she have went with expendable first stages? No one is taking anything away from Shotwell, but fact is, it is Musk who is making reusability, full reusability, on-orbit refueling, and super-heavy lift a priority of R&D at SpaceX. And this has nothing to do with gender. Steve Jobs got all of the accolades for everything amazing that Apple did. He stole credit from Steve Wozniak, and from all of the other brilliant designers and engineers at Apple, but people mostly gave him a pass. But to deny Steve as the driving force for many of decisions, even if Steve had nothing to do with Apple's amazing supply chain management, or semiconductor team, is also distorting history. No Steve Jobs, no iPhone, no Mac. No Musk, no Starship. It's just that simple, Musk isn't an executive to set out to make a rocket company to make money launching satellites, he set out to make humans multiplanetary, and everything flows from that vision. His obsession with that dream is the core driver behind everything else. Musk creates the 'urgency' at SpaceX. Blue Origin isn't doing jack because they are careful with money, Blue Origin is wasting money. They've spent $1 billion a year! They're not doing anything because they're running a traditional waterfall model of development and they have no urgency, becausefor Bezos this is a hobby. They're OldSpace dressed up in NewSpace clothing. What you're doing is trying to remove the person who controls the purse springs, who is pushing his company to engage in risky, unsafe, but potentially revolutionary vision, from the story. Put a traditional CEO in Musk's chair and you'll get a guy managing a 5% YoY improvement in their existing Falcon 9 business lines every year. They'll rest on their butt milking the Falcon 9 with tweaks, and they'll be stuck in the innovators dilemma for fear of killing the golden goose, or risking the company. And it's for that reason, since the 1960s, the basic formula for aerospace companies hasn't changed. Also to be clear, I'm a big fan of Shotwell. But you can be a fan of both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, of the visionary risk taker with the obsessive personality, and the person responsible for executing it. With the ADHD and the OCD founders. You need both kinds of people.

cromwellian 5y ago

Would Starbase or Starship even exist as a concept or program of SpaceX, if it hadn't been for Musk? Would Shotwell have created the Starship program at SpaceX? Would Shotwell even have pushed for the reusable booster program at SpaceX or would she have went with expendable first stages? No one is taking anything away from Shotwell, but fact is, it is Musk who is making reusability, full reusability, on-orbit refueling, and super-heavy lift a priority of R&D at SpaceX. And this has nothing to do with gender. Steve Jobs got all of the accolades for everything amazing that Apple did. He stole credit from Steve Wozniak, and from all of the other brilliant designers and engineers at Apple, but people mostly gave him a pass. But to deny Steve as the driving force for many of decisions, even if Steve had nothing to do with Apple's amazing supply chain management, or semiconductor team, is also distorting history. No Steve Jobs, no iPhone, no Mac. No Musk, no Starship. It's just that simple, Musk isn't an executive to set out to make a rocket company to make money launching satellites, he set out to make humans multiplanetary, and everything flows from that vision. His obsession with that dream is the core driver behind everything else. Musk creates the 'urgency' at SpaceX. Blue Origin isn't doing jack because they are careful with money, Blue Origin is wasting money. They've spent $1 billion a year! They're not doing anything because they're running a traditional waterfall model of development and they have no urgency, becausefor Bezos this is a hobby. They're OldSpace dressed up in NewSpace clothing. What you're doing is trying to remove the person who controls the purse springs, who is pushing his company to engage in risky, unsafe, but potentially revolutionary vision, from the story. Put a traditional CEO in Musk's chair and you'll get a guy managing a 5% YoY improvement in their existing Falcon 9 business lines every year. They'll rest on their butt milking the Falcon 9 with tweaks, and they'll be stuck in the innovators dilemma for fear of killing the golden goose, or risking the company. And it's for that reason, since the 1960s, the basic formula for aerospace companies hasn't changed. Also to be clear, I'm a big fan of Shotwell. But you can be a fan of both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, of the visionary risk taker with the obsessive personality, and the person responsible for executing it. With the ADHD and the OCD founders. You need both kinds of people.