Shotwell: decline in GEO business is not a “crushing blow” for us. Seeing strong growth in DOD business, but also later with commercial crew: “7 billion potential payloads” #WSBW
Shotwell: Falcon 9 first stages come back in much better shape than anticipated. Have refurbishment time down to four weeks; goal is still a one-day turnaround next year. #WSBW
02:10Before SpaceX even made orbit, customers were brought to the factory, and were excited to be a part of something different.03:09 Q: "What's been the biggest challenge being in the industry that's so male-dominated?" A: "I've been really lucky to work for companies where there wasn't an obvious bias. For sure at SpaceX. The only thing that matters at SpaceX is how good your work is. Sex, who you're sleeping with, whether you go church or not, what color is your skin, that doesn't matter."04:30 Was in slippers and a robe in her hotel room for the launch, could rely on all 7,000 employees.06:50 BFR will allow incredible flexibility. Could be used to retrieve a satellite in it's payload bay. BFR will allow people to work and live in space, and deploy technology that could not be previously. Will have an 8.5m diameter payload bay, which is "Big... big."07:08 Will be an announcement soon on SpaceX tourism.08:15 Q: "How will the recent discovery of liquid water on Mars change SpaceX's colonization strategy? A: "There has to be water on Mars for our system to work, because it's a LOX/Methane system. Knowledge of liquid water on the surface definitely makes things more exciting, though.09:30 Q: "What will SpaceX's relationship with the ESA look like?" A: "We won't be going to Mars on our own, will be doing it on collaboration with NASA and the ESA. There's so many elements of the trip that we're not thinking about, that we're hoping other organizations pitch in. Living on the surface of Mars will be like extreme camping, for a hundred years."11:30 A lot of Falcon 1 was made by other people, notably the structure/airframe. SpaceX wanted to own the engines, operations, and software. Electronics were 50/50. Europe has quite good composite technology compared to the US, could be collaboration there.14:15 We broke our HR team growing the company so fast. Will try not to do that again. "I try to meet with every employee once a year/year and a half."14:50 Q: "After Mars colonization, does SpaceX see itself being in charge of the politics/government?" A: "We'll have to figure out what the right way to start a settlement on Mars is. I don't think we should be in charge of the government there."16:20 Asteroid mining is an important business, but only to use as a capability to go further. Don't know if it'll ever be cost effective.17:10 Tourism is inevitable, need to make sure we don't do it too soon. Bring up test pilots first, and families after.18:35 Q: "How have you managed to keep a startup mentality in a company that's grown so big, especially in an industry that's generally moved in a bureaucratic way?" A: "We're not as startup-y as we want to still be. Have had bureaucracy creep in, have tried to beat it back by engaging with employees. My suggestion box is really important. Employees know that if something's in their way, some dumb rule, that they're supposed to raise their hand and tell us. We do try to maintain that culture. The key is to continue to have really insanely ambitious goals. Every new project is a startup, even if the company isn't. Doing that next big thing is really hard, and it keeps people motivated."20:00 Q: "How have US regulations limited the amount you can collaborate with other countries?" A: "The State Department makes our lives very difficult from that perspective. There is almost no collaboration we can do, unless it's under the auspices of government-to-government agreements. Even hard to hire international employees. The US does not have a corner on the market of great engineers. We want to be able to hire talent wherever it sits."23:00 Software team is relatively small, ~100 people. Vast majority of the employees at SpaceX are technical. Tiny communications team, medium-ish sized finance team.26:00 Putting people in space is incredibly important to humanity. Since the advent of SpaceX, everyone in the space industry is happy (except other launch providers). Everybody has dropped their price.28:30 Q: "What is your relationship managing a company with Elon?" (Might have butchered this question, but I think that's what he meant.) A: "Elon is my boss. He's the chairman of the board, primary shareholder. Just to be clear, I run the company the way he wants me to. We do divide our time. He focuses on technology and innovation, and I focus on day-to-day operations. I love working for Elon. I've worked for him for 16 years. He's funny, really smart, very straightforward. The media casts him in two ways: One that he's this god that no one gets near, which is also foolish, because he can be very down-to-earth. Or that he's this evil person, which is also ridiculous. He just wants to do great things for people. He started SpaceX because he wanted to go to Mars, and he didn't see that any other organization was going to go do it. He's an extraordinary man. I would not want to be him, by the way. Anything you do. Anything! Shows up in the media, it's ridiculous. You can't live your life that way."32:30Question from r/SpaceX! Q: "How will ITAR work with BFR Earth-to-Earth? (He uses landing at Shanghai as an example)" A: "We'll land on our own platform that's out at sea. Largely because cities probably won't want something hovering over their billion dollar buildings. It's also very loud. (Notably sonic booms.) Will land in international waters." Q: He also asks how women at SpaceX balance work and family, maternity leave, etc. "Rocketry is known as a man's field." A: "I didn't know rockets were a man's business. That's new to me. [Laughter and applause] "Sorry, that was bad phrasing. My bad!" "It's okay! We have extraordinary women at SpaceX. We do give them maternity leave. We give baby bonding leave to fathers as leave. What we try to do is just be fair. Women get more time off, of course. In fact, our retention rate for women is higher than our retention rate for men. So we've clearly created an environment in which women are comfortable. 22% of our new interns are female.35:00 Q: "You've said that travel to mars will be available within the next decade. Will people with absurd ambitions to work on Mars be able to in that time? (She's an architecture student, so she uses that as her example)" A: "Yes." [Laughter] "Something terrible will have to happen in SpaceX for us to not be on our way to Mars and back in 10 years."36:30 Q: "What characteristics do you look for when hiring a new engineer?" A: "People who can work on a ship, and are very good working large mechanical structures as well as electronics. Will need a lot of builders, and very creative people." Q: "What to people need to do to prepare for a future trip to mars?" (In terms of health, skills, etc) A: "Mechanical people, people good with electronics, people who know how to make methane from Martian regolith, that would be great." Q: "What about soft skills?" A: "Soft skills are great, especially during the journey. It'll be like you're in a large aircraft for 3-6 months. We need to make sure that we know how to do that and we aren't putting everyone to sleep, so you'll be interacting. I think it will be fantastic. There will be windows. Lots of windows." [Laughter]39:00 Q: Something about suborbital flight, I can't hear him too clearly. When will suborbital business be happening? A: "Blue is working on it, along with Virgin. They're just trying to make the system safe and reliable. Blue has a little bit more technology to go. Virgin I think is just trying to do it safely. Because they go right to tourists. They're not taking astronauts/test pilots. They're going right to regular population. Although, sort of "regular", you need $200,000 to spend on the five minutes of suborbital flight. They say that they're going to do it this year, I think that it's a year, maybe two, away." Q: Something something "SpaceX" I think he was talking about BFR for suborbital flight. A: "Oh, you mean that? Well, I need that new rocket. I think we're going to fly that new rocket in 2021... and we never make our deadlines. [Laughter] It will be the first half of next decade. Q: "Are there any links between SpaceX and Elon's other companies?" (Not verbatim, but something along those lines) A: "There are some synergies between them. We use Tesla batteries in our technology. We gave Tesla our enterprise information system. I think the first cars on Mars will be Teslas. I also think that we're be boring tunnels on Mars to live in. — Talking to the architecture student from earlier — "One of your mediums of expertise has to be rock." [Laughter] Q: Last question, can't make out what she asks unfortunately. A: Talks about her technical background, and her love for people. Thinks her people skills have been a greater characteristic than her technical background.
Transcript from reddit thanks to Jack Lishman:
The Air Force Air, Space & Cyber Conference next month has a spot carved out for "SpaceX Remarks" 17-Sep-2018. https://www.afa.org/events/Conference/Agenda1Bezoz is a keynote speaker.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell: ‘We would launch a weapon to defend the U.S.’by Sandra Erwin — September 17, 2018During an appearance on Monday at the Air Force Association’s annual symposium, Shotwell was thrown a question she said she had never heard before: “Would SpaceX launch military weapons?”
I hate headlines that are written just based on a response to a leading question like that.
AIAA Space 2018, Commercial Crew — The Newest Ride to LEOTuesday, Sept 18th 1400–1530 EDTMODERATOR: Kathy Lueders, Program Manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASAPANELISTS:John Mulholland, Vice President and Program Manager, Commercial Crew Programs, Space Exploration, The Boeing CompanyBenjamin Reed, Director, Commercial Crew Mission Management, SpaceX Dont seem to be livestreamed, but will be uploaded later.
As you probably all know, tomorrow Hans Koenigsmann is going to speak during IAC.However, today there was a meeting with Hans at the University of Bremen booth, where he was speaking about starting a career in the space sector. It was announced on the @IAC2018 Twitter account just 2,5h before the meeting, so there weren't actually many people attending. I know the quality of the sound is not that great, but it was in the Exhibition Hall, where many people where passing by and talking, so it's the best we could get.
Press Conference for #dearMoon with @yousuck2020 @fccjapan on October 9th 11:30am - 12:30pm in Tokyo. Live Stream information to follow. http://www.fccj.or.jp/events-calendar/press-events/icalrepeat.detail/2018/10/09/5084/30/press-conference-yusaku-maezawa-dearmoon-host-curator-entrepreneur-and-ceo-of-zozo.html?filter_reset=1 …
Yes, it has been removed on an IAC organizers request (I guess they noticed it because it was embedded on our website that we were accredited through). I received a message to remove it because it's unsolicited and unauthorized and because the frame was not intended for publication. I had not realized earlier that these should not be published, as there had been no clear rules posted anywhere.